This, like Series 5, was not an isolated review series, so this is another re-cut to put my Series 6 reviews in a self-contained context with each other. As with other compilation LDD series posts, edits will be made where information is outdated by current knowledge (either seamlessly or as an editor's note in brackets) and extraneous discussion that made sense in the original roundups will be cut to contain the reviews to this post.
Living Dead Dolls had a special theme for Series 6 directly based upon the series number. Six is a famously spooky number when put in an identical trio, with 666 being cited as the Satanic "Number of the Beast", and this is the driving idea behind LDD Series 6, with the "beast" part taken more literally with a gimmick of pet companions! As such, there's an irregular total of six dolls in the series, and each comes with a pet animal, leaving a number of beasts within the cast of the series, and 6 dolls and 6 animals in series 6!
[I later realized quite belatedly that Series 6 is also a stealth Halloween series, having released in October and having each doll rooted in classically spooky imagery. This is not an official LDD Halloween release due to the lack of holiday branding and specific iconography, but it clearly fits the season. That revelation comes to light as I progress through these dolls over the months.]
This series was also collected sporadically when I felt like it, so not in consecutive months or in even intervals between dolls. I only knew I needed them all before October hit because they turned out to be so Halloweeny and I had a lot else planned for the month LDD-wise.
Sneaking to the Slime: Hush
[Hush and the following doll Calico's reviews were both initially published in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 1.]
Hush is such a compelling Living Dead Doll to me because she's a mix of honestly freaky, mildly repulsive, and gosh-darned adorable.
Series 6 is honestly one of those series I wouldn't [and didn't] say no to a single doll from, and I could seriously see myself collecting all of them--it's the only "variety" series where I can say that [I think today, that could be false: I could easily see myself getting all of Series 14 as well]. The other two series I can consider completing (23 [complete now], and 31) have thematically-unified casts. Fortunately, as things stand right now, Series 6 promises to be easy to collect. All of the dolls are on the lower end of the aftermarket prices. All the more for me to enjoy!
I never would have thought it would be Hush as my first doll in the series, but I'd recently become obsessed with her, and was always at least a little captivated. I firmly rank Hush as one of the all-time creepiest Living Dead Dolls ever made...and also find her very endearing.
Hush's story is that she's a little girl who snuck down into the sewers at night and befriended and fed the rats who lived there, only to slip and fall to her death down in the drains during one of her visits, whereupon she became rat food herself. I find her design to perfectly capture the disgusting environment she found herself in without being truly revolting and intolerable, as well as having some of the weird stupid innocence a girl would need to possess to end up in that situation. Hush had been on my mind for a time, and popped up as a pretty low offering for LDD in mint condition, so I said yes.
I got Hush before S3 Lottie, so this was the second-oldest LDD packaging I had seen at the time of getting her, after S1 Sadie.
Here's the coffin unwrapped. The wrap is just like the Series 1 Sadie box, with rattly sheet plastic.
The Series 6 coffin is black with handles on the side like Series 8, and has the pink tissue that was the "default" for several early series.
The chipboard displays a color photo closeup of Hush's eyes styled as a jagged cutout, along with her poem. Through a typo, the rat Shriek's name is not capitalized, though the name being a verb means it's very easy not to realize a mistake was made.
Her poem reads:
Shy little Hush
and her pet rat Shriek
Dwelling in the sewer,
These two are sure to reek.
Here's a metrical rewrite attempt.
Look at little Hush and her pet rat Shriek
Sewer-dwelling pals, they are freaks who reek
The back of the box under the opaque lid feels like an in-between stage for the ones I've shown. It's less cluttered than Series 1, and has the slogan featured in Series 8, but it has yellow text and the illustration from the inner lid which were seen on the Series 1 back.
"Creepy Doll" is inappropriately capitalized like in Series 8.
I found myself having an easier time with Hush's package, since, after experiencing S1 Sadie, I knew the chipboard was taped inside and got that off easily. After that, the backdrop and tissue slid out with ease and I was able to undo the ties. There's an extra twist tie in the Series 6 dolls' boxes for the requisite pet, and Shriek was rested on a small plastic tray under the tie and over Hush's legs.
However, putting the coffin back together was trickier. The tissue adhesive to the backdrop hadn't held, so I had to try to tuck it in after the backdrop was in, and it wasn't so smooth. While I love the look and feel of the classic packaging with the tissue, I'm starting to feel more and more that the switch to plastic trays is more user-friendly and appealing. It seems like it can be hit or miss whether the tissue in a coffin is orderly and properly secured or not. Age definitely decreases the odds of a tidy tissue, though. S1 Sadie's was pretty shredded in the unboxing process.
Here's the doll unboxed.
Hush's death certificate has the graphical style of most LDD series'. She died on December 20, 1971. The most likely thematic reason for this death date is that Roy Disney died that day--he was the co-founder of the Disney empire and the brother of the famous man with the Mouse. I'm surprised they picked Roy and not Walt for the date, though. It wouldn't have been a massive distance from Roy--Walt was December 15, 1966.
Hush must have lived somewhere warm to have not died of hypothermia before she could become rodent feed. Sneaking out late in just a nightie during December would be unthinkable in many areas. Going on the Disney allusion, though, California or Florida could make sense as her location.
Her poem reads:
Shy little Hush thought rats were so pretty
So it was her good fortune she lived by the city
It was easy to sneak into the sewer each night
To offer her pets a cheesy delight
But one silly slip landed Hush on her head
It was right there she drowned and the rats were well fed.
Interesting that both poems start with the exact same phrase. Here's a rewrite attempt.
Quiet sweet Hush felt that rats were so pretty
It was good fortune she lived by the city
Easy she snuck down each night to the sewer
Offering cheese to the sweet mischief-doers
One night, she fell on her head in the slurry
Rats swarmed, and they were well fed in a scurry
Here's the doll. What a horrible little presence.
Hush's hair is long and black and with a center parting, falling out of her face in a big mop. One really interesting thing they did with her was to make her hair out of very thin rooted yarn rather than typical fake hair fiber, lending it a really messy, matted, freaky appearance that well conveys the soggy and filthy look of a girl who fell in the sewer. It can expose some bald spots because yarn hair functionally has to be rooted/laid thinner to feel proportionate in volume, but for such a thoroughly bedraggled girl as Hush, bald spots aren't that bad. Yarn hair can only be finger-combed to tidy it up, but tidiness is not the intention here.
I really enjoy yarn hair because it can be so easily arranged and combed and positioned for effect in ways fiber hair can't do unaided, so Hush's hair can hang pretty much as wide or narrow, or as in front of out out of her face as you want. It's all harrowing and horrible and always looks its worst (read:best)!
 |
| As if she needed to look any scarier! |
And here's Hush's hair at its most orderly.
I find her to look best in her awful way when her hair is all swept out of her face and asymmetrical, but it's really fun to play with.
Yarn specifically like this was later used for Series 30's Lucy, the freak show geek. Geeks, in the original context of carnivals, were also a filthy sort and agreed to bite the heads off small animals for entertainment, so it suited her too. While Hush's Resurrection doll is respectable in her own right, I think she has far less character, and one aspect of that includes using a typical smooth hair fiber and having a tidier hairstyle.
 |
| Official LDD photo of Resurrection Hush. |
Thin yarn like this might have been the superior option to give to Faith for a wet-hair look, since wet hair is creepiest when scraggly. Faith's glossy hair would have been good in theory when new, but it was so thin on my copy, and a little damaged. And it might have been too tidy for a drowned doll, shiny or not.
With thin yarn on Faith, I could have created hair arrangements like this...
...without actual water. Of course, the double-edged sword is that yarn hair would be absorbent, unlike realistic hair fiber, meaning taking pictures of a Faith made that way in muddy water would probably be inadvisable for maintaining the doll--and photos of her hair dunked in water would look less realistic than they do with standard doll hair. Hush's hair looks more convincing dry than it would wet, while Faith's hair doesn't look so creepy when it's dry.
It's debatable whether Faith should have had hair like Hush, but the choice to give her realistic hair can't be explained by Faith being released before a doll debuted this yarn hair. Hush was two series before Faith.
Other characters with yarn hair are Macumba (the only Black doll, using it for a Black hair texture), Captain Bonney (meant to look pirate-braided), Misery (likely done for a wild silhouette), Agrat-Bat-Mahlat (likely meant to look messy or wild), Daisy Slae (either for a wild look or to depict white-girl hippie dreadlocks). Rotten Sam and Sandy and Series 6 fellow Calico all use yarn hair as literal yarn due to their rag-doll imagery. Sam and Sandy are parodies of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Calico is a Frankenmonster with a patchwork theme, fairly similar to Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Hush and Lucy are the only LDDs with really thin yarn hair.
[Since publishing this review initially, I've gotten Macumba, Bonney, and Daisy Slae, and can hyperlink that paragraph to my reviews of them in this recut repost!]
Yarn yarn yarn yarn. I'm spinning quite a yarn about yarn here. Might as well direct you to my first exploits with yarn hair making over Treesa Thornwillow while I'm at it.
Hush's face paint is haunting, with very bold dark grey veining all over that looks like deathly decay or toxin effects, but also makes her look like an old doll with a cracked or crazed finish.
I love LDDs which can be read as horrifyingly warped antiques, and Hush works in that category for me. She has fairly standard LDD eyes, with two rings of grey shading her irises, and an intense inflamed pink airbrushed shading surrounds them, presumably to make her look ill. Hush's eyes are outlined in grey rather than black, and her bold veins still have an airbrushing element to them, softening her in some nice disquieting ways so she doesn't look like an all-out cartoon. Her face is extremely stark and shocking, but it's graceful enough to be a genuinely gorgeous paint job. It's mesmerizing and I keep coming back to stare at it. Hush's body color is a very very pale pink. Her lips are black.
Hush's expression is fairly vague but she looks slightly scared or unhappy, like someone without a lot of foresight or perspective who made a dumb mistake. Despite her really scary-looking veins and nasty appearance, I also find Hush to be very sweet. However, two lines connected to her veins fall pretty exactly into the LDD brow shape used on dolls like Lottie, which allows her to be read as more intense and wicked, so it's kind of up to you whether she has brows or not. Here's me outlining the spot where I'm seeing eyebrows to illustrate it to you. I'd struggle to believe these aren't meant to be eyebrows.
 |
| Schrödinger's eyebrows. |
I prefer her viewing her as looking more startled and sad, though, so I like that the brows fade out at a distance.
I love the contrast of her hair and skin. In low lighting, she looks especially pale and ghostly, and the eye shading seems to get redder.
The vein detail continues all across Hush's body, and her nails are painted black. I really love the LDDs that are thoroughly painted, and Series 6 includes another one with Calico and her full-body patchwork design. She and Hush have more in common than I realized!
 |
| Official LDD portrait of Calico. (Like I said, I could see myself owning all of the Series 6 dolls.) |
Hush's costume is one piece--a nightdress, implying she's snuck out of the house at night to visit her hideaway. Hush is barefoot to match this vibe. Her feet are not molded very evenly, so she's a bit wobbly.
The dress has ribbon straps tied in bows, though I will not endeavor to see if they untie, and has a tiered construction. The greyish color has some darker stains, and it seems clear that the dress is overall designed to look like it had started out white or cream in color. The back of the dress velcros, but the way it's sewn, the hook and loop strips cross over in an X or V instead of lining up parallel.
This dress feels really lovely. Clearly, by Series 6, LDD had already begun to deliver on really great doll clothing.
I think Hush's color scheme is so beautifully done. The grey in her eyes and dress are a perfect match for the pink and stark black, and she overall evokes classic pale little monster/ghost girls with black hair while not feeling derivative. She feels grounded and stylized to me in just the right blend, and is extremely interesting and arresting to me for a doll with design features that aren't unique in horror history.
Because she's from Series 6, Hush is on the older swivel body. Hush's vinyl has some strange spots of grime and discoloration, so, while she's textually meant to be filthy, I will try to wash her down to just the designed repulsiveness.
Hush's animal companion is naturally a rat, who's named Shriek. The two make a pair of names that sounds like someone trying to quiet a scream--Hush and Shriek! The Series 6 animals are static figurines which are quite large next to the dolls, and done in a very caricatured style. Shriek has red eyes, a brown mohawk, and a snarl that only a lethally naive girl like Hush could possibly love.
He's made of a relatively soft vinyl with a hole in the bottom, like a rubber duck but not as squishy. I don't think all of the pets were made like this, but it was viable for this guy. The creases on the head have some dark washing to make his definition pop more.
The Shriek sculpt was reused, cast in black, for the (based on a movie, but unlicensed because the original source material is public domain) Nosferatu and Victim exclusive two-pack to reflect the swarms of rats the ratlike vampire Count Orlok commands in the film. The plague rat motif for Orlok (an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula preceding the Lugosi portrayal!) is such a cool angle for a vampire.
 |
| Official LDD photo of the Nosferatu set. I'd go for Orlok and his rat, but I don't need the whole set because the Victim doesn't seem closely based on the film character Ellen. |
The two Series 6 dolls who were redesigned in Resurrection series XI did not have pets, but they referenced their original pets in their variant dolls' costumes. Dottie Rose's variant had a poodle skirt printed with her specific poodle Hun, and Hush was dressed and made up in a full-on rat suit with a fluffy hooded, tailed onesie, and painted whiskers and teeth!
 |
| Official LDD photo. |
Then, to take photos of Hush, I grabbed whatever I could find to construct a sewer. I decided I could fake one with my garden path, using the patio edge as the walk and the dirt, flooded, as the sludge. I grabbed some things to construct some walls around her. For extra dressing, I thought an unclaimed foot from a failed doll project was an appropriate thing to find down in the drains.
I also really liked an edit that created toxic green lighting.
The grass kind of harms the effect, but I think I did okay.
Hush also looked really good near the basement boiler with all the pipes.
And this time, the toxic green really bounces off her sickly pink.
Hush's colors aren't too bright, but she really works in this hypersaturated setup!
And lastly, a pair of photos staging the moments after her death.
It's strange to call such a freaky little thing a beautiful doll, but that's what Hush is. Her visual design is magnetic, arresting, and lush in all its sick little ways, perfectly capturing an exaggerated, creepy horror look with some real care and skill. Hush has incredible paint work, her dress is really nicely made, and her crazy yarn hair is such a wonderful asset. She's my filthy little sewer baby and I love her. I think she's a real standout in the brand.
Miss Hodgepodge '03: Calico
Calico's chipboard features her own eyes and her poem, confirming that photo closeups of the eyes are the Series 6 chipboard theme. I'd be very interested to see Dottie Rose's, because she had a variant where, intentionally, half of the copies of her doll had S3 Lottie-style eyebrows and half had no brows.
(Listen, you probably will not have to wait long at all to find out. The browless Dottie has always been on my list, ever since the time I discovered LDD. She'll probably be in the next LDD roundup, whenever I make one.)
Calico's chipboard poem refers to her pet just like Hush's, which I'm assuming will be the case for everyone in the series--chipboard mentions the pet, death certificate does not. It reads:
Calico sure loves
Her pet Muzzy
Some parts are scaly
And some parts are fuzzy.
Here's a rewrite.
Calico walks with her funny pet Muzzy
Some parts are scaly and some parts are fuzzy.
Calico's unboxing was smooth and her tissue remained in order when repacking. Muzzy was packaged under a twist tie and rested in a plastic cradle just like Shriek, but its position was very odd, being placed head-down by Calico's side.
Here's Calico's death certificate. She evidently modernized her fashion sense after she died, since she went to the grave on August 20, 1903!
Dottie Rose died just the year after, and she'd also be somebody dressed in a style that emerged well after her time of death, since Dottie Rose is firmly a 1950s girl on the visual level. Calico's death date seems to have no thematic significance. The LDD website lists her death date as "8/20/03", creating the impression she died in 2003, the year of her release, not the century before. There may be occasional discrepancies or false impressions from the website, so I'll always treat the printed certificates actually released with the doll as holding the canonical date, whenever I get the chance to see one.
Calico's certificate poem says:
Calico was a puzzle to everyone she met
A mystery to be solved, but never to forget
She always chose to keep her body modified
Stitched together jigsaw, unliving zombified
And a rewrite.
A calico jigsaw so foul and rotten
Forever unsolved and yet never forgotten
Again and again, the patches modified
A quilt of a gal, a dolly zombified.
Seems like Calico is a bit of a fashionista who rebuilt herself into oblivion. While she looks like a Frankenstein undead monster, the poem creates the haunting implication that she started as a living human and replaced herself bit by bit until she was no longer alive. Calico could be a walking Ship of Theseus!
Here she is unboxed. Her yarn hair was still pinched together from being under a twist tie, but the shape instantly relaxed after running through it with my fingers.
That hair is a thick purple yarn which is pulled out of her face on top to make her hairline a little more monstrous. The yarn is glued down around the middle of her scalp, possibly to try to cover it up or force it to project outward into more of a wild mane, but most of the hair is loose and flexible. The glued-down hair is a little thin on the right side and doesn't fully hide her scalp.
Her hair can be swept back over her forehead and it will cover the entire glued-down portion and her scalp, which is the style she's meant to have anyway.
Since Calico is all stitched-up and her name reflects miscellaneous assembled fabric, she can safely be considered to be themed after rag dolls as well as Frankenmonsters, and her hair would thus be literally depicting yarn! I always thought it would have been cool to see her Resurrected in plush form to really realize that concept. While this puts her in the same ambiguous monster niche as Sally, I've let go of my Nightmare Before Christmas Skullector dolls, so I can't take a photo of them together.
Calico's face paint isn't exceptional in the face details itself, but introduces her wild paint job, which is absolutely exceptional--head to toe, her body is painted in an asymmetrical patchwork of stitched scraps of olive green and dark and pale shades of muted blue.
 |
| She had some grime to clean up with a wash. |
Her scars are dark red, and the stitches are black, with several crossing over in X shapes.
This paint job leaves her skin color with no dominant tone you can label her with, and her look changes from different angles. The extensive and unlikely nature of the paint design really makes her shine. The patches really wrap around and cover her, so the paint job isn't missing much potential. A lesser doll would have far fewer patches on easier-to-paint areas, like just on the front without wrapping around.
A very similar patchwork skin design would later be done for both versions of the Resurrection Bride of Valentine doll, who goes for a more traditional Universal Studios look with a vertical hairdo and head bolts! She'd be incredible to own either way, but the variant looks way more polished to me.
 |
| Resurrection Bride of Valentine. (Official LDD photo.) |
 |
| Variant Res Bride. There is not a scenario right now, at her value and rarity, where obtaining her would be remotely easy or sane, and pursuing her would shut down all other collecting for a long time. I'll go nuts for LDDs, but not that nuts. Probably a pipe dream forever. (Official LDD photo.) |
It's admittedly a little hard for me to look at Res-variant Bride and not think of Calico as a consolation prize, like "Oh, we have Resurrection-variant Bride of Valentine at home" and all. But comparing a Series 6 mainline doll to a Resurrection variant released years later in extremely limited quantities is entirely unfair to Calico. And she is a cool doll with her own visual flair. Her patches are more extreme! And I can build her out a little with extra pieces.
Calico's torso has some staining from her red dress, which does hurt the impact of her body a bit, but this is still really cool.
However, not all of Calico's seams have stitches on them, and not all of them are painted at all--there are a few places where colors meet with no scars or stitches.
The unstitched seams might be done for effect, but the places where there are no painted scars at the intersection of patches just feel unfinished to me.
The paint is pretty clean and mostly precise, though there are a few slight textural giveaways that indicate the blues are exclusively painted and the body parts are all cast in olive. None of her green spots look like paint, but a few of the blues, in both tones, do. Still, it's genuinely hard to tell because the paint is so opaque, and she's super fun to look at--her poem is quite correct in that I did find her to be a puzzle to solve in terms of analyzing how her paint was done. If all of her seams were painted and stitched and the paint job was a little tighter, I would call Calico one of the hands-down most impressive LDD paint jobs--but painting shapes and lines across a 3D form is technically demanding and I'm not surprised to see a few letdowns in it. What matters is that she looks really cool. And she does, and she's still an achievement.
God, it'd be great to compare with a Res Bride of Valentine's paint job. I could theoretically settle for the main doll because she's (comparatively) far less pricey and could be built out, but it'd still take a very weak irresponsible moment to make that decision, so I probably won't. I'd be able to get more dolls I wanted more with the money she'd cost, including a Res doll I wanted more than her.
Calico also happens to feel like a midpoint between the G1 and G3 Frankie Steins with her skin colors.
Calico came before both of them, though, and had the squared hairline and mismatched eyes going on first. Monster High is gorgeous, but Calico really has some of that edge and weirdness I love about horror. Conventional beauty and a young target audience can be barriers to types of expression I enjoy.
Placing her in my whole array of Frankenmonster toys would be very difficult, because she's in the middle of three of the color groups I found in them--green, blue, and red! I'd have to switch to a display standing in a cluster with more use of foreground and background where the others can branch off of her, because she breaks the flat lineup concept.
 |
| She would short-circuit the color flow of this setup. |
Living Dead Dolls as a brand is starving for characters of color, and while Calico would most likely be aracial or supernaturally very mixed-race, I kind of want to grasp at the opportunity to view her as a nonwhite character. There just isn't a lot to pick from otherwise.
Calico's facial features are simple. She has no brows and pinkish smudging around her eyes, which are two different colors--right is green, left is very pale purple. This follows from LDD's first Frankenmonster, the Bride of Valentine, who was more Gothic and minimally influenced by the Universal films.
I think Jinx is the only Series 6 doll to have unambiguous or constant eyebrows! Calico, Revenant, and Isaac don't have them at all, Dottie Rose only has them on half of her copies, and Hush's face paint can be read as both browless and browed depending on how you look at it.
Calico's lips are red. Her eyelashes are long and a bit awkward in shape, which lends the possible reading that they're actually stitches, not lashes--maybe they're even holding her eyes open!
Calico's hands and feet have purple nail paint.
Calico's outfit makes a bold statement--as a way to let the body paint shine and ground the design a bit, Calico is dressed in a simple glamorous vinyl dress and sandals, and she's wearing only a single flat color--primary red. This also matches her lipstick, creating a strong visual balance.
The dress is a strapless vinyl fabric number that hugs her body and has a slit up the right side. The bodice has a rounded line, and the dress velcros up the back. The back of the dress isn't really any lower than the front; it just dips down under the arms before curving up again in kind of a tulip shape when viewed from the side. The dress is seemingly consciously cut to show off a lot of the paint job, since her shoulders and upper back are uncovered this way.
Vinyl fabric isn't a polite choice for most clothing, particularly not a slinky dress, so the outfit might feel maturer than I think is warranted for LDD and this character. I don't want any LDDs evoking the Series 1 Fashion Victims, but this is fine. Calico doesn't feel filthy. We'll treat it as an unorthodox choice that's weird for being weird, not as anything salacious. Calico is a style anomaly (and icon) driven into absurdity and fashion faux pas by her extreme pursuit for beauty and that's the entirety of her drive, thank you. I could definitely see this corpse on an avant-garde runway. If anything, I'm more bothered by the fabric choice because of the threat of it aging poorly. Satiny fabric has been overused by LDD, especially in early series as the go-to after felt material, and it's been employed in a lot of outfits that just looked like cheap party-store costumes by accident, but I think it would have suited Calico better than vinyl, for posterity and tone. At the same time, I do like the way Calico's vibe hits hard on the pop and begs for the reaction "shocking!" What did she do to herself? we ask, looking at how far-gone this diva is.
Calico's shoes match her dress and lips and are the LDD sandal pieces.
The LDD sandals debuted on Series 4's pretty widow Ms. Eerie, and have ankle straps and open toes. The straps cross over in back and have pin holes to let them be unfastened. I struggled to pull them far enough to refasten them around her ankles, so my method for putting them back on became to hold the straps closed while very carefully scooting them up her feet. With the sandals, I think I now have most of the common LDD shoe sculpts. I've seen the Mary Janes on Sadie and Lottie, the boots on the Tin Man and Scarecrow, the pointy boots on Agatha and the Wicked Witch, masculine dress shoes on the Wizard, and now the sandals on Calico. I just don't have a doll with the sneakers.
The sandals also give Calico a bit of a platform and add to her height in a good way.
Calico's pet is even more mishmashed than she is, depicting multiple animal species mixed together. Muzzy has a more textured and nuanced paint job with dimensional stitching that makes it look more realistic than Calico, but it's a really wicked little animal.
Muzzy appears to have the head of a dog (or two dogs) with a duck's bill instead of a snout, and the body of an iguana. One of its legs is still iguana, while the right legs are dog and the upper left is evidently from another bird species, since it has non-webbed feet. The tail seems to be part snake and part demon! As such, it's not entirely clear just how many animals Muzzy is assembled from, nor which ones in specific were used, which feels exactly correct.
Muzzy has an obvious horizontal "waist" seam where two pieces of plastic were molded separately and assembled together. Jinx's pet Hellcat has a similar artifact on its neck, but the other pets might all be one piece.
I'm calling it early: Muzzy is the best pet in Series 6. It's such a cool and wild sculpt, and so detailed paint-wise too.
Muzzy's slinky curved shape makes it feel like it's meant to be peeking out from behind Calico. I like this dynamism.
So Calico is very cool, but I can't escape the impression that she's just a tad incomplete. So I decided to remedy this with completely optional extra pieces to build out her ensemble a bit more. LDD are not fashion dolls, but I like the idea of bizarre fashionista Calico being the exception, coming with extra clothing options and accessories to make her the original monstrous fashion doll. A girl like her would have a wardrobe with options. And giving her more excitement will help fight the insecurities I have about that out-of-reach stitched lady, Res-variant Bride of Valentine.
First, I decided to make a leash for Muzzy with a noose knot in red yarn. The knot didn't tidy and tighten properly, but it's functional. I left the loop loose enough to slide back over its head.
The next idea I had delayed this post for a while. I wanted to give her a red noose as a scarf to build out her look just a bit more, but this was a comedy of errors. I failed to order the right size and color of macrame cord the first two times, then tried dyeing cord and even brute-forcing it by using diluted acrylic paint, and the dyed cords weren't getting the right color.
 |
| Too dark, too light, and type of cord didn't help things much. |
The painted one worked, but looked muted next to the dress..and then the noose slipped out of the knot, rendering it unusable because I couldn't undo and re-tie the piece after it had been stiffened and saturated with paint. I put my faith in one last attempt, where the listing seemed to truly show the correct tone and size of cord, but I swore to give up on the idea if that arrived and was somehow wrong, too.
Fortunately, this last cord was right.
The relative short length of the tails of the noose means I have to be slow when widening the loop so I don't end up pulling the end out of the knot, but this works pretty nicely.
Besides that, I then tried to search online to find a hat for her--I think a style with a wide brim and round top would suit her...but the problem is, Living Dead Dolls are very niche and have unusual proportions, so pretty much nobody is making custom clothes for them, and none of them hats. Most doll hats that looked right were either obviously or very likely too large for an LDD head, or else they weren't the correct red. I thought a rain hat would be good to look for, because that would lead to comparable fabrics to her dress, but again, there were no options I felt confident would match or fit her in-person, and I wasn't taking risks on that. LDD heads fit Rainbow High hats and eyeglasses pretty well, so I searched through eBay and Etsy for RH options, and I didn't find anything red or vinyl...but I did think I found something pretty perfect for her in a custom RH outfit from LittlePrincessShopPL on Etsy. It clashes in the exact right way for me. A leopard-print beret!
I decided to keep the matching jacket, too. I cut the sleeves off so Calico could wear it, and while it's obviously not cut for an LDD body, which is wider, it stretches enough for her to rock it pretty decently, and her hair covers the poor fit on the back. I paired it with OMG Spirit Queen's sunglasses, and bought some green net ribbon that reminded me of Muzzy's scales to serve as an alternate scarf. I trimmed it down on both sides to make it less thick around her neck and remove the wire in the edges.
While the ribbon was consciously chosen to reflect Muzzy, it wasn't until the Etsy pieces had arrived and I'd dressed Calico that I realized I might have felt so certain the beret was her because I subconsciously picked up on the fact that it matched Muzzy's bill. The animal print is also perfect for someone with an animal made of everything. The color and animal print are obviously perfect for her because of her pet, but that wasn't in my mind when I chose the pieces--at least not consciously.
I really like this look, and it fulfills my adoration of metropolitan fashion. I think it completes Calico beautifully to make her production level feel a bit more impressive than her base look, which can strike me as a little bare. While Calico's body paint is de-emphasized by adding more pieces to her, the visual chaos is resonant with her design, and I love that this extra costuming harmonizes with her pet--which it should do in a series of dolls distinguished by the presence of pets. It also feels very nineties chic, like something you'd see in Clueless.
Here's some pictures exploring fashion permutations.
All of my portraits with Calico had to be set against fabric backdrops because I'm an artistic nerd about things like that. Paper backdrops just don't resonate with a character theme like this.
Here's Calico on the red carpet in her full metro chic.
And a more elegant look.
I have a wall hook that's just the right height to hang shirts or costume capes from, but my bookshelf corner is also very handy.
Before first posting LDD Roundup 1 (the source of this doll review), I reviewed a Dracula doll that inspired a whole vampire-collection tableau. Imitating that, here's a picture of Calico with all of my Frankenmonsters so far, plus Wizard Dedwin as her resident scientist. I have other scientists, but I didn't think my LEGO and Playmobil scientists would be required for this tableau.
This was a good enough composition, but this next arrangement most ideally utilizes Calico as the missing link between the blue, red, and green Frankenmonsters. With everything placed this way, Frankie and Dedwin perfectly transition between the green and red, and the colors all stem off of Calico nicely the way this is laid out.
One of my LEGO monsters fell out of sight between photos and I forgot he was missing from this second setup. I Spy Challenge--can you spot the difference and identify the little minifigure monster in the first photo that didn't make it into the second display?
If I ever get the original LDD Bride of Valentine from Series 3 (she's on my long list of potential candidates), she'd go somewhere near G3 Frankie and the Skullector Bride of Frankenstein in that setup, since she's pale-skinned and wears an off-white costume. She does have elements of red in the bloodstain and her heart and scars, so she'd have to also be placed in such a way to complete the "circle" and segue into the red monsters.
It's a shame this arrangement doesn't photograph into an appealing portrait composition, but a close-up looks good.
And this was my very favorite picture of Calico. I decided to stage her at one of her frequent surgeries.
 |
| [I still love this photo.] |
Mixing fabric-sewing imagery and a medical surgery was a really fun challenge, as well as staging thread, fabric, and cotton to look like she was getting stuffed, stitched, and having the rag-doll version of a forehead peel. I drew her forehead paint back on in post to blend the fabric flap better into the head, and also just to reflect the fact that the lower edge would still be stitched. Ironically, a seamless blend of the fabric and doll required the re-addition of the seam! She's still on a coffin lid, but that's covered in white fabric. I also liked showing the red thread like her dress is being worked on too, and the clear bin of eyes and hands (borrowing Symphanee's display case) was fun. I wanted Calico's surgery space to feel very campy with the red fabric and fancy white; almost a little Rocky Horror in its aesthetic. Wizard Dr. Dedwin is still tending to her, since he mixes Frankenstein and medicine in his own way that works just right with this photo. It's plastic surgery, fabric crafts, and reanimation all colliding!
Calico appeals to my sense of the weird. She's not like any other Living Dead Doll. She's also not traditional or remotely antique in aesthetic, so she's not like a lot of the dolls I favor from the brand. But she's fun, and she has elements of pop and classic horror and camp to her that I really like. She's defiant of standards and I applaud her for it, but she's also great for Halloween. [I'm not yet figuring out that this is intentional...]
This is the full assortment I created for her.
And this is the final display I chose for her.
Overall, like the Lost in Oz series, LDD Series 6 works great as an unofficial Halloween series, particularly now that pastel has become a valid Halloween aesthetic and Dottie Rose doesn't feel like such an outlier! With a ghost, a spooky cat, a creepy dead girl, a rag doll Frankenstein, a scarecrow, and a pastel scary lady, all of the characters have a degree of pop and iconic spook that make them great for the holiday.
Here's my two Series 6 sisters together. For two yarn-haired creeps with fully-painted bodies, they have a lot different about them!
 |
| See what I mean about the tall sandals? It's a perfect Frankenmonster height boost for Cal! |
Dang it, I am going to end up with all of them, aren't I? [Yes.]
Last Day in the Sun: Dottie Rose
[This review was first published in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 2.]
I said she'd probably be in this roundup, and I'm glad I was able to hold to it when a spot opened back up. LDD Series 6 wasn't grand enough to earn a standalone series of posts, but I kind of want to make it a consecutive through-line in these roundups for now because they're easy acquisitions and I like them all.
Dottie Rose is the third of my top three of Series 6, and was formerly the number-one Series 6 doll on my wishlist. I believe she is also the first LDD I've gotten who I seriously wanted back in the phase when I first fixated on them as a teen. I think I also liked Agatha back then, but Dottie Rose was a big contender on my purely-dreaming wishlist back then.
[Hush and Calico as seen in Roundup 1 are currently standing as the other members of my S6 top three, or perhaps just my "favorite half" of the series because they're not in any particular ranking, but that all can change. Isaac is a fun novelty doll, Jinx has that sixties retro appeal that'd fit her in with Sadie and Lottie, and Revenant is classically spooky in a great way. I'd love to see how things change as I get more--they already have, in a way, because I might actually seek out Jinx next despite initially putting her at the bottom of the series!]
Dottie Rose has a name that very literally describes her aesthetic--she's polka-dots and pink. She's a thoroughly 1950s-looking gal who died due to a deadly photosensitivity, or sun allergy. As with Hush, Dottie Rose's animal was directly involved in her death--she was forced to leave the house and enter the harmful sunlight to chase after her poodle Hun after it got outside. As such, Dottie Rose is very pale from staying in the dark, and has blisters on her face from the sun exposure that did her in.
I always liked Dottie Rose's look...or at least, half of her dolls'. In a highly unusual and still unexplained move, (reportedly) half of Dottie Rose's dolls were released with harsh eyebrows like Series 3 Lottie's or Hush's maybe-eyebrows, and half were completely browless. I guess the designers just couldn't decide which suited her better, and this dichotomy was referenced by her Resurrection dolls--the main had brows, and the variant didn't. I think the design works best without eyebrows so she looks really eerie and soft to match her aesthetic, so I made sure to get a browless doll.
Despite the word that half of her dolls were browless, the browless Dotties are certainly harder to come by and the aftermarket creates the impression they're in the minority of copies, being listed in fewer numbers and generally at a higher price when compared to browed Dottie Rose listings of comparable setup. Perhaps this simply indicates a market bias, though--people could just generally like the browless Dottie Rose more and so fewer owners are willing to sell that variant.
Finding a complete browless Dottie Rose I could also justify buying was actually pretty challenging, but I eventually checked my "recently viewed items" tab on eBay to find one listing that wasn't popping up in search and was less painful than the other one I could see. I was glad. I didn't want the doll I wanted now to be out of the realm of reason due to the price. S6 dolls on the aftermarket at this moment [of reviewing] generally seemed to jump up in price a bit recently--when I bought Hush and Calico, everybody could be found at a $40 level complete, while now that seems to be $50 or $60 for Jinxes and Revenants. Hm.
My copy came deboxed but fully complete. Her opaque coffin lid was on the box for shipping, and it looked pretty beat-up. When I took the lid off, I almost thought she was missing her clear coffin lid, but of course it was just squeezed inside the opaque lid like those pieces do when the coffin is fully closed. You could stage a really pointless magic trick by making the clear lid "vanish" just by putting on the opaque lid of a coffin over the clear one and taking it off!
Nothing new to say about the S6 packaging, though Dottie Rose's coloring flatters the S6 pink tissue the best. Her chipboard photo has her own eyes, and depicts the eyebrowed version of the doll.
Again, though, both versions are given visibility (the browless doll is photographed in the LDD archive), so it's not really like there's a "canon" version of this doll that's more correct. I wonder, though, if maybe the browless doll being on the site created some bias or expectation that this was the way Dottie Rose should look, and browed collectors felt let down by getting the copy they didn't expect or want? Otherwise, I can see the browed version just being less popular based on its own qualities.
Dottie Rose's chipboard poem is a brief couplet focused on the character and their pet, just like the other chipboard poems in S6:
Dottie Rose and her pet poodle Hun
As dead as they are, they still have some fun
This says very little to me. I'd add a little more about their story.
Pale Dottie Rose and her poodle dog Hun
A poorly-matched pair for a run in the sun
It's never been clear if "Dottie Rose" is a Southern-style compound first name or a separate first name and last name. Her poems just refer to her as "Dottie", but that could be a nickname for short. I like to see the name as a compound first name myself, with whatever surname she had being left unknown. It makes sense given her fifties theme, since names like Mary Jane and Betty Sue and such were popular during the era, and "Rose" is a more typical first name than surname.
Dottie Rose's death certificate discloses that she died on February 26, 1904, a time well before her visual aesthetic's vogue. Like with Hush, her winter death time doesn't make much sense with her costuming unless she came from somewhere very warm.
Dottie Rose's certificate poem says:
Dottie was highly allergic to the sun
But she loved sundresses and her pet poodle Hun
Late one morning Hun ran out into the day
Dottie followed fast, dieing [sic] on her way
Here's a meter tweak.
Dottie Rose couldn't go out in the sun
She wore her light dresses in shade with her Hun
But then the dog ran out and caused her a fright
Dottie chased Hun but she fried in the light
Here's the two unpacked.
With her wide bob and polka-dot halter dress, Dottie Rose feels like a chic retro housewife archetype (I don't know if she'd have actually been married), almost like a mix of Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors and Lucy Ricardo.
 |
| Ellen Greene as Audrey, sporting the exact same hairdo as Dottie Rose. |
 |
| Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy, wearing a distinctive polka-dot dress. |
While the doll's colors, poodle, and dots feel very fifties, her hair, with the wide rounded bob and bangs, feels more distinctive of the 1960s. But of course, neither are true to the nineteen-aughts.
Resurrection Dottie Rose might feel even more sixties to me, with her wavy black hair in center-part feeling slightly like Mary Tyler Moore. Res Dottie's main doll alludes to the angry-eyebrows half of the S6 copies, and is bleeding from the mouth.
 |
| The brows are a different shape from the original, though. |
This is one of those Res dolls whose identity would take a minute or two to correctly guess, she's so different, but I kind of like her.
Res-variant Dottie is firmly fifties, with a poodle skirt, blouse, and saddle shoes. Her colors and hair make her better resemble the original doll with her emphasis on pink, and she also represents the browless copies of the S6 doll, since she doesn't have any under her sunglasses. Like the way Res-variant Hush (Hush and Dottie were both Res'd in Resurrection XI) had a rat costume to reference her original pet, Res-variant Dottie has a poodle skirt decorated with her specific poodle Hun!
Variant Dottie is more faithful to the original and I like her more than the main Res, but her vibe feels more like a teen diner chick who would hang out with the greasers--she feels like a younger character than the other two Dotties.
Something tells me both Res dolls might actually be improved, as far as being takes on Dottie Rose, if they swapped clothing. Variant Dottie would thus have the same pink hair and black dotted dress idea as the original, while main Res Dottie would have black hair and a pinker outfit for a fun reverse color balance. The hairstyles would also map well onto the opposite costumes. Unfortunately, this would be a very very costly experiment, and apparently variant Dottie Rose is sewn into her shirt or it's otherwise not designed to come off, so it would be a big hassle even trying to swap their outfits. I definitely plan to get a Resurrection doll on the blog sometime, and to compare a Res to an original, but I'm really leaning toward the first being variant Chloe if nobody else comes up beforehand. Most Res dolls are well out of reach, but there are some I would abandon standards for.
Revenant was the other S6 doll with a Resurrection, though hers came earlier than Dottie Rose and Hush's--she was a Res VII doll and she neither included nor referenced her original pet in either of her Res variants.
Of the Series 6 dolls, Jinx, Calico, and Isaac were not Resurrected, and Calico and Isaac are the only S6 dolls without any subsequent doll releases. Jinx got cast as the Cheshire Cat in the Alice doll series, getting two dolls (a regular and a variant) out of it.
Now back to the S6 Dottie.
Her hair is pink and her skin is pale, creating a very similar color palette to Monster High's rendition of C.A. Cupid.
The pink and black on Dottie Rose create a very classic fifties-chic tone. I love the color combo, but another take on Dottie that was more purely pastel, playing on the classic fifties combo of pink and sea-foam green would have also been cool. I think the black is very purposeful, though, since it creates a contrast that makes her fit the goth tones of the brand and connotes the darkness she has to live in for her safety. Her aesthetic has also just recently become acceptable for Halloween festivities due to the push in recent years of pastel spooky Halloween merchandise. With that, the entire cast of Series 6 can easily be used for Halloween decor...which I might just do! [I am so close here to figuring it out!]
Her hair is styled in a round curved bob that widens out and bends back inward toward her neck. Her hair and bangs have gel to maintain their shape, though I don't anticipate it being necessary for the effect and I plan to wash it out. The hair doesn't look super polished and tidy as a representation of the human hairstyle, but I like the way it works for Dottie Rose the doll and I don't want to try boiling it flatter.
The hair has a lot of flyaways and isn't super soft. It might be like Lottie's.
This roundup has offered a good snapshot of LDD bangs. Dottie's are decent. They're not flat or thick, but they lay better than Chloe's (or, evidently, Frozen Charlotte's) did six series later, so the manufacturing was spotty for a good amount of time. I think some dolls before Chloe had okay bangs, like S11's Jubilee, but Lamenta comes from a period where LDD seemed to really have bangs locked down, where they were always thick and laid flat. I don't know where the trend of good bangs started, but Lamenta likely benefits from being made after it did.
Dottie Rose's face is extremely striking,
As a lady who's never out in the sun, Dottie Rose's skin is dramatically pale, though it's not paper-white. It's a yellowish off-white tone. Her eyes are ringed by very dark circles that fade out and really pop out of her face, and her irises are pink just like her hair, creating a very nice stylized color scheme. The irises are entirely pink, too--the outlines and pupils are just a darker shade. They're not black. It's possible with the pale skin and pink eyes that Mezco were attempting to allude to albinism with her look, but while that would make you sensitive to sun, it wouldn't be rapidly deadly or grisly the way this doll is designed. I think Dottie's pallor is more likely just to communicate that she keeps to the dark for her own safety.
Dottie Rose's head has bumpy texturing and some subtle pink paint on the bumps to depict her skin breaking out into blisters from the sunlight damaging her.
Mildly gross warning.
The blisters indicate a more plausible diagnosis for her sun allergy-- blistering and rashes from sun exposure are known as a type of porphyria, the cutaneous (skin-related) variety. This couldn't realistically have been the cause of her quick death, though. While attacks of other porphyria types could be life-threatening in a very short span of time, photosensitivity doesn't track as one of them. I also wasn't able to find any kind of condition where it would be plausible for a short period of neighborhood sun exposure to kill someone before they could even return home. It's also a miracle, in a time before this could be genetically pre-diagnosed, that Dottie Rose ever lived past early infancy with such a dire condition. I believe Dottie Rose is loosely based on cutaneous porphyria and her dying quickly just by going into the sun for a bit is an extreme exaggeration. However, it's in keeping with the classic horror theme of LDD that a person could be confined to the darkness and snuffed out almost immediately by sunlight.
Dottie Rose may also be loosely influenced by the horror film The Others, which stars a mother and her two photosensitive children who are kept in the house for their safety, before ghosts start to show up.
I would not be inclined to call it respectful and it certainly isn't realistic, but Dottie Rose could perhaps be considered a very uncommon form of disability representation if you really squint at her sideways. I challenge you to name another doll with porphyria!
I'll be honest--I could do without the whole blister aspect aesthetically, as I find it genuinely very uncanny and uncomfortable, but Dottie Rose does give me the opportunity to compare her head sculpt to Faith's. Faith used a bumpy head to depict clumps of algae from her lake drowning, and I wondered if it was the same bumpy-textured head that would have debuted with S1 Posey. Dottie Rose having the same bumps would indicate that Faith and Dottie both used the same sculpt, which would have been the one Posey debuted because LDD wouldn't have reason to develop a new one otherwise.
The two bumpy dolls do line up, which is clearest to see with the bumps on their left cheeks (lower right in the image). Dottie Rose actually taught me the bumps extend to the nose. I never noticed this on Faith because her nose bumps aren't painted over with the more opaque green like the other bumps are.
 |
| Same sculpt, and gotta be Posey's first. |
It's cool how Faith so creatively reinterpreted the sculpt to be clumps of lake muck rather than skin problems.
[The other dolls I've since reviewed with this sculpt are Quack and Captain Bonney (linked previously in this recut post).]
Dottie Rose's lips are lined with black but have pinkish violet paint in the middle to make them look ombre'd, which is very pretty. My copy has some flaws. Her right eye looks more narrow and angled than her left, and the airbrushing under the eye has a light patch that breaks the shadow. Her chin also had some yellow discoloration I wanted to see if I could remove.
It can be hard to notice, but her nostrils have also been defined with dabs of pink paint inside!
The browed Dottie Rose has eyebrows similar to Lottie's, and there are multiple reasons I find the browless doll more effective.
First is the inherent sense of tragedy to Dottie Rose's story that makes a malicious look feel disjointed. Dottie Rose deserved neither the life nor the death she was handed-- she had a lifelong condition that severely limited her activity, and she was killed by it, all for trying not to lose her dog.
Then there's the fact that I find the subtlety to feel far spookier here. While Dottie is retro enough for the browed look to read as 1950s-60s pulp-horror camp, I think the eerie browless version really suits a sweet lady forced to live in the darkness all her life. She becomes the mysterious recluse on the street, the creepy misunderstood neighbor no one sees--she's the Boo Radley on the block, if you will.
When I put Dottie Rose in conversation with my other pale LDDs, her skintone feels like a fairly plausible flesh color, and not even necessarily a dead one.
Betsy (whose skin is the same as Chloe or Lamenta's colors) is pure white, Lottie is a bit yellower, and Agatha is greyish yellow, while Dottie ends up looking like a relatively realistic depiction of a light-skinned person who's gotten very wan from a lack of sunlight. She's very eerie and her eyes are unusual, but Dottie Rose actually passes for human-colored when compared to other very pale LDDs.
It's a highlighted irony in the poems that Dottie Rose favors sundresses despite not being able to survive in sunlight. Perhaps now that she's dead, though, there's no issue. The dress here is a halter style which ties behind the neck quite easily, though the strings are quite frayed.
 |
| I've elected to trim the strings a little shorter so I don't need to tie a bow. |
The fabric is slightly stiff black cotton with white polka dots that feel very fifties and give the doll the front half of her name. The lower back of the dress velcros as you'd expect. The dress looks and feels absolutely proper for the period. It's just a shame the neck straps aren't so tidy. Of S6 so far, I'm still most impressed with Hush's clothing, but Dottie Rose's comes second.
Dottie Rose's fingers and toes have pink nails, and her shoes are black LDD sandals just like Betsy's. All of the S6 girls I have so far have had painted nails!
Dottie Rose's feet are peculiarly mismolded such that her left leg is quite literally shorter than her right. The leg isn't at a different angle or anything; the two are just different lengths. I wonder how this even happens. A mistake in extraction before the vinyl has fully set?
She can stand up stably, but this is annoying and not really something I expect I can improve or fix. I'd try putting a shim in her shoe to lower the platform to the ground more and even her out that way, but that wouldn't work with the shape--the shoe would just pop off. Otherwise, I'd have to extend the platform of the shoe itself, but that'd take an invasive modification. I think I can just deal with it because she does stand okay.
Hun the poodle, as mentioned before, is an oblique reference to the 1950s fashion trend of poodle skirts which was made explicit through Dottie Rose's Resurrection variant. Hun facially resembles Shriek, the rat paired with Hush. It's an evil-looking snarling poodle with a huge fluffy mane and a bloody face and collar, creating the grisly suggestion that Dottie, too, was munched on by her animal after she died. Otherwise, Hun might just be an extremely aggressive animal and is an evil zombie.
The top puff of poodle fur looks to be a separate piece glued in, with a seam all around it.
Because Hun's fluff is a solid sculpt, my plans to leash the dog had to adapt. I'll tie it around the dog's waist since the neck won't do.
None of the S6 pets have official word on gender and none have human names, so I've had to write about them more ambiguously. It's possible Hush's pet Muzzy is sexless or artificially intersex after the way it was cobbled together, but the other pets have no information you could go on. I defaulted to male for Shriek, but Hun could be a vicious girl or a very bad boy.
Now, I've already evaluated Dottie Rose as a tragic figure, but evil as the dog looks, we should evaluate this under Hun's perspective. If Dottie Rose was never able to go out in the sun (possibly beyond any shielding allowing her to leave the house), then it sounds like Hun could have been starved of a great deal of outdoor time, including natural doggy bathroom breaks and socializing and exploring that are healthy for a dog to experience. That's no way for a dog to live, and Dottie Rose's situation could very well have created a neglectful environment for Hun. That would make Hun's run outside into a sympathetic flight for a dog desperate to enjoy the outdoors. This could even make Dottie Rose's death partially karmic--for attempting to own a dog when her situation made her unfit, the dog led to her death by doing what dogs do.
But of course, it'd be just as easy to say Dottie Rose did accommodate her pooch properly and typically did protect herself for sunlight outings, and this was just a horrible incident where the dog got out by accident (dogs can do that regardless of how well they're cared for) and she couldn't prepare to leave the house if she wanted to catch the dog. We just don't have enough official context.
I took Dottie Rose down for a hair wash and treatment, but no boiling so the shape will survive. I also scrubbed her face a bit and attempted re-bending her left leg to move the foot out to the side so her stance would even, but no luck.
I'd ordered an unofficial white faux-leather trench coat for Ken dolls ages ago in a misguided attempt to use it for Monster High, where every boy doll was too small for it. I was glad of it now, though, and I tested it on a Living Dead Doll while I waited for Dottie Rose to see if it would work well to stage her in protective clothing for days she had to go out in the sun. Fortunately, it seemed perfect if I just trimmed the sleeves. I had a hat to spare from the Viv project which I could color white to suit Dottie Rose, and some black gloves to spare whose fingers could become gloves or sleeves for her protection. And the Spirit Queen glasses jumped from Calico to Viv now to Dottie to complete the look. I also made Hun a noose leash from white yarn. I was delighted to have everything I needed to create this outfit without needing to order or buy a thing, and to have it all prepared before Dottie Rose even arrived. I didn't want her to be a money or time sink that held up this post any longer!
Here she is, fully shaded from the sun to give Hun a proper walk. I like to think the best of her and imagine this was something she did so her dog would have a good life, up until the tragedy when Hun got out without permission and she couldn't prepare.
Her toes are exposed this way, but I wasn't itching to borrow the black tights padding Chloe's shoes just for a quick photo.
I know that I essentially reinvented Marcia Greyman for this look, but shush. It's a good aesthetic.
I liked putting it together, but I don't see these pieces getting stored in her coffin as part of her stock. I don't see myself using them often enough for that. I am gratified to have somebody to have justified the Ken coat staying in my bin for such a long time, though.
Here's some color portraits.
I then took some photos of her sheltered inside. For a proportional scene, I constructed a windowed living room wall with a cutout poster board. I threw in a curtain from a fabric scrap subject to a failed red-dyeing attempt. Its weak unintentionally-pink dye and dotted pattern made it perfect for Dottie Rose. While my initial vision was for her room to have black curtains, I think the pink standing out on the black interior works well and lets more light through to make the contrast of the light and dark stronger and making the window feel more like a forbidden pleasantry Dottie Rose can't enjoy.
I put this wall on a bath mat to form a white rug and added some furniture elements and shone a light from the back to show her taking cover in shadows. I know Dottie Rose wouldn't functionally need to live in darkness and that electric lights would be fine for her, but the horror and drama and caricature of the character suits the impractically dark interior. For an objectively crappy cheap diorama, the scene works really well. The lighting does the work and sells it wonderfully.
Of course lighting-dominant photos translate beautifully to black and white, but that last photo also highlights for me that Dottie Rose really gives me the vibe of a fifties or sixties horror film that never was. Her look and story of having to shelter in the dark feel like they came from a retro horror movie that doesn't exist. I don't know what it is, but I'm so fascinated by her story. I feel like you could spin a social commentary about domestic suburbia, almost like a Shirley Jackson thing where Dottie Rose unpeels the dark side or cracks in the suburban fantasy, but it's also a story about disability and tragic chance, and the exaggerated sunlight threat opens itself to dramatic visual chiaroscuro.
Then I got the idea for something really surreal. It required Bristol board cut out in a silhouette. Some slight editing sells the weird visual better, adding a shadowy blur.
This turned out better than I expected. It's such a confusing visual, which is the point! I think shooting it with a cutout and real, practical depth made all the difference.
And the big piece-- staging her death. I've long had the image in my mind of her collapsing dead while running down a picturesque neighborhood sidewalk. So I decided to stage that!
I could have used the real walk outside, but I didn't want to be a complete weirdo where I'd be seen and in the way, and making a proportional sidewalk for the doll would sell the idea better. That allowed me to come up with added specificity and depth to the pictures--I had the idea of having one of the squares being a piece she signed and put a handprint in when it was new and drying, and cruel circumstance led to her dying right in front of her signature, reaching futilely into her own handprint. I had a strip of fake grass that was just large enough to shoot LDD with as a top-down backdrop. All of these pictures were taken on my bedroom floor!
These first two shots looked daylit enough...
But then I put an overhead lamp on to create more shadows and communicate more that the light is what's killing Dottie.
I never thought a piece of sidewalk would be one of the coolest things I've ever made for a doll, but I'm so proud of it!
I started with just a smidge of clay left over from the second round making Lamenta's basin. I managed to roll it flat and thin enough to build three pavement squares out of it, which was perfect. And then I had the idea of adding Dottie Rose's signature and handprint from when the sidewalk was drying cement. I figured there would be nothing more poetically cruel than her dying right there, and the hand imagery feels spooky. In that way, the doodled sidewalk becomes her own pre-engraved headstone. I don't know if "suburban gothic" is a pre-existing tone, but whatever it is, it's that. I imagine Dottie Rose would have been buried right under that cement slab, with perhaps an epitaph chiseled in afterward.
The actual handprint itself is an LDD doll hand, since there was no other way to get the effect besides doing the real thing, but I enlisted Lamenta to make the print in Dottie's stead. The air-dry terra-cotta clay can stain light vinyl and I didn't want to risk it. Lamenta is the only LDD I have with black-cast hands, so she was a good guinea pig. She got rinsed right away and there's no apparent discoloration, but I couldn't have guaranteed that with another LDD.
I then realized the stones needed a gritty surface to look more believable, so I crumbled some dried clay over them and sealed it with spray paint. This worked fine for the plain stones, but the one with the carving started to lose definition in the name when painted, and trying to re-carve it just crumbled the piece and tore off the spray finish containing the grit layer, so I restarted. The signed slab in the photos is not terra-cotta air-dry. I used an oven-bake clay for the second take, which was firm and smooth and took the handprint beautifully and carved legibly like absolute butter. The clay leaves no color behind on things, so the Dottie Rose doll could have made the print herself, but I stuck with Lamenta for the job just to be absolutely safe. I added a fake crack to the square as well so it looked more complete as a solo piece or headstone, because I now fully wanted to have this piece kept around after the photo session as an accessory for her. I'd gotten the oven-dry clay to begin with for a project attempting to sculpt a doll wig, but was foiled by being unable to take the hair off the head without ruining the shape (plastic wrap underneath didn't help me either). For a piece of carved pavement, however, the medium was perfect. The Crayola air-dry clay doesn't ever seem to get entirely solid or strong, or else I was too hasty to finish it this time. The oven clay felt a lot better. From there, I then sprayed sealant onto the stone and added crumbles for texture, sealed that with another layer, and painted the stone. I had tested mottled dabbed colors or dark washes in the signature, but the handprint this time was so shallow that I didn't want the carvings looking way darker, and the stone looked best with just a flat beige tone. I also added pink splat on the stone for a bit of icky detail. Going off the visual of her Res doll, I decided Dottie Rose is losing blood or other sickened fluids from her deadly stint. The doll herself lines up with it more like she bashed her head, which could be a more realistic death--weakening from the light and the run and tripping and falling into a lethal head wound.
I wasn't sure about the other two stones of the pavement which were made with the air-dry because they were thinner than the replacement signed stone and their grit looked too chunky, but I went ahead and used them to save time since they were never the focal point of the picture. I only need to keep the signed stone, anyway.
Here's the grave built with it. I think this is a perfect visual gag, and I think this could be an awesome Return Dottie Rose accessory if she got brought back.
This tile is getting a place of honor and safety in the back of her coffin, under the doll tray.
And lastly, two poem pieces.
I really love Dottie Rose, and she was worth years of waiting and a higher price. I find her look and story to be so magnetic and ripe for suburban horror fun.
Here's my three S6 dolls together.
 |
| Hush and rat Shriek, Calico and amalgamate animal Muzzy, Dottie Rose and poodle Hush. |
Dottie Rose pairs very nicely with Hush in particular. They both use black and pink colors, but in some opposite places (Hush has black hair and pink eye shading, Dottie Rose has pink hair and black eye shading) and both have very haunting and gorgeous face paint with mesmerizing airbrushing and a repellent cuteness to them. Their pets align closely in terms of stylization, and both were killed by their attachment to their animals. Of the three, I think I'm still most visually magnetized and impressed by Hush, but Dottie Rose is so charming and gave me bigger photo achievements. While the other S6 dolls are nice, I can't imagine having such extensive photo work with them.
Outstanding in His Field: Isaac
[This review was initially published in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 3.]
Isaac is Living Dead Dolls' first scarecrow doll (read about its second in my first LDD post here). He's also one of LDD's novelty dolls, because to lean into the scarecrow theme, he's a soft-bodied floppy plush for most of his body, only having plastic doll parts for his head and hands, plus plastic LDD shoes sewn on. I don't know if this endeared him much to LDD collectors, and I knew there was the concern that he required a doll stand if he hoped to display like his fellow LDDs, but S6 in general isn't the highest-fetching series on the aftermarket, so I don't know. I certainly liked Isaac's character design and was intrigued by the doll, even if I didn't come away finding him the best in his series.
Oh, and remember how I said S6, with its Frankenstein, ghost, scarecrow, black cat, and creepy goths would be a good series for Halloween despite not being a themed Halloween series? Well...why didn't I just check the release time?
The dolls came out in October 2003. They're totally a Halloween series at the same time as they're built around the Number of the Beast concept. S6 was actually the first Halloween series, it just wasn't branded as such. [Eureka at last!]
My Isaac came sealed, making him my third of four S6 dolls to be acquired that way. Here's the wrap and lid removed.
And his chipboard.
His poem reads:
Isaac is a scarecrow
Who wants to steal your soul
But he is too busy hanging
And loving his Ole' Crow
I like that there's more to this poem than just "Isaac is creepy and has a pet". It might be a little generic, but stealing a soul is a motivation that gives him character. Here's a tweak.
Isaac is a scarecrow
Who's searching for a soul
But for now, he hangs around
A perch for his Ole Crow
Here's his death certificate.
Isaac has the honor of being my first LDD with no known death date. This makes sense, since an animate scarecrow inhabited by something dead probably can't count as having ever lived in the first place, and whether Isaac is a ghost or spirit or just a scarecrow that got up and walked on the dark side would be hard to determine.
The certificate poem is as follows:
Nailed to a cross
This false prophet hates
Crows pecking on his innards
He just hangs and waits
Isaac's name and poems allude to the Stephen King story Children of the Corn, about a cult of parentless children in a farm area, led by a boy named Isaac in the 1984 film adaptation. Isaac in the film is sacrificed by the others but returns possessed by the entity he preached about, "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". I don't know how the idea of a punished false prophet suits a scarecrow, but there's something very Promethean about the idea of being pecked by birds for your sins. I want to try leaning into that. How about:
Nailed to a cross
His prophecies frightened
But he knows that the birds
Only peck the enlightened
Isaac's unboxing was slightly nonstandard even for S6. Because his arms are not rigid jointed pieces, two extra twist ties were used for him to hold his wrists in place, in addition to the extra tie used for S6 dolls to secure the pets. Here he is out.
Isaac does need a stand. His legs are firmly-stuffed enough that they can lock upright, but he's top-heavy and his hips are too floppy for him to at all be able to free-stand. He needs to lean against something, and even then, I don't fully trust it. It's also not super easy to find the pose where his legs feel stable, so a stand is more reliable.
Here he is in the one old-fashioned doll stand I have, which fortunately works perfectly for him.
The first thing I wanted to do was compare proportions. As it turns out, Isaac isn't too much taller than a regular LDD, but his long arms, wide shoulders, bulky torso, high waist, and skinny legs give him a very gangly clumsy silhouette that's totally unlike the standard shape. I think this is very cleverly done to maximize the "skinny" effect within a size that's compatible with the regular dolls and the coffin boxes. The tweaks to his proportions like raising his waist and crotch and lengthening his arms do a great job at making him seem spindly and tall even though the doll doesn't tower over his fellows.
Up on top, Isaac has a hat with straw attached under the brim, which appears to function as his hair. The hat is glued to his head. The hat feels like denim and has a wide triangle point and an irregular petal-like jagged brim, as well as a yellow patch that's really sewn on with red thread.
The hat is black, but appears intentionally dirtied by yellow-brown "dust" coloration to make him look more weathered.
All of the straw is real, and it's attached under the brim of the hat, not to the head. This means it's a bit ambiguous whether the straw is part of the hat or whether it's his hair. It casts quite a shadow on his face regardless!
Isaac's head is a vinyl LDD mold made for all-vinyl dolls, and is the only body part he shares with another doll. This is the specialty sculpt which debuted the previous series for S5's Siren. Siren introduced a stitched-lips sculpt that works very well for a scarecrow. The stitches have texture like rope or yarn laces, and are here painted black. The ends go into recessed circles to represent the holes they're threaded through!
I keep thinking at least one other doll used this mold, but it might just be Isaac and Siren after all. Ella von Terra in Series 33 debuted an alternate stitch-mouthed mold with crossed stitches that, to me, looked too thick and unrealistic, but I wonder if her sculpt was made because the older one was out of commission or built on a pre-ball-joint head? Both Isaac and Siren came before the LDDs needed overhauled molds for the new articulation, and several specialty sculpts released before the overhaul didn't seem to return on the ball-joint dolls. I think it's just the screaming, devil-horns, bumpy, and ripped-cheek faces that survived the transition of body styles.
[Siren has since been reviewed, first posted in LDD Roundup 5.]
Isaac's head is cast in a golden color and features painted patches of brown--a circle over his eye and a triangle on his neck.
Neither patch is outlined, but I think it passes here. The stitches on both are uniformly done in X shapes all around. His eyes are depicted as black sockets with piercing white irises, making him look inhabited or haunted by a supernatural entity. The pupils appear to be deliberately unfocused to make him look more empty or clumsy. The lip stitches coming from the Siren sculpt are clearly dimensional, but the other stitches are all just painted. The painted patchwork makes him much like S6 fellow Calico, who is entirely patches.
I guess if one doll in S6 got the stitched mouth, it had to be Isaac. Both having it could make sense, but it would feel redundant, and it could be overkill on Cal.
There's a lot of commonalities and links you could throw between the S6 dolls, and I'd love to do an analysis of how you can chain them together once I have them all.
Airbrushing features around Isaac's eyes and also his mouth, and the boundaries of the mouth shading aren't a clean fade, but I think it looks okay. It resembles a fabric stain that way. Isaac has no eyebrows.
While the face is classic and pretty cute, it's also a lot scarier in person than I'd expected it to be. He's very spooky.
Isaac's soft body is a separate layer from his clothes, though the outfit, despite opening with velcro, can't really be removed. Let's look at it first.
He's wearing a red flannel shirt with straw in the neck and sleeves, and a pair of long black pants with elastic suspenders, as well as black round-toed LDD boots.
The shirt has no simulated buttons or panels, but it does have a collar and another yellow patch sewn to the left shoulder.
The pants are the same black dusty denim as the hat, and are very simple, with elastic suspenders, a yellow patch on the front right hip and a tattered ankle that comes down around the boots.
The suspenders aren't super tight around his shoulders, but I don't know if they would have been tighter when new. The straps don't cross each other in the back.
Here's how the outfit opens in the back, and the plush torso underneath. Pants and shirt are attached like usual for LDD. All of Isaac's soft body is blank black fabric.
While the outfit looks removable, this is deceptive for two reasons. For one, his boots are pinched and sewn to the rag feet with thread.
I'm not cutting these threads. I learned my lesson from the soft-bodied Dracula. Plush dolls don't fit in shoes that great! Next to the head, the boots are the only piece of Isaac that exist on other dolls.
And back to undressing, even if you took the boots off, good luck getting Isaac's sleeves over these hands!
These are unique hand sculpts sewn into the ends of his fabric arms.
 |
| For some reason, some straw was sewn into the arm despite the sleeve already having a lot. |
The hands have a gnarled appearance and a washed paint job to make them look half-wooden, like they're twigs and sticks in a hand shape. And you're not seeing things--both of Isaac's hands are deliberately left-handed shapes, and the left hand on the right side of his body also has a sixth digit! Superstition casts the left hand as evil, and it's imagery LDD seems to invoke a lot by having the surviving hand of one-handed dolls be the left one, or in the conjoined twins Hazel and Hattie (who I really want). The two are conjoined at the shoulder such that each sister has only one arm, and it's evil twin Hattie who ends up with the left hand between the two. Meanwhile, extra digits was also once seen as a sign of evil.
I think Isaac's extra-digit hand is actually supposed to be his left left hand to be extra evil, and my copy has it switched via manufacturer error. Oh, well.
Both hands have the palm facing forward when they dangle down. Very cool pieces, but they prohibit the outfit coming off.
Isaac's pet is Ole Crow (the apostrophe in the poem is not correct; it would be if it was "Ol' Crow with no "e"), who is stylized akin to the others, and is sculpted cawing in a horrible shriek, tongue and all.
Ole Crow balances properly on those feet, which is good because I've heard some copies aren't molded properly to let that happen.
The beak is subtly grey, and grey appears on the tail feathers as well.
Isaac's motion is technically greater than other dolls, but he doesn't have any rigidity to hold a pose with. His head is able to flop back and forth a little, and there are sewn pinches in his limbs that create floppy joints at his shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. If he was stiff, these joints would make him the most poseable LDD until the Return dolls, but as he is, they don't add a lot of practical display function.
His big hands can grip some things and they can interlock. Isaac proved able to hang from my desk here!
Isaac is too small and too plastic to be cuddly, but I think his soft body adds a lot of rag-doll charm to him and makes him very endearing and classic-feeling to me. I love the soft body.
Here's the two LDD scarecrow dolls together: Isaac, and Purdy as the Scarecrow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
It's striking how different they are, and it shows how well each executes their goal. Isaac, with his exclusively warm color palette and caricature, is a quintessential spooky autumnal Halloween scarecrow--among the best spooky scarecrows I've seen, actually. Meanwhile, Purdy's costume feels more folksy and it suits a fantasy take on a scarecrow and does read "Oz". Her blue colors are not only true to the book lore of the Scarecrow being made by the blue-wearing Munchkin nation (a detail I'm only just realizing, and which I've since added to her review), but they remove her from a Halloween domain in the right way.
For photos with Isaac, I did similar to what I did for Purdy and build him a scarecrow stake, and did make it cruciform to match his poems. While Isaac references it with a religious and mildly blasphemous context, it doesn't have to be taken that way because it used to just be an execution without any specific significance. But also LDD is shock-goth, so this is what you get with it. His stake is larger than the one I made for Purdy so I could accommodate the long limbs, and it's made from thicker branches. His design works perfectly so he can hang from the crossbar by his suspenders while his arms stretch over the top, and his hand shapes work really well for resting on the bar. Purdy had to be tied onto her stake, but Isaac's clothes are perfect for hanging him up just as he is!
I tried one picture in afternoon daylight on one of the dirt patches around my house. I had to really edit the colors to turn the spring greenery into sickly yellow plants and match his autumn vibe. This isn't the proper time to photograph Isaac, so I faked it!
 |
| Ole Crow perches surprisingly well on the bar! |
Then I noticed the cicadas crawling around the front path and got the heck out. No thank you. I moved to where they weren't. I then tried holding him up to find a patch of sky, which I thought would be very powerful.
And some text work with these.
And I took more photos in the full garden scenery, using the same color-grading edits as before.
This was where I discovered Isaac could lock his hands together and hug his crow.
This is just about the most darling thing; I'm gonna scream. Isaac's unique ability to hold his pet makes him seem so much sweeter and the bond looks so much more wholesome. Which I'm pretty sure is entirely antithetical to LDD's goals!
He's even more cute dangling his knees on my desk bars.
Yeah, I fully love this little guy.
Isaac is such a unique and charming Living Dead Doll. His soft body allows him to have unique scarecrow proportions as well as the tactile charm and physical motion of a real floppy stuffed dummy, and his character design really couldn't be better for the task of a spooky Halloween scarecrow. While I'd prefer for semantic reasons if his hands hadn't erroneously swapped sides during his manufacturing, he does look spot-on as a whole. Of the entire soft-Halloween S6, Isaac might one of the most directly Halloweeny. Maybe I should have even waited to get any S6 dolls because they'd have been a good Halloween feature in October, but I have enough planned for that, and one of my posts will discuss decorating with dolls for the holiday, where S6 is sure to feature.
Here's all of them so far now.
I think my two best S6 experiences so far have been Hush and Isaac out of a combination of sheer love for the designs and doll quality, though Dottie Rose gave me the best photo session of them. I'm surprised; I really hadn't expected Isaac to get out of the bottom three of the series, but my final ranking might have him in the top half.
BOO: Revenant
[This review was initially published in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 5.]
For a while, it looked like Series 6 had begun to get less accessible on the aftermarket, as I was noticing Revenants and Jinxes were ending up in the $60 range after seeing all of S6 in the $40 range when I started, but fortunately, I found a Revenant back in the low range who looked opened and tissue-mangled, but complete, and possibly still tied into the box.
Within Series 6's Halloween imagery, Revenant is a ghost, and she's the first ghost in LDD as well as the first LDD to glow in the dark. Revenant achieves this by being cast in luminous translucent yellow plastic, which several other dolls would follow with, including Walpurgis as the Wicked Witch of the West. Revenant is not the last, and arguably not the most traditional, Halloween ghost in the line (Eleanor followed her in Series 16--she's waiting here for her time in October), but she does feel very classic and appealing.
Her box was pretty beat-up, which might explain her low price.
The clear window lid is a bit bent, the box is scuffed, and the chipboard is veined. Not a huge deal.
Revenant's chipboard has her eyes, but LDD cleverly chose to depict her while glowing in the dark to make her glow factor clearer--as such, her face is phosphorescent green.
Revenant is the only S6 doll made to look eyeless, so this image is harder to recognize as a fragment of a face than the other dolls'.
Her chipboard poem mentions her pet, as per the series formula:
One hell of a ghost
And Carrion her pet
Are two of the creepiest ghouls
You wish you never met
You wish you never met
And a rewrite
A hell of a ghost
And a flesh-eating pet:
The creepiest creatures
You shouldn't have met
While Series 6 has six dolls and six pets to reference the Number of the Beast, Revenant is the only doll in the series whose death date actually makes a 666 reference. She died on June 6, 1960, or 6/6/60.
Her certificate poem says:
An image from the past, she roams eternally
Reliving the horrid night of a twisted tragedy
To gaze upon this ghost, you'll witness her demise
For she is a harbinger of death as you will surely realize
Very clumsy.
A wisp of the past, eternally roaming
Reliving her downfall, shrieking and moaning
A glance at the ghost, a nasty surprise
To see her will bring forth your early demise
Here she is unboxed. She had already been removed previously.
Revenant's hair is long, white, and center-parted out of her face. I'm sure it would have been perfect new, but like so many (too many) Living Dead Dolls, age and/or heat damage has caused her ends to be fried and tangled. There's no real way to fix this or make her hair comb fully smooth, but for a tattered ghost, it's acceptable. Just disappointing.
The rest of the hair feels pretty nice.
Revenant's face is done entirely in black paint. Her eye sockets are blacked out to look empty, have some black airbrushing to shade them, and her face and neck have a veining effect similar to S6 fellow doll Hush. It also looks a bit like later doll Agatha's cracks and blacked-out eyelessness. Revenant has no eyebrows at all, not even hidden within her vein detailing, and her lips are subtly smiling. I think she's capable of looking both sweet and sinister.
This isn't the most novel horror face design, but Revenant executes it perfectly.
Revenant's body is cast in a translucent yellow phosphorescent plastic that glows in the dark. She looks less opaque, and more yellow, than Oz Walpurgis. I'm willing to bet the translucency is fully part of her ghost theme, though.
Walpurgis looks yellow in certain lighting, but is more green. Revenant is unambiguously yellow-toned. While it doesn't objectively look good, I love it as a hallmark of old toy kitsch. Glow plastic in an ugly conspicuous color is very nostalgic and charming to me, and Revenant is of that childhood era where I remember those things--I just wasn't aware of her at the time. It's possible Revenant looked less yellow when new, going by her official photo, but most copies today look about the same, so maybe the official photo is a prototype.
The remarkable thing about LDD is that I haven't observed any clear age yellowing in any of the old dolls' vinyl, only in the white hair of Hollywood. I wonder if that has anything to do with the thickness/rigidity of the doll vinyl compared to a Mattel fashion doll head, but whatever it is, I love it. And if the dolls do yellow, it's extremely even in effect because there aren't any patches of discoloration evident. I appreciate it, because LDD has too many other issues and too many pale dolls for yellowing to be an issue! Now if only there was a way to undo the stains in these dolls, because nothing I've tried was successful.
And of course, I say this with the caveat that my LDD collection may well be stricken by yellowing in the future. Here's hoping not. I do keep them out of direct light, though, which probably helps.
The translucency of Revenant's head also shows some internal molding flaws. There's some veined lines on the inside of her right temple, and an air bubble that formed on her left.
I had to pop out Rev's head anyway to free some stuck strands of hair in her joints, so I was able to poke a tool into her head and feel the flaws with the tool. They're not fully encased inside the plastic--they're dimensional on the inside of her head, but the outside is smooth. I should probably be more bothered by these, but they're kind of fascinating.
Revenant's hair looks cool with light passing through her from the front.
Revenant's dress is two layers of fabric-- a black piece attached under a white piece with deliberate tattering and holes. These holes are the same pattern on all copies.
The sleeves and hem have jagged-cut edges and the sleeves are flared with a slit up the side and are long enough to completely hide her hands, giving her costume a lot of drama.
The layered effect has quite striking contrast and feels very classic and party-store scary in a charming way. There's nothing some ratty-looking fabric can't make a little scarier.
The dress velcros down the back and comes off in one piece. While the piece has a lot of unfinished edges, particularly around the holes, gentle handling will prevent unmanufactured damage. The white fabric isn't super thin or liable to fray on its own. I like its texture. The white part has some yellow stains, but I don't know how possible it is to clean them. Trying to soak in bleach could result in the black layer of the dress seeping into the white. I chose to dab in some white paint over the stains instead.
Revenant's body is predictably quite stained by the black in her dress. Her legs are the least opaque parts of her body.
Here's how she glows.
While Calico still has the coolest pet with her Frankenstein animal Muzzy, Revenant gives her fierce competition with her pet Carrion, who's a full vulture. While vultures are a Halloween presence, I feel like they're a kind of under-recognized or underutilized spooky icon, and I always welcome them in the horror space.
The actual first thing I saw when I unboxed the doll was that Carrion's right foot had fallen off. Fortunately, it was a peg attachment that I could pop back in, but I'll wager this was once glued when it was new. I decided to re-glue it.
Revenant had a Resurrection release, which was fairly different. Both gave her the batlike wings several LDDs have had, which are plastic-ribbed fabric with a hinge at the top point that lets them close and open. The wings make her look like a "lost soul" archetype, and both dolls are black-haired. The main is stark white save for her hair and wings and has a really piercing creepy effect with her white staring eyeballs and high-contrast veins. She looks more like a creepy baby in a compelling way. The S6 doll looks older.
Revenant's Res variant is more faithful to the doll facially; having a different but tonally identical face to her original S6 doll. She also is cast in glowing plastic like the original. She still has inset eyes, but they look more like the dark voids on S6 Revenant. The two Res dolls swap color balances between wings and outfit, so the variant has the dark robe and light wings. She also has a hood that can be worn up. Neither Revenant reissued Carrion or bore any reference to the animal, unlike the later Series 6 Resurrections both seen in Res XI. Dottie Rose and Hush's Resurrection variants both referenced their pets in their costume designs.
Back to Series 6 Revenant. She can carry Carrion perched on her arm, but for this posture to work out, Carrion actually serves as a counterbalance. If I take the bird off, the doll falls backward, and if Revenant leans forward, the bird will tip her forward!
And another portrait.
I tried using a Pepper's Ghost effect by manipulating a pane of glass to cast her reflection over a scene to create a "ghost" version of the doll in-camera, but that requires a bigger, more rectangular glass pane than the artist's palette I was trying to use, and I needed more black fabric to cover the scenery under the glass. Other parts of the scene got reflected too.
Still, you can see what I was going for.
I love Revenant because, and I say this with pure affection, she looks like a cheap hokey Halloween toy. Her tattered clothes and ugly yellow glow plastic look humble and like much of the Halloween paraphernalia of my childhood which wasn't that finely made, but had all the earnest spooky charm in the world. (And she is actually from that time period of Halloween toys--I'm just getting her well after the fact!)
The doll is simple and basic. She's very familiarly spooky and doesn't look super special to me...and that's what makes her super special. She perfectly captures that niche of generic Halloween junk that always made me smile and get in the Halloween spirit. She's not the most classic or retro Halloween ghost design (that would be Eleanor), but she still feels very classical Halloween, quite timeless, and not overly edgy or scary. It's a fierce competition as to who is the Halloweeniest S6 doll, but Revenant might feel the most evocative of my personal Halloween memories and I love her for it.
Satan's Pet: Jinx
[This review was initially published in Living Dead Dolls Roundup 7].
Since March, when I first started buying Series 6 dolls and then afterward decided to get them all as a throughline in the LDD Roundups, Jinx has become the obvious most difficult doll to obtain in the series. I swear I remember seeing her for $40 sealed like all the rest in S6 months ago, but today, her sealed/complete offerings are heftier. Not at the $100+ mark, but still higher than others. Every cheaper Jinx has a busted/incomplete box or missing pieces. Had I the foresight, I would have made her an earlier acquisition when she was cheaper.
Jinx, in the concept of Halloween iconography within the series, is a black cat girl and sports orange and black coloration for a classic spooky vibe. She's mostly humanoid and looks like she's just wearing a costume, but her eyes are feline in a way that can be taken as supernatural. Jinx also mixes in leopard print for some visual texture, and also indulges in the concept of bad-luck superstitions in a similar way to Monster High's Catty Noir. I bet LDD kind of regretted already tapping that concept in S6, since they had to come up with a separate take on the black cat superstition for S13!.
My Jinx came sealed, which is the only way she was showing up complete at the moment.
Here's her chipboard, following the same formula as the other Series 6 chipboard poems--a couplet that mentions the pet.
Jinx and her Hellcat make quite a pair
Their path is paved with bad luck, so cross if you dare
And a rewrite.
Jinx and her Hellcat make quite a pair
They're nothing but bad luck--cross if you dare!
The June 7 date doesn't have any clear meaning, other than the fact that it's a day off June 6, or 6/6. That might be intentional to put her closer to the 666 theme of the series? The 6/6 date proper was used by Revenant, paired with a 1966 year for a 6/6/66 theme.
The certificate poem delves more into superstition theming that would later be individualized in separate topics per doll in Series 13.
Breaking mirrors and walking under ladders till she died
This unlucky kitten used up all of her nine lives
We've already seen the broken-mirror doll in my LDD Roundup 7 alongside Jinx, and Jacob is the ladder doll of Series 13.
Here's a loose rewrite.
Most cats have nine lives, but she got thirteen
Yet still, she used all them up
With broken glass mirrors and walks under ladders
And all of the types of bad luck.
And unboxed. Hellcat did not come with a plastic tray under it like Shriek and Muzzy did. I don't remember Ole Crow or Hun having them, and can't say for Revenant's vulture Carrion, since she was the only S6 doll I purchased unboxed. There's some heavy competition between the S6 dolls as to who's the most Halloweeny among them, but Jinx is certainly the one with the most classic spooky seasonal color palette, being all orange and black with yellow/tan from the leopard print mixing in.
Jinx's visual aesthetic is classic, cute, and cartoony LDD, with that vaguely retro 1960s flair that Sadie and Lottie also have, so naturally, I love her. Her black cat theme is downplayed by her orange hair and leopard print, and I have to wonder if she's partially inspired by Josie and the Pussycats as a result--her hair and leopard pattern put together feel too close for coincidence. Josie was a franchise originating through Archie Comics which featured a band of musicians in cat costumes, and Josie herself looks a lot like Jinx.
 |
| Josie in the center. |
If this isn't a deliberate reference, it's possible it's a subconscious one where the designers paired the orange haircut, cat theme, and leopard print on instincts they weren't aware were informed by seeing the Josie design previously.
It's a bit awkward with her haircut, which doesn't pull through and part around the band in the most elegant way to disguise it.
The haircut and the high-neck cut of her outfit do completely disguise the presence of the chinstrap, though. With some side angles or her top removed, the strap is more visible, but the hair and costume ensure it isn't distracting. I had no idea the band was an elastic chinstrap until getting the doll. I assumed it'd be a rigid arc that worked like a human-scale one.
Jinx's hair itself is a straight shoulder-length bob cut rooted in a more blended orange color with reddish and yellowish highlights coming together. A lot of LDD hair is entirely monochromatic, so a blend is nice to see. She has high bangs cut well above her eyebrows, but the shape works for her. Bangs this high can often be a crime of the highest order (particularly on poor Courteney Cox in Scream 3, whose stylist utterly failed the Bettie Page look), but Jinx wears them well. The bangs were a little unconvincing fresh, but when boiled, laid better...the rooting is still too thin on the bangs, though, and it can show. She might benefit from some gel combed in to spread the hair and keep it covering the empty spots. The hair texture boiled out is just okay, not special, and feels similar to many other LDDs--though fortunately, without fried ends.
This is her after hair care.
The hair fibers didn't end up hanging down completely straight, either, but the silhouette is right.
Jinx has a pale flesh skin color that can look greyish in some lighting, and a mostly human face. Her face paint is all done in orange, yellow, and black, with harsh black brows, cat-eye makeup outlines (naturally) and wings, and yellow and orange eyes with no visible sclera and slit feline pupils. Her eyes look glowy and catlike and very retro-spooky and Halloweeny. Very cute.
She's definitely in a club with S1 Sadie, Sin, and Lottie.
I think Series 2's Kitty (a vintage cheerleader who has nothing to do with cats) might also fit this specific aesthetic niche of LDD, and maybe I could end up loving her if I pursued that. I just never thought much of her previously due to her colors not being so unique. If she had light blonde hair, she'd stand apart much better among Sadie and Sin.
 |
| Wondering about her...and I was so sure I had no need for anyone in Series 2! |
Jinx's outfit is coordinated, but two pieces. She has a sweater-like top in black fleece, with long sleeves, a leopard-print shirt collar, and an applique "13" symbol on the front in orange outlined block numbers.
 |
| The black interiors of the glyphs are part of the applique as well. |
Jinx's sweater does pull over her waist and lay on top of the skirt to tidy her up. The way it's sewn, though, it pulls up and exposes her belly when her arms are raised.
Like Chloe's dress, Jinx's shirt velcros shut without a loop strip to match the hook strip--the hooks just grip onto the fabric itself.
Her skirt hugs her legs and is the same leopard fabric as the collar and ear lining and has a velour-like black trim on the hem which is separate from the material of the headband. This black material isn't the softest, smoothest fabric, despite its appearance. Maybe it's just old. The piece is elasticated and just slides up or down her body.
The skirt also has a tail sewn on the back. This matches the trim on the skirt, and there's wire inside to pose it. The end of the tail is not tacked static to the seat of the skirt, though, so the posing doesn't make much difference. The tail as it is can flap back and forth in a downward diagonal the way it's attached, which doesn't allow you to pose it in an upright shape. It always wants to fall and hang downward.
Jinx has orange socks, which I think are a unique color for the dolls, and black Mary Janes.
While the Mary Jane shoes are of variable tightness, particularly in earlier LDDs and dolls around Evangeline's time, I was quite pleased to find Jinx to be entirely solid with snug shoes. She stands very easily, and I always appreciate that.
Hellcat is exceptionally large, and does really feel like a half-demonic creature given its proportions next to Jinx. It's stylized like the other S6 pets and has a sneer with a protruding fang and a "mohawk" of fur. Like Shriek and the body of Carrion, the cat feels like hollow vinyl. The pet is evidently two pieces glued together on a seam at the neck. The head does not turn. I'm confused and disappointed by the pale grey airbrushing on the cat, which diminishes its spooky Halloween vibe significantly. Orange, maybe. But not a color that makes the cat look white.
I was so distracted by the shading that I tried to see if I could wipe it off...and got the valuable and disappointing revelation that I could not. Hellcat is actually entirely painted, and the black rubbed off too, revealing a reddish cast vinyl underneath. So I had no choice now but to paint over in black. I regret touching the cat now, but that disappointment is my fault. I wasn't supposed to do that and should have accepted the paint it had, regardless of my taste. The paint I used is supposedly light-absorbent, but mostly amounts to "really dark and really matte", and it worked well for Hellcat and almost makes it look flocked.
Here's Catty Noir with her two LDD halves--the black-cat and mirrors doll in between the dolls about just one of those!
Simone would also qualify to trade out for Jinx's spot, but Jinx is the doll who actually looks like a cat, plus she shares the 13 symbol with Catty.
Jinx is the fourth doll from Series 6 I'm reviewing who had subsequent releases--hers were the two variants within the Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland collection, where she was a shoe-in for the role of the Cheshire Cat. Her main variant is easily recognizable through the colors, though her face paint gives her a caricatured different expression and her hairstyle might be significantly different under the hoodie. The bangs are certainly different.
 |
| This would be equally effective as a Halloween cat doll. |
Her variant, like every variant in the Alice line, has stark white skin and changes her hair to black and her stripes to purple, while making her eyes blue. This comes across as a mix of the magenta striped 1951 Disney animated Cheshire Cat and the blue-eyed Cheshire Cat of the Tim Burton adaptation.
I don't know if I'd pin her as Jinx, but like both variants.
To set up photos for Jinx, I used an orange-painted poster board prepared for this year's Halloween blog extravaganza and set up some spooky cat props with Jinx, Hellcat, and some leopard fabric so the display was very Halloweeny but also specific to the doll's look. I did a light saturated take, and then a darker take lit by a red light, which created a moodier scene.
 |
| I am so ready for October, and excited to share my Halloween spirit on the blog this time! |
I took a portrait just with the background, but her patchy bangs spoiled the effect a little.
Jinx's eyes pop under blacklight.
Here's the two on the leopard background.
And a photo of Jinx outside under a ladder. This toy ladder piece I had appears to be taller than the ladder included with Jacob in Series 13, but neither are long enough to lean against a wall with the doll standing below, so I had to cheat and prop the ladder up on something else cut off below frame.
I think Jinx is really sweet and fun, but her execution as a toy ultimately didn't bump her into the top three of the series for me. I'd thought she had a chance of that, but the hair's too patchy and slightly messy, the headband is functional but not the best matched to the hair shape, the poseable tail isn't super dynamic the way it's been sewn on, the shirt pulls up when Jinx lifts her arms, and Hellcat's paint job totally misses the point. I still really like Jinx's aesthetic and she displays great. She's darling and very spooky while having some fun touches that make her interesting in the Halloween aesthetic she embodies. She deserves to exist alongside Salem; both are doing their own takes well. I just wish the doll was a bit more polished. (Love that she stands so firmly, though.)
Overview
[This section was initially published as 6 and 6 for 6: Living Dead Dolls Series 6 Complete.]
And after so many months, Series 6 is complete!
This wasn't a set I aimed to collect at the start, but I had no argument against any of the dolls, and learning of their Halloween theme after so long being familiar with them sold me even more. As such, they became an unevenly dispersed feature within my LDD roundups between April and September.
Series 6 has the themed concept, but I still consider them more of a variety series. They are also technically a Halloween series, but still form an assortment. Possibly because of their Halloween vibe, the series is also one of the most accessible and family-friendly in tone, with no blood at all in the designs. Scars, veins, stitches, and blisters still feature, but nothing too shocking or edgy, and there's a general use of color and contrast in the series that feels poppy and light-hearted.
In terms of innovation, there's not too much. We got the first LDD animal sculpts here, and Hush's rat would later be reused for the Nosferatu set, colored black. Revenant debuted LDDs cast in glow-in-the-dark plastic, and was probably the first LDD overall with glowing features. Isaac features a soft body connecting his plastic head, hands, and shoes, though his innovation was a one-off for effect and never got repeated or emulated by another LDD.
In terms of quality, each doll had their issues and none felt spectacular. Here's my ranking--left to right, best to worst.
I put Isaac at the top since he had nothing really detrimental or unpleasant about him. My copy has a mistake where his two (different) left hand sculpts are on the opposite side they should be, and has an odd errant piece of straw sewn in one of his wrists, but these are very minor things, and the rest of the doll looks good.
I put Hush right after Isaac. She had some really weird discolorations and grime under her clothing, but she cleaned up fine and her flaws aren't really shown. She's wobbly on her feet, but not the worst.
Jinx comes after Hush by a small margin. She looks good and stands firmly, but her hair is not rooted especially well, particularly in the bangs, where gaps are easily visible. The hair texture also isn't fabulous. It's fine, but not the smoothest.
Revenant is after Jinx. Her outfit had yellowed patches, though this could be the fault of her previous owner. Her costume also stained her, and her molding has internal flaws made visible by her translucent plastic. What really lets her down is her fried snarled hair ends. She'd have such gorgeous hair without that problem. She's also a little wobbly.
Dottie Rose almost got the bottom spot just for the egregious issue of my copy having a mismolded left leg that's physically shorter than her right. She can stand, but she has to lean, and such an error is exceptional and frustrating. The neck strings of her halter dress are also unfinished fabric that frays. However, I'm sure another Dottie copy could be much better, and maybe come in the top three of this category, so in my individual experience, I was unlucky, but overall, a Dottie Rose would probably lack that problem.
Calico comes last. Her yarn hair was not very tidily arranged in the section glued down to her scalp, leaving notable gaps that demand her hair gets all swept behind her. Her dress also left notable stains, and her fabric material is fine at the moment, but I know it's subject to cracking and peeling and I dread that. I think it could have been made of pure plastic if the texture was really important to them; something like the costume Gabriella wears in Series 18. I can't trust this vinyl faux-leather type.
Calico's issues in the dress are serious concerns inherent to any copy of the doll, so she's in last place.
Calico's issues in the dress are serious concerns inherent to any copy of the doll, so she's in last place.
Character design is a very competitive category here. There's really no losers.
Isaac comes first, mostly for being such a delightful surprise. He's just a fantastic spooky scarecrow with his patchwork and stitching detail, and his great autumnal dark color palette in entirely warm tones. He's piercing and frightening and yet oddly adorable, and his more mobile soft body gives him a literalist scarecrow charm that I think is extremely charming. I liked him so much more than I expected to.
I think I have to put Hush after him, and it was hard to bump her down a spot. She's still a hauntingly beautiful creepy doll with a great paint job and a gross and terrifying vibe with her matted yarn hair and sewer rat pet. I think I'd like her just that little bit more if she wasn't suggested to have angry eyebrows within her face paint design. They blend into her vein detail, but once you see it, you notice it, and I prefer her looking a little naive and scared.
Dottie Rose comes after Isaac. I think her look is very striking as a ghoulish chic 1950s lady, and her palette occupies the more newly popularized aesthetic niche of pastel Halloween in a way that feels prescient. I have nothing bad to say about her design. Hush and Isaac just impressed and surprised me more.
Calico comes right after. She's just so strange and bold in such an arresting iconic way. Her colors don't quite go, but they do. Her simple outfit can be plain, or it can be perfect. Her hairstyle and platform sandals give her a confidently weird stature that makes her a very charming glam Frankenstein type. I had initially restyled her with more clothing pieces, but I think looking at her again sold me more on her simplicity. And you can't beat that killer patchwork body paint.
Jinx is right after Calico. She's very sweet and classically Halloween, and lands in the niche of cartoony pseudo-1960s dolls I love, right alongside Sadie and Lottie.
Revenant goes after Jinx. She's a very solid kitschy Halloween ghost decoration with her own retro charm and all the nostalgia of cheap plastic glow toys from my childhood. She's very effective and charming, but she just feels the least inventive in the group.
And my overall experience ranking.
Dottie Rose is at the top because I love her character design and she gave me the best photo session of the group, with some really fun surreal and haunting and challenging setups to tell the story of a woman who lives in a bright suburb while keeping to the darkness of her own home.
Isaac is after her for being the most pleasant surprise, and I loved playing with him and taking his photos.
Calico is in the middle because she gave me some fun creative challenges and is such a striking doll.
Hush comes after her because she's a beautiful doll I love--her photo setup was just a bit beyond me.
Jinx is after Hush because she's sweet and I got good work with her, but she didn't light me up like the other dolls.
Revenant is at the end because her photo session was the most challenging and least rewarding.
Here are my favorite pictures of each doll, in review order:
And one last ranking, unique to this series-- pets!
Calico's pet Muzzy can't be beat. It's an incredibly sculpted and well-painted fusion of multiple different animal and creature types with great texture and personality. Revenant's pet Carrion is second-place just because a pet vulture is so cool. Isaac's Ole Crow is after that because it was a great presence in his photos. Dottie Rose's Hun was a bit harder to work with, but a brutal poodle is a fun idea. Hush's pet Shriek is after that because it's not so dynamic, and Jinx's Hellcat is last because its factory paint job gave it a lot of pale shading that ruined the effect of the black cat theme.
The dolls also have a lot of thematic links between them.
- Dottie Rose and Hush both use a black/white/pink palette and their pets each participated in their deaths.
- Hush and Calico both have full-body paint detail and yarn hair.
- Calico and Isaac both have stitch theming.
- Isaac and Revenant both have bird pets.
- Revenant and Hush both have veining detail.
And there are other minutiae shared between the dolls, but these are the more interesting ones!
So that's Series 6 complete! I'm definitely going to save them some room during Halloween decorations, and they can join their more explicitly Halloween-themed LDD compatriots as decor. I don't see myself completing too many more "variety" LDD series (Series 14 might be the only one I'm thinking about), but it was fun to see how they all work together.
No comments:
Post a Comment