No Such Thing as a Free Soul: Living Dead Dolls Resurrection Lilith by Mezco Toyz

When reading the first half of this post, I ask you only one thing: bear with me.

So. When looking at AliExpress LDD listings in search of something low-end that caught my fancy at this moment, I noticed (with some disbelief) a Resurrection-variant Lilith in a beat-up incomplete coffin, but who seemed to be a whole doll with her original certificate, and she was going for less than $40.

Sure, her packaging was messed up or non-original, but I was still mildly amazed to see it. I then moved on, because Res Lilith isn't really my thing and I actually prefer the main edition of her Res. 

Then, the next day, I pumped the brakes hard and backed up and came to my senses because a Resurrection variant for less than $40??? That's a doll that gets multiple hundreds at her lowest prices normally! This is a variant doll recorded to have been produced in only 75 copies!!! Who even cares about complete in these circumstances? Who even cares if she's not my truest love of LDD? I was taking this doll! So what if it's just to boast? That's a pretty awesome thing to have to boast about!

What helps is that Lilith has several rare features in terms of her production, and is a pretty cool design even if I don't love her personally (especially not next to her impeccable original character design).

I did temper my expectations in case she had aged poorly or been damaged and approached a state where her low price was earned. I was a bit skeptical about the coloring of her body, but again, unless this doll had been physically cut to ribbons and thrown into a garbage bag of moldy cheese and rotten soup, I thought she was going to be objectively a legendary steal at the price for which I bought her.

I've seen multiple boxed copies of her were selling from a Chinese eBay sellers between $80-100, so it's possible this doll somehow isn't as mythical of a pull as I'd first thought, but a deal looked like a deal.

Warning for bloody imagery and scary faces.

Resurrection Lilith is from Res II, just like my first Res doll, Sadie. The copy I received was not as messy as the one photographed, as it was sealed. I soon found the doll had been previously unpacked and was just re-wired into her box and re-wrapped. 

Mirrored lid again!

Res II clearly doesn't have individualized chipboards, because the dirty classic Sadie is on this one, too.

Here's the re-twisted wires holding in Lilith.

The tissue felt a little light.

Like Sadie's, her certificate is a recolored reprint, though the tie ribbon looked redder instead of the classic wine color LDD uses.

"Damned" is spelled wrong.

Lilith as I discussed her before was very monster-movie and based upon foundational classic vampire pop culture, being a Dracula-esque lady stabbed in the chest with a stake. Resurrection Lilith, on the other hand, more clearly incorporates her mythological namesake from Mesopotamian and Jewish stories where she was an ancient demon and/or the first wife of the Abrahamic religious figure of Adam. While it became much less common in later Res series, Lilith was a Res doll whose two variant dolls were palette/paint swaps without any physical or structural differences in sculpts, hairstyle, or costuming. More Res dolls were akin to palette-swap main-series variants in the earlier goes, while later Res series often basically made two fully separate character designs with different hairstyles, sculpts, or costume structures between the two Res editions of a character. With Lilith here, the only differences between her Res dolls are in coloring, but not overall design structure, aesthetic, or sculpts, so everything I discuss here about her special body features applies to her main as well.

Res-variant Lilith has black hair with a red streak on top on her right, and it's a center- parted hairstyle with no widow's peak or bangs. The hair streak was white on the main Res, giving her an element of Lily Munster, which I liked a bit better. The hair is soft and untangled, and it has a bit of lift to it rather than falling directly down and framing her face. 

Lilith's wings are her first big novelty, though not at all introduced by her. 

Wings like these originated on Series 4's Inferno. They're shaped like bat or dragon wings and have a gnarled texture, with the frame being hollow plastic in two pieces between which the fabric is pinched. This Lilith's wings are red with black membrane. The wings have a hinge just on the top point with a metal screw with a wide flat head and a Phillips receptacle, and they fan outward when the wings are lifted. This is dynamic, but also just practical so the dolls fit in their coffins. The left wing was loose and would fall back down when hinged upward, but I assumed I could tighten the screw to fix that. While the wings feel like the kind of plastic that could crack and break easily, I love the sewing on the membrane that textures the wings and also fully finishes the edges. These wings have two cylindrical pegs that slide into holes in her back and are glued in, but it's possible to gently wiggle them out and break the glue so the wings can be removed and replaced. This is hugely helpful in working with her hair, so I went ahead with it.

The wings fit back in easily and snugly. I don't see any reason for Mezco to have designed these as affixed pieces when they work as removable pieces very safely and make the dolls a lot easier to fuss with and display as desired.

Lilith uses the open mouth, snarling to show off her teeth, which is only correct after Series 3 Lilith debuted this head mold style with her vampire fangs! If any character was to use an open mouth, it'd be a remake of the lady who debuted it. This Lilith, however, actually has a new head sculpt based on the screaming face, which has pointed batlike ears!

Pointy ears had been done for the Nosferatu Count Orlok doll and Desmodus and Absynth, but as plastic pieces glued over the ears of the standard open-mouth head mold. This Lilith mold never appeared again, either. This is one of the few LDD head molds exclusive to a Resurrection doll, and thus has no mainline counterpart with molded flat eyes instead of eye cups for inset pieces. For Res Lilith's two dolls, and only those two dolls, to use this mold is pretty special. The Res dolls with unique body molds (which also include Res-variant Damien marked with a 666 scar on his forehead, and both Res Brides of Valentine with her head bolts) are extremely desirable to me, so it's great to have the chance to get even one of these exclusive molds!

Res Lilith's two dolls were also the second and final use of the pointed central rodent fangs which debuted on the Nosferatu doll. Because Nosferatu was literally an off-brand unlicensed Dracula adaptation, Orlok's portrayal of vampirism focused on the viral plague aspect by likening him to a rat instead of a bat. A version of Nosferatu is currently in theaters through a remake by history-fascinated filmmaker Robert Eggers. I'd love to see it.

But this was where I started to realize why this doll was $40. It looked like Resurrection-variant Lilith was drastically off-base in production and this isn't the only copy like this. This doll's eyes seem tiny and her face seems distorted. Indeed, her eyes are much smaller than Res Sadie's inset eyes and sockets, and only fill the standard LDD oval-socket shape. I didn't think any Res eyes were that small. But they also look very awkward and absent despite their flaming color. The face doesn't pull together. Part of the problem seems to be the airbrushing is underdone and the fangs aren't placed properly, bending too much and not hanging sharply down. The whole face just isn't what's pictured on the site:

There's a nuance here that makes her look more aware. The eyes feel more convex and not as shrunken. The brows look longer.  There's just something wrong about this copy. And I know variant Lilith has been produced correctly from some other in-hand photos, but what I was seeing, and saw in multiple, looked bad. My copy had the same face but didn't look like the same messy-box copy in the selling photograph, so I worried trying again with the other copy on the listing would just get me another one with the tiny eyes. 

Look how much more vibrant and cohesive Sadie looks. These two are from the same release?!??

Res Lilith's final note from Orlok is that she uses the long clawed arms that debuted on Orlok's LDD.

She's my second doll with these arms. It's cool how Resurrection Lilith mixes demons and Orlok together while the original was far more in the Dracula school of vampires. The previous incomplete glow doll with these arms I have is Emerald City Walpurgis. These arms look a little shiny.

Lilith's dress is a strapless one-piece that works easily with her wings by not getting in the way. It makes logistical sense that she could actually dress herself in her costume.The bodice is sewn to resemble a corset with its seams and the cross-stitches on the sides depicting laces, and is red with black stitching, while the skirt is soft flowy velvet with pleats filled by black satin akin to Siren or Ember's dresses. Main Res Lilith's dress is inverted between the red and black, just like her wings. 

The dress gaps around the torso, but it can be tightened by pulling the velcro closed at a slight angle in back.

Lilith also has a thin ribbon choker around her neck which is a sewn loop slid on before the head was popped in. It doesn't come off.

Lilith wears black pointy boots with no socks and is very wobbly. I tested her glow, but it didn't seem very strong.

I really tried with her, but she's just giving nothing.

I took Lilith downstairs to tighten her wing and try putting paint on to fix her face. The wing tightened with a screw adjustment, but I wasn't sure how the face fix was working. Then, when I tried to wiggle out her teeth to re-glue them, they tore and broke off and the doll was officially a bust. She was already janky and now she was broken. I was immensely upset to have destroyed her, but I had to console myself with the fact in-person, she was fairly-priced and not really a good doll the way she was produced. Had I gotten a copy that had the proper manufacturing that clicked her face together, she'd be worth more, but this awkward vacant-faced doll wasn't ever going to be just right.

I decided to make the best of the moment and acquire what I sought the whole time from her--information. Pulling Lilith out of the population of viable copies for good, I cut open her head to investigate her eyes. The eyes are tightly fitted into cups behind the socket which seem formed of thin bubbled vinyl. These aren't molded cups so much as dribbled. They had to be cut open to remove an eye, which is in its own black plastic holder.

Somehow, this didn't feel like how I thought it would. 

Oh, and Lilith's left hip was loose because her leg peg was twisting out of the socket. I've seen too many of those now. I discarded the body pieces and kept the dress and boots as usable costume, upset.

But you've been screaming through the screen at me (I hope). Perhaps you've already understood this was a different story than  I thought. Or rather, I wasn't thinking. But I was now.

The certificate ribbon was bright red. The face was really off. The wing was loose. The leg was loose. The teeth were badly applied. The arms were shiny. The bodice was gappy. The inset eyes did not look like they should be made that way. The doll looked too good for it and I shook off the thought the first time I had it, but now I had to get real and ask myself seriously: no cope, was Lilith fake??? 

DUH.

If you're smarter than me (again, I hope you are), then you were asking yourself that question from the moment I told you this doll was $40, and this read has been excruciating for you up to this point. It's hard for me to read back. I am so sorry.

The prospect of Lilith being a fake stuck in my mind because it would explain why the doll was so off and why there seemed to be such a uncanny discrepancy between the low-price Res-variant Liliths and the proven good ones. I had wondered if she was somehow a factory reject, but now I had to ask if she was entirely knocked-off. Was it possible? I wasn't aware any LDD fakes existed, and it wasn't so obvious that this couldn't also be a bad official copy. The seller wasn't scamming a ton out of me with such a low price if this was a fake. But why would a run of only 75 dolls produce so many starkly bad copies? Why was I ever trusting a Chinese market listing of a super-rare doll for so cheap? But let's not jump to conclusions based only on abundant, glaring logical reasoning. We need proof. And there was one easy way to tell--get out your magnifying glasses; we're inspecting Res II coffins. How useful it is now to have a Res II doll already! 

What I notice is that Lilith's clear coffin lid has thicker print than Sadie's. The reverse print isn't a knock against it, though, since I've gotten legit dolls with the mirrored print in Bloody Mary and confirmed-real Res II Sadie. 

Look at the "Pure Evil" in the right side of each lid--see the thicker lettering on Lilith's?

Sadie's coffin has a woodgrain effect several coffins used, while Lilith's is flat black. Because I didn't get my Sadie sealed, there's a chance this coffin body wasn't Sadie's originally, but I'm not inclined to assume this is ever the case unless a doll's coffin has the wrong tissue color for their release. Both boxes are dated 2005 by copyright, though the sticker on the lid says Sadie was a 2008 doll. I'm guessing Sadie's box is correct but the bottom date doesn't reflect the doll. I'd believe this happened sometimes if my Bloody Mary's coffin body is original to her--that date doesn't seem correct for her release time, either. (Sidenote: I finally found a good deal on a Mary whose chipboard I can complete my copy's coffin with!)

Things started to get damning when scrutinizing the Lilith box's text and noticing nonsense typos. You do not make typographical errors in packaging legalese, but Lilith claims to be for ages "iS and up". Mezco HQ is also apparently in the state of "New Oprk", and is spelled "Mezco Toys" just before, despite other uses being "Mezco Toyz" as they should be.

Son of a bitch.

"Made in China" is unchanged, but it takes a very different tone this time. "Made in China? You got that right!"

The back of the package also has a damning discrepancy with the tagline "Beca se deader is better"!

Thicker print on Lil's again.

Interestingly, Lilith's box credits the LDD line to "Damien Glonek, Ed Long, and Mez". This was accurate to the LDD team for a while, and I imagine Damien and Mez Markowitz are still there today, but Sadie's box only attributes Damien and Ed. I had never noticed the "and Mez" tagline, but I went back to check some later LDD coffins like Series 33, and sure enough, it's there! I checked my coffins, and the earliest series I've collected from with the "and Mez" extension of the line was Series 23.

I was looking right at Agatha's coffin back when I reviewed her in March and never noticed.

The new credit line may have been added in Series 19, 20, or 21 which I haven't sampled from yet, though it's not impossible for it to have been added in Series 23. Series 22 does not have the typical creator credit in its special 13th-anniversary back copy, and Series 18 was still credited to just Damien and Ed. I knew Mez joined the design team at some point (enough so, reportedly, to have designed all of Series 31!), but I never noticed he was added to the credits on the coffins. So good on you, sketchy Lilith for teaching me...but I heavily suspect this detail is anachronistic for Res II coffins because Res II Sadie's coffin should have it if not.

Wait, hold up.

Death CECTIFICATE?

That sound you're hearing is me, banging my head into my desk.

To be honest, we don't know that the "damned" typo is the fakers' fault. LDD makes typos. But the header is absolutely a sign of forgery. This was Sadie's cert.

And of course the doll-name typeface is subtly different too.

Oh, and the inside of Lilith's box is glossy, and the LDD character artwork inside the lid is upscaled and incomplete next to Sadie's.

Now it's just a game of spot-the-difference at this point! You get no points, though. You already lose by buying the fake.

I have to wonder now if "Lilith" was ever secured in her coffin like a normal LDD. I'd assumed she was unboxed and re-wired and re-sealed in her coffin for resale back when I thought she was legit, but maybe that sloppy job was her original boxing.

And it all comes back to those eyes. So small, so dead, and not even pristine, with the black cups leaving a conspicuous glossy edge.

I labored under the frame this was Mezco's work for wayyy too long.

My conclusion was clearly already drawn, but the clincher was going back to the LDD fan wiki page for Res II only to suddenly see some earnest, conscientious child wiki editor plastered big bold-text warnings that a fake Lilith with short teeth and small eyes and short arms was floating around the aftermarket. 

Dang. Despite being visibly written by minors, this fan wiki has provided a lot of information I couldn't get elsewhere. Good kids editing that wiki.

So, let's look at that description provided. Short teeth? Absolutely, and distorted too. Small eyes? First thing I clocked. 

...short arms? These are longer clawed arms. Confirmed longer than normal LDD arms, anyway...Uh, hey, Walpurgis. Lend a hand?

Damn it.

Hahahaha oh my god rest in pig dung you plastic poser.

I had to laugh at myself at the end of it all. Who was I kidding?

"I got a Resurrection variant for $40; that's impossible!" 

Gee....ya think?!!?

I ought to be furious. Instead, I'm immensely relaxed by the realization I was played and did not, in fact, destructively spiral with a precious official release. It was a scam, absolutely, and I was played for a fool. 

Pictured: me.

Do not offer sympathies; I am completely fine and I do not feel like a victim for ignoring all logic and getting tricked as a result. A lot of it's on me. 

But it was a learning experience and it was a loss I could take on the chin. Had they asked a high price and got me, that would have been pure evil. Maybe "Lilith" here is a sinful queen after all, preying on gluttony--want that doll; envy--gotta have it because others prize her; greed--gotta have her to take the chance from someone else; pride--a Res variant is cool to own; and sloth--eh, looks good enough, won't check further to verify. So this fake is wicked enough to qualify as a real Living Dead Doll...but artistic merit is the true identifier at the end of it all.

I don't know what these resellers' game is, but by buying the lowest-priced fake available, I took the least harm possible under the parameters of this deception. (The true least harm, of course, would be catching on and never buying at all.) I'm also oddly fascinated to have encountered this, because it's the best fake doll I've seen. She's not good and instantly looks wrong, yes. In some part, she probably had to even if she wasn't inherently made worse. But she's convincing enough to look like a factory dud when the real thing isn't next to her and she's staged in a messy secondhand coffin like the online selling photo. Seeing the distinctive vacant-faced Liliths in multiple, at multiple low prices, should have been the most damning red flag warning me away, but the doll emerged at a time when no real variant Liliths were being sold to compare her to, and the fake is close enough to have never made me suspect a forgery until she was in-hand. And bluntly, classic LDD wasn't always quite good enough on the manufacturing for me to have immediately seen through "Lilith". It was initially within the realm of possibility in my mind for Mezco quality control to have passed her. Still, she does throw some things into perspective, like how LDD molding and vinyl quality is more consistent and better, how the costumes typically fit great, and how great the Res dolls' eyes are made. 

I don't know what Chinese parameters for copyright law are, or how much or little they care about honoring it, but this Lilith absolutely wouldn't survive the U.S. market without a swift legal shutdown. Is she distinct? Yes. But she's a blatant attempt at deception, baiting buyers with the rarest class of LDD release and getting as close as possible with errant distinguishing details only those who are seeking them will catch. She looked off, but that wasn't enough to catch her as fake. Only getting her and realizing a lot was wrong and then combing her box with finer inspection fully outed her as an impostor. Overwhelming evidence, yes. But evidence that's only overwhelming and obvious when your mindset has shifted to finding all the ways it's a fake because that explains everything doesn't cut it. You wouldn't scrutinize the box unless you already suspected there was something to notice. Those are details only gathered when confirming your suspicion.

This would get you sued to oblivion in the USA, where our overzealous litigious system does sometimes get it right and can shut down obvious scams and IP violations that stand to harm consumers and companies. International sale, though? You just gotta eat the loss. "Lilith" likely wasn't even sold by her originator, allowing a plausible deniability defense where the seller could claim they thought it was real...though I'd smack the astonishingly low price in their face and ask why such a prize would be so undervalued by someone who thought it was real.

I'll stop constructing imaginary scenarios. I'm not going to international court for this.

It does seem that this fake variant Lilith is a new wave on the rounds right now, because the wiki wasn't warning about her a couple of months ago, though it'd be astonishing to me if this doll was somehow manufactured recently. My guess is they made her during the original run of the real deal and some copies have stayed around to make an insidious new bid at tricking people. Her coffin using a later version of the creator credit than an actual Res II coffin suggests she was produced after Res II, though I still couldn't imagine her being made as recently as last year or so because that's so much lapsed time to reconstruct the molds and costume and packaging from. My visual instincts won out at the end of the day and squashed the charade on my end. I just knew she didn't look correct, and I was able to pull the threads from there. And by wrecking her, rather than destroying something bad but valuable, I actually killed a member of an invasive species and spared somebody else in the ecosystem. Win?

I filed reports against live eBay listings of fake Liliths I could find. I hope it does something and they get taken down. The form allows very little text to send and explain a report with, so it's not encouraging. 

Now I'm reflecting and overthinking other bad experiences, and I wonder if my first Shadow High Zooey Electra from two years ago was actually a fake rather than an honest manufacturing variant, because she seemed so very off in her own ways, too. Her blue eyeshadow was over-applied, her white face paint is almost invisible, her hair hangs wider, and her tinsel was a whole different color--green to the good one's red. You could tell me her head mold was distorted too, and I'd believe you.

I didn't think to inspect her packaging for errors and alterations, but I don't know, this first copy is bad and oddly different enough to be a fake if we're taking Lilith as the metric for how eerily a fake can approach the real. The only things making me think she wasn't fake is that Zooey 1 never had any obvious quality deficits and felt like a normal Rainbow High doll in terms of plastic and joint quality, and I bought Zooey 1 (the bad one) on Amazon blind, and then got Zooey 2 nude from eBay after seeing she had the face done right. Can fakes infiltrate Amazon like that? I re-scanned pictures I took of Zooey 1's box, and it looks legit from what I see, so maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing. Still, a variant in manufacturing that looks bad enough to be one of the better fakes is an issue!

I then inspected the packaging of my janky sealed-bought Salem, also sourced through AliExpress, but she checks out. No copy errors on her box and no clear visual changes to her design, and I know she was factory-packed like normal LDD--tight wires, and nothing wrong on her certificate. She was messy and her shoulder is loose, but this is something that's happened to better LDDs, and there's no reason to believe she was a fake. I'm far more willing to believe she was a factory reject than a deception.

When I was going through the process with this Lilith, I was worried publishing about the disaster would make you think less of me as a reader because I wrecked a special doll and dissected her, but then when I realized she was a fraud, that quickly changed into my worry you'll think less of me for being so gullible! 

It doesn't feel good to be in the zone of naïve enough to entice, but smart enough to see when I've gotten got. I'd much rather be smart enough to never get got to begin with, but these experiences are teaching tools that get one closer to that goal. As Ralphie Parker with his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin, I leave this experience wiser. It should have been absolutely obvious that a Res-variant LDD for less than $100 was too good to be true, and yet, and yet. My only defense was that I wasn't super invested in Lilith and got her on an offhand whim because she was cheap. Had I loved her and bought her for more, I'd be much more ashamed and far more put out by the affair. I'm lucky it worked out to be an ultimately entertaining diversion rather than a crushing failure. Who'd have thought being scammed was actually the good ending?

I still feel like I'm too old to have been tricked here, but maybe I'm not? You see, I haven't figured out if I'm older than "iS" yet! 

So now I have a coffin I can use for someone else, and a dress that's good enough to keep. I tore up the fake chipboard.

And this roller-coaster isn't over. We need a high note.

Resurrection Lilith is a cool doll after all, and the fake fiasco made me want a real one for closure and appreciation's sake. I saw a main copy for an acceptable (still very expensive) price and she was produced the way she deserved to be. I wasn't hung up on the variant being my edition of Res Lilith--I'd grabbed her "variant" only because I thought she was a steal and then learned she really really wasn't. The main doll was a balm for this trainwreck, and a worthy piece to collect for her novelties. Not a balm for my wallet, mind, but it was a viable acquisition in the moment and she poetically completed the topic after learning I'd been duped. I wanted to see all of the glory of this concept when done correctly.

I've heard mixed reports, but it's been claimed only the variant Lilith has a glow-in-the-dark effect, so I may not be able to show an opaque LDD glowing here today, unfortunately. 

Real main Lilith's is my first sealed Resurrection, and her window lid is not mirrored. Her box matches real Res Sadie's in all its design and copy. This Lilith does not come from Mezco Toys in New Oprk. 

The lack of doll-specific imagery on the fake Lilith chipboard wasn't a red flag on the fake; this is true for the real Res II dolls.

I also discovered that Res III has a "continuation" of this imagery, showing the same gravesite with a more-emerged doll, but the character looks like a generic design matching no specific LDD. It looks like Series 9 Dawn wearing an unfamiliar dress, if anything. Maybe the two dolls on the Res I and II chipboards are the same figure and I misread it as a depiction of Sadie.

Indeed, Res I started this visual sequence with just the arms bursting out!

Res IV had non-coffin two-pack boxes without chipboards, and Res V, VI, and VII continued grave/revival imagery but moved away from the I-III tombstone. 

The certificate checks out, with the correct ribbon color. The ankle wires were hanging long like the fake's, though. Every other LDD I've seen wired-in had those twisted closer to the box.

I wanted to check the real Res certificate to see if the typo for "damned" was there. I knew "cectificate" was a forger's work, but, knowing LDD, "damnd" could have been Mezco's fault originally. Turns out, the Mezco certificate has no typos.

Here's Lilith out of the box, and she immediately looks better despite her untidy hair.

There's something poignant about the fact that the amount of work that goes in actually pays off. A fake never looks as good as the real thing because corners are cut and similarities are changed and so the artistry and design that fueled the original is lost in imitation. Effort and passion and standards are felt in the product, and it's encouraging that even as money may move cheap product easily, the best is always going to be the best because the best was put in.

Main-Res Lilith's wings have black "bones" and red membrane with black sewing, inverse of the variant's. The official pair's hinge pins are not screws, however. While this is a slight aesthetic improvement, I liked the accessibility and adjustability of the fake wings.

Not that these wings needed tightening.

This Lilith's hair is black with a white streak, and is meant to lie flat with a center part for a sleek look, but the doll will need a boil to achieve that. These wings are awesome, but on long-haired dolls, it's a hassle to arrange the hair. Short-haired, bald, or updo'd characters would fare better with these for un-fiddly display. I think the only such case of a winged doll with hair all above the neck is the lone boy doll who has the wings, Desmodus, though Resurrection-variant Revenant has a hood that can keep her hair in order.

The official LDD portrait made the wing membrane look like flaming red-orange, but the doll's are just red in person. I really wish they were orange. That would have elevated the design more for me, but this is still good.

Lilith's skintone is a striking pale blue tone that makes her look ghostly and spooky in a way plain white or even grey wouldn't do as well. The color works really well in white light and low lighting to give her a cold, dead, ghastly appearance, much in the way blue makeup did for monster actors in black-and-white film productions. 

This skintone is also what the fake variant should have had--both official Res Liliths were colored this way. I wondered about that, too, but convinced myself I was wrong despite the fake being a greenish-grey tone that's nowhere near correct. This Lilith color is a little paler and less poppy than S3 Lilith's similar blue tone.

The focal point of Lilith's face for me are her inset eyes, which look pure black and have a super unsettling effect with how shiny and featureless they are. They look like pure darkness and evil suited to a demonic character. But the eyes aren't just flat black--when you illuminate them, you see she has actual pupils, and they're distorted and flattened!

The eyes are wall-eyed and have a bump in the lower pupil, but I believe this is all intentional design to evoke goat's eyes, commonly used in demon imagery. This makes Lilith's face look more animalistic with the pupils turning sideways and being narrowed. It almost looks like manufacturing errors, but the symmetry of the eyes convinces me this is a hidden detail. In normal lighting, you really just see the blackness of her eyeballs, and it's cool to have this so obscured.

Lilith's eyes are distinctly different in shape from Res II Sadie in the same collection, and do approach the standard LDD oval contour, but they don't feel as recessed and distorted and tiny as the fake Lilith's.

Remember, this is the fake face after attempted paint improvements.

Lilith's face paint is basically the same as the variant's, with the inset eye design being the only thing Mezco changed. The fake eyes were an approximation of what variant Lilith had, and while they're classically demonic, I think the main's are so much more interesting. With the simple black eyelashes and brows and red airbrushed shading, the face could look very basic, and did on the fake variant...but on the real main, it looks extremely polished and artistic. The doll has an eerie dimension to her face with her shiny black eyes and airbrushed sockets making her feel like a proper art doll. 

There was a flaw in her airbrushing on her right eye, but it's not too distracting.

Lilith's mouth uses a properly-molded cast of the Count Orlok rat fangs, which only Res Lilith and Orlok ever used. Here, they're all a yellowed tone with one speck of red blood, and the shaping and placement is much cleaner. It's not perfect, but it reads way better. I like the black tongue, too.

The blood surrounding her mouth is slightly better-applied for the desired visual effect. I also noticed black lines at the corners of her mouth pointing downward which are more fine and tidy than on the fake.

Lilith's choker is black and a sewn loop that can't come off normally, just like the fake one.

I was suspecting the fake dress was actually nearly as good as the real deal, with the possibility that the official one was just sewn properly to fit tight. I didn't anticipate a lot to be different.

As mentioned, the colors are inverted and the materials all look the same. I think the real dress might have a slightly shinier satin bodice, and the shape is more sculpted with a curve on top, and it's better-fit to the doll.

The construction is the same overall. There aren't any more pleats on the real skirt--just the two in front.

Real Lilith can easily wear the fake variant's dress.

Amazing what a lively model will do for a costume!

The real doll also has black pointy boots with no socks, though she feels less wobbly than the fake in her own boots. Socks would be appreciated on either, regardless.

The fake wings are also good enough to be swapped onto the real Lilith.

The biggest quality deficits were all in the body, with the coloring, eyes, faceup, and molding all being off. The fake's hair, wings, and costume were the closest to the real deal with less glaring problems.

Main, real Res Lilith does not glow in the dark. Seeing an opaque glowing LDD is not in the cards today.

Here's the two Liliths briefly compared. They're strikingly different. Resurrection looks younger, more glamorous, and way artsier as a doll while the main is very cartoony and conservative. The concepts of a winged demon and classic vampire are also distinct.

Resurrection is still a vampire icon with her Lily Munster hair, Nosferatu ears, teeth, and claws, bat wings, and bloody diet. I think her citation of classic horror mixed with demonology works really well in this design.

I took Lilith down to boil her hair. It improved her silhouette, but not so much her texture. It's not the silkiest hair around, and it's very thinly rooted. She displays much nicer now, though. I also trimmed S3 Lilith's hair at the ends a bit to get rid of some fried tangles.

Lilith has no Resurrection accessories and wasn't staked, but she is able to hold S3 Lilith's stake pretty well!

I also got a lot of fun out of using the wings as veils to photograph through.

And I took pictures of the real Lilith interacting with the gutted fake as the victor in the battle.

Red light behind her wings looked great!

And this gave me the cover photo. I didn't want to give the arc of this journey away too blatantly, but it was important to depict, so I have Lilith holding the S3 stake in the eye of the fake face, photographed through her wing.

Since I don't have the kind of Gothic hellish scenery Lilith required, I edited her into pictures instead.

For this one, I used shadows to stylize the piece and cover for the lack of a perfect photo blend.

I just cut out and flipped part of the wall to invert the crucifix here.

As ever, I had to do the three mandatory vampire photo gags--the absent reflection, the disconnected shadow, and the band across the eyes. I repeated the use of liquid to reflect on, here using a bathroom sink as an interior tub. A Sadie is the actress stalked by Lilith as she was with the S3 doll, but of course it's the Resurrection I'm using with the Resurrection here. 

The OG dolls reflecting (and not) in a pond.

Lilith looks so good in orange and green eighties-horror lighting, but she's also stunning in dramatic white light here, looking so pale she's practically greyscale. With the scant red accents in the picture, it looks very goth and artsy. This is a full-color photo with zero color editing!

For the shadow gag this time, I put Sadie in and put shampoo in her hair so I could pose it like the shadow was grabbing it--the gag is actually derived from a mutually Nosferatu-inspired teaser clip during American Horror Story Season 6's promotional cycle.

Here's the eye light.

And I did another cave scene with Sadie and a superimposed face.

The face alone makes a good picture.

Then I brought back the Gothic mirror backdrop and played with lighting.

You don't get what you pay for in aftermarket collectible resale culture, because the speculative market is ridiculous, scarcity is a hell of a drug, and you have to become ridiculous to engage. But when you skew your standards and adjust for the game...you get what you pay for. And I tell you, it's an old and obvious wisdom, but a wisdom nonetheless: there's nobody finding a Resurrection-variant Living Dead Doll under $100. You have to pay for the real prizes, but you get the real prizes. 

Obviously, there's grey areas. You can snag fantastic deals from people selling the real article well below the typical aftermarket price, and you have to keep your eye out and know the going rates so you can recognize and grab those genuine steals (I got a real steal at the same time I got duped by "Lilith"! Review upcoming!) And on the other side, you can be sold crap for premium prices if you're not diligent enough to make sure what you're getting--and "I paid enough, it shoulda been true" stings way worse than plain old "too good to be true". But exceptions are not the rule. Be skeptical of a miracle bargain because it probably isn't. And be willing to trust a big ticket, so long as the seller is upfront with photos. The thing usually isn't pricey for nothing.

Resurrection Lilith never would have been a doll I'd have ended up with if the fake hadn't blindsided me, so in some way, I'm actually the ultimate sucker by being scammed so hard I went out and paid even more for something more expensive. But that's not how I feel about it. Resurrection Lilith is actually a very interesting, beautiful, artfully scary doll and I'm glad to have been able to experience her and share her here on the blog. 

With rare features like her teeth, wings, and claws, plus her unique eye design and head sculpt, she's got a lot of novelty, and she's also a really pretty, sleek, eerie presence with her glamor-goth style and terrifying face. She's absolutely a queen of demons and a vampire nemesis to marvel at, and I completely understood how to stage her for photos. Her hair is the biggest issue, just because its rooting and texture aren't fantastic and it's hard to arrange with her wings, but it's worth the hassle for her display. (I also sincerely think her wings would be better with orange fabric.) I don't like Res Lilith more per se than S3, because they're not trying to be the same thing. I think both are killer.

I'm morbidly curious to see now if other LDD fakes have been or will be made, and I'll definitely be more vigilant and listen to my instincts, but I think I turned a dud into a positive by showing the real deal in all her glory. 

Fool me once? Shame on you and me both. There won't be a twice.