The DEADvent Calendar: Day 9

Time for Day 9!

Inside the drawer this time was a new package shape--it looked like a mini coffin! 

And indeed it is, with a little sleepyhead tucked into a tissue sheet!

It's Minis Series 2 Bedtime Sadie!

Series 1 big Sadie wasn't sure how to feel about meeting alternate mini dolls of her alternate selves, and wondered if reality was breaking a little,  but she ultimately saw the benefit to a creepy mini-me running around.

Bedtime Sadie gets her review within this post.

Bedtime Sadie is a pretty cute sleepy design for the LDD figurehead, and I think I've always been attached to toys dressed for bed, though Bedtime Sadie in the full-size dolls never grabbed me.

This Minis doll was actually the only LDD Mini (with a matching full-size doll) to come before the full-size doll counterpart. Bedtime Sadie debuted in the Minis range and was well-received enough to earn a full-size adaptation after the fact, being upsized for Series 7 and cast as the face of Sloth in the Deadly Sins. 

Like Sadie's Schooltime and Sweet 16 editions, S7 Bedtime Sadie was given a unique death date separate from Series 1 Sadie, which, if taken literally, suggests the Sadies are all separate characters or from parallel universes. Stylistically, though, it's just LDD redefining the applicable everygirl character and making each death date more thematic to the release.

Bedtime Sadie appeared in Minis Series 2, taking the slot that would belong to Schooltime Sadie from the original LDD Series 2. Schooltime Sadie got her Mini elsewhere in a place I've hinted at, so a new Sadie was developed for the Minis series, and she then got her full-size match later. By technicality, this means Bedtime Sadie is also the only Series 7 doll with a Minis release, though while S7 Sloth is Bedtime Sadie, Minis Bedtime Sadie is not Sloth. 

The only full series to be replicated in the Minis were 1, 2, 3, 4, and 16, and even the cancelled seventh main series of Minis which sourced characters from five different LDD sets had no Series 7 characters. It would have consisted one character each from Series 8, 11, 12, 13, and 15.

Bedtime Sadie's coffin packaging is just like Mini Lottie's. 

Here's the doll out. She does not like to stand easily because she has fabric footies.

Her hat is a slightly stretchy black knit with a long tail, and is sewn into a bend. The skull-and-crossbones pattern is cute. On the Series 7 full-size doll, these skulls glowed on her pajamas, but they don't on the Mini. The hat fits snug on her head.

Under the hat, there's some unfortunate forehead stains...and bangs?!?

I had no reason to expect this, and I immediately had to see if the full-size doll had them. That changes my entire perception of Sadie's design history, since I thought her first appearance with bangs was her Resurrection design (followed by her Series 35 Res-style doll and her Return edition). You really can't tell with the Series 7 doll in pictures because her hat covers the same area as on the Mini. 

But I wasn't nuts. Series 7 Bedtime Sadie/Sloth really doesn't have bangs, making that a trait unique to the original Mini. How odd. And what a strange place for the character to debut bangs--on a mini doll where they aren't even seen thanks to her hat! The hair is pretty wavy and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be straighter, but I think the texture looks good and I won't attempt to boil it straight. I want to fix her bangs, but the volume of her hair can stay. It sets her apart and works for a cozy sleepy doll. 

Bedtime Sadie's vinyl head blatantly does not match the color of her body, which is more pale and greenish and unlike a typical Sadie color. The head is pink, perhaps even more than it was meant to be, though I can't imagine it being much paler at the start. Maybe something chemical did happen to the color perhaps in conjunction with the heads seeming like they may have been chemically shrunken on the Minis dolls? I'm more ready to blame the color of the body, though, because it is wildly incorrect with its pale greenish-grey cast. The body matches full-size Sadie's flesh tone worse than the head does, so the bigger issue is there. This is not evidently the fault of just this copy, since other options for this doll looked no better online, and even new pictures of the Mini from LDD archive photos suggest the match was never perfect. It's not even the fault of the plastic type--the arms and legs are actually flexible vinyl separate from the hard plastic torso, but the body all matches, while the head is vinyl and is totally different. Starting in Series 3, the Minis switched to hard-plastic limbs and all of the Minis I'd seen after Minis Series 2 have been pretty evenly color-matched, but the variant Bedtime Sadie from the box-set including the Series 3 Minis also doesn't have great color-matching, indicating that even if she is hard plastic, she's not a better edition. This wasn't promising for the prospect of other Minis Sadies. Maybe body donation from a later Mini with a better color could be a solution. I do want the set that includes variant Bedtime Sadie, so I may just find out in person how she fared.

Bedtime Sadie's faceup uses the matching two white eyes first present on her original handmade custom and the Series 2 Schooltime design (Schooltime's eyes are actually faintly blue), and also like Schooltime, she has a fresh scar on her forehead. Schooltime Sadie (among several others) used the edgy Mansonesque "X" design, but Bedtime twists on the idea by having a "Z" shape that matches her cartoony sleepy theme. I like it. Her eyes are painted with a grey half-lidded design, accordingly, and she has some caricatured arched grey eye shading which I could probably do without. It's not stylistically like any other Sadie, and I think it's misplaced--heavy shading under the eyes to make her look exhausted would be more appropriate. I do think the doll looks nice, though, and she's a lot more endearing in person than I expected. Her lid paint looks a little thin, though, since I can see bits of her iris coming through from beneath.

The pajamas have a rounded neck gap in the cut and are a footie piece that velcros in the back. The fabric is just like the hat.

I noticed only after undressing and redressing her that the pajamas have a butt flap, complete with buttons sewn. And it velcros open. 

While the velcro attachments underneath keep Sadie modest and her butt doesn't show when this piece is open, this is still an absolutely next-level detail for a tiny doll. Sadie does lack underwear paint to match the presence of the flap, so the flap theoretically would open to a bare butt. Reportedly, the Series 7 doll is also still covered when her larger pajamas' flap is opened.

Because I liked this Mini so much and I found her color so distracting, I decided to paint over her visible body parts to match her head better.

This wasn't a perfect or durable result, and her head scraped some paint away at the top of the neck, but the look was good. The doll has so little body showing that I didn't paint much, and redressing her didn't do much to the paint. Right now the doll isn't quite important enough to try sourcing another factory Minis body that would match better. Minis don't come easily enough to rebody every one whose color is a little off. There are also BJD bodies that are small, but the ones thin enough to fit into Minis clothes are a little too tall, and Sadie's footie pajamas would categorically not work with one. More on that another time, because I did rebody one Mini for another project after getting a BJD mini as an investigation.

Series 7 Bedtime Sadie, in addition to glowy pajamas, got a little book of scary bedtime stories as an accessory, but I don't think it was paper or functional in any way. The Mini doesn't have it because the Minis don't have accessories--only Mini Isabel, who has her stick mask, and that's counted as a costume piece like hats are.

The Mini came with the standard-issue Minis keychain noose, but I forgot to wrap it with her in the calendar and didn't need to use it.

Bedtime Sadie had one more release as a cuddly bedtime soft-bodied doll with vinyl for the head and hands, and a toothy teddy bear. I'd have loved this if it were entirely fabric and more cute. 

Her scar is bleeding down.

Here's Mini Bedtime Sadie after all her TLC.

The main reason I went in for Bedtime Sadie was because she's the ideal character to play Scrooge to the Christmas Carol Minis, and will join the photo staging for their upcoming review.

This makes perfect sense to me.

She's got the nightcap on, and as a minimally-defined mascot, the broader Sadie is a versatile actress and easy protagonist for the LDD take on the tale. "Scrooge" and "Sadie" even have superficial similarities as words. I may have other purposes for her too, but that comes in time. 

I'll leave you with this as we wait for day 10.

'Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house

Not a creature was living

Not even a mouse

The nooses were hung by the chimney up high

Awaiting St. Nick in the hope he would die

And Sadie was nestled all snug in her coffin

While visions of butcher knives danced in her noggin

With skull-print pajamas and a horrible cap

She longed for sweet brains on her long winter's nap.