D is for Demonspawn: Living Dead Dolls Damien, Reincarnate

Time for another Return of the Living Dead Dolls/Series 1 review. I highly recommend reading my previous two reviews in this series (links here for Sadie and Eggzorcist) because they're some of my best work on the blog. Fingers crossed the trend continues!

Background

The third-released doll in the Return LDD lineup, all based on Series 1 thus far, is Damien. Damien is LDD's first of their minority-male cast, establishing a trend for most series of containing one boy to four girls. He's also the Series 1 character with the fewest editions, having no special releases that were all his own. Every Damien was part of a release that most or all of Series 1's cast were also included in.

Living Dead Dolls Damien has a clear concept beyond just being a spooky boy who could be Sadie's brother. (And just to be clear: he's never said nor implied to be. They just look like plausible siblings.) Damien's concept is that he is blatantly based on the character of Damien Thorn from The Omen, to the point where I'm astonished Mezco never got threatened by legal and the LDD character has persisted thus far without ever becoming less obvious.

The Omen was a 1976 religious horror movie made to ride the success of The Exorcist before it. It tells the story of diplomat Robert Thorn. His wife delivers a stillbirth in the hospital, but before she finds out, shady clergy there convince Robert to take in another child and raise him like he was the baby she was pregnant with. (It's the seventies, and the wife having zero autonomy over her pregnancies is a recurring and upsetting fact of life in the film.) Robert never feels right around his adopted son Damien, Damien is attended by a sinister nanny, and evil, upsetting things happen around him until Robert learns his son is the Biblical Antichrist incarnate and that the world will fall if he lives. I think the film can be credited with mass-popularizing the symbolism of the 666 number, though it obviously existed beforehand. The Omen was remade with the remake released on 6/6/06, and the franchise has had sequels up to this day, with The First Omen releasing in 2024 to better reception than any film in the series since the actual first Omen.

I don't like The Omen very much. I have no opposition to horror with religious themes,  and the film has some good scary moments and ideas, but I personally think The Omen fails to execute the plot and moral conflict properly--in short, the portrayal and performance of Antichrist Damien Thorn does not adequately feel like a truly manipulative, malicious child. His designation as abhorrently evil feels more dogmatic and accusatory, and weird phenomena follow him, but it never seems like he wants them. He also has the Satanic nanny grooming him to be evil, which suggests he's not a bad person yet. Even the spookiest or darkest moments involving him don't make him look consciously malicious or at all inhuman, and he seems more manipulated than villainous. The father's increasing madness regarding the knowledge his son is an evil who must be vanquished instead seemed far more like a man driven by irrational paranoia toward an innocent son, and the religious theme in conjunction gave me uncomfortable connotations of radical conservative bigotries where someone can be rejected based on how they were born and where parents can turn against their children for bigoted reasons or accuse them of deception when they are genuine. When Damien cries and pleads for his father to stop trying to attack and kill him, it's terrifying and heartbreaking, but the film's lens is that this was a perfect demonic manipulation that allowed the Antichrist to win the story and survive. I can't support the idea that a child trying to defend himself from abuse is actually a demon's lie that must be pushed through. Not after a whole film where this child is never clearly lying or demonic. That's not a perfect façade. It's an insufficient villain portrayal. 

The film intended the act of killing Damien to be the answer and that his father was just too weak or human to do it. From my perspective, this is absolutely horrifying because Damien never felt deserving of the attack and hatred and it felt like a horrible story where spurning and murdering your child can be righteous and failing is the bad ending. Furthermore, I didn't appreciate the way Robert Thorn was unable to accept or love his adopted child as his own. Demon or not, and regardless of the deception in choosing to adopt him,  that just put a bad taste in my mouth as an adoptee and I think it sends a horrible message. The whole film, intentionally or not, feels like a validation for the mindsets of being unable to love or trust your children...mindsets which feel unearned in the story and which are very very rarely justified in real life.  For me, without sufficient displays of evil or malice on his part, it makes the film's intent that Damien is actually that bad exceptionally off-putting and depressing. Like, how do the filmmakers believe they've shown us a monster child with the movie they delivered? If they do, I'm scared of them and how they view the world. Either make the kid indisputably wicked and irredeemable like other successful evil-child stories, focus on a heartbreaking angle where the kid is more of a pawn than a menace, or re-examine the premise that the kid is doomed and irredeemable at all...like Good Omens did as a heavy aspect of its plot satire (but Neil Gaiman is a horrible person and should not be supported). Maybe not being in the same firm-Catholic mindset as the film is preventing me from finding the mere "he's the Antichrist" label to be sufficient reason to distrust and root against Damien. But I think as a writer for all audiences, character action and motivation are important and you should not let a mere label of X or Y be the only way you frame a character in a moral conflict and justify their treatment.  I can also see that the film was intentionally invoking doubt about whether the panic around Damien was well-founded or not, and there's a great story in a narrative where this religious fervor and war over the kid is purely delusion and tragic, but in a story where he's only at the end indicated to actually be evil, then the ambiguity results in a story where the villain never actually feels like one until the final seconds, rendering him too sympathetic for the rest. Seeing him smile darkly at the end does not recontextualize any of his previous behavior or make him look more consciously evil in previous scenes.

I'm in a minority because The Omen is viewed as a classic, but that kid is not scary or hateable to me, and thus the entire story falls apart in my eyes. Religious The Exorcist is far better than the film it inspired. There, there's no sense of dogmatism and the evil force is fully demonstrated and horrific and despicable. You completely understand why the demon is evil and needs to be defeated because it consciously, deliberately, and gleefully wreaks torment and horror upon the innocent in unforgiving detail. 

So, tl;dr; the Omen film gives the LDD character zero special appeal to me. I know there are fans who have a soft spot for LDD Damien, though, and there was nothing wrong with the doll, so I wasn't going to let an iffy movie sour him. I'd had such a good time with the previous Return LDDs that I was game for Damien.

I wonder myself where LDD Damien comes from to a degree, because his movie reference and namesake is obvious, but Damien Glonek was (and evidently, still is) one of the lead LDD creatives. I always wondered if the LDD Damien's name had any significance to that.

Damien's design is typically that of a sinister vintage schoolboy in a blazer and shorts, armed with textbooks and a slingshot, almost like a classic "rascal" archetype. Damien Thorn's academic life is never focused upon in The Omen, and neither is he much of a classic "bad kid", so this is more of an original lens with the LDD character. 

Damien is a lesser presence from the Series 1 cast, as mentioned, with no standalone releases. He had a 13th Anniversary remake and reproduction, and the two Resurrection variants. The Res dolls had the closest to the 1976 film child's haircut out of any of his dolls, and had more of a generic upper-class outfit without a specific schoolboy theme.

Res main.

Res variant. This one has a one-off textured head sculpt with a 666 mark indented on his forehead. There are very few Res-exclusive doll sculpts. My chances of collecting this sculpt are next to nil due to the rarity of the doll it's on.

Damien also had a Series 35 Res-style doll as one of the random dolls in the "mystery" slot.

This is my least favorite LDD Damien.

Return Damien takes the uniformed schoolboy look and seems to concentrate the imagery more toward a definitive boarding-school/prep-school look, rather than just being...British and wearing a school uniform because that's more common. Return Damien's necktie, blazer, and coat, the latter two of which have a crest emblem on them, all push him into a wealthier, more private kind of schooling that works for the Damien Thorn character and the LDD one. It is very easy to believe a rich prep-school boy can be a monster. 

But that's it for his regular dolls. Beyond LDD Minis and the vinyl mystery figures, Damien stops there. Sadie had multiple other series designs, plus Resurrection, a Fashion Victim, a pencil sharpener, other supplemental merchandise, and the birthday-themed Celebrating release alongside Sin. Eggzorcist had standalone exclusives (blue-suit S1 rendition and the three 10th Anniversary variants) as did Posey (her four translucent-body variants and an oversize porcelain doll), and Sadie and Eggzorcist both appeared in Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland. Sin and Damien each have fewer releases than the others from S1, but Sin has one more standard doll than Damien thanks to her Celebrating release. Damien and Sin never had releases that none of the other S1 dolls were included in, but Sin has one with Sadie that the rest were excluded from, while Damien's release formats were all shared with multiple other S1 characters.

With both Damiens I'm discussing, I took advantage of gift credit to lighten the blow of each purchase because I wasn't passionate enough about the character to put my whole wallet into him. I was using the gift credit regardless, but this was my chosen avenue for it. Return Damien is my first Return doll not ordered from Mezco directly. Both Damiens arrived on the same day, which was a first for this Return series of reviews. 

Quick Return LDD Temperature Check: The State of Things

Since writing Eggzorcist's review, Return Posey was fully revealed and listed with complete stock, and she looks great. 

On the day my Damiens were arriving, I had to double-check and double-take and hastily preorder Return Sin through Mezco because her last month of shipping is April, this very month, and I thought I had much more time for her. Sin's review feature will probably come next month. I don't think two Return spots in one month is healthy, so I'll pace myself. (I'm quite conflicted over Sin because the S1 original has a great pitchfork accessory, but the doll cannot hold it. I could build a hybrid of her two anniversary S1 remakes, using the variant that matches S1 and the main edition's gripping hand that the variant didn't get, but that would be expensive and it wouldn't be the real deal like the other S1s I've been reviewing. I need to devise a non-damaging way to modify things so Sin may hold her pitchfork--perhaps a wrapped wire handle with a loop bracket?) With Return Sin secured, I'll have a bit of breathing room to get S1 Sin and order Posey afterward. Posey's last shipping month is July.

At time of writing, what's next for LDD or the Return design format is unknown. Do we continue to chronologically remake the dolls that were? Do we now pick and choose and abandon a series structure, remaking characters that are popular and/or still culturally viable without a clear format? Was Return a one-off extravaganza and the brand goes dormant again? Can we actually return to the classic era or are those days forever in the past, buried by the managerial upheaval?

Return Damien

What interested me about Return Damien, if nothing else, was the increased scope of modularity on his edition. He has two subtly different faceplates, but also has two pairs of eyes, two wig scalps, two cloth caps, a removable jacket and tie, and an overcoat plus his standby books and slingshot for accessories. It seemed like there was a lot of display variability on this doll and a lot of love put in, so I was confident he'd feel high in value.

The coffin is in the same format as the others, of course.

Damien's coffin back has a portrait of him sitting on a staircase.

Under the lid, he's rested in the top doll tray, assembled with the most classic Series 1 Damien features--parted wig, blank eyes...but no hat. Both hats are in the tray below, and I'm not sure why. Were they both put in the accessory tray to fill the real estate and use the space on that layer?

Sadie is still the only Return doll with an accessory packaged on this layer--she had her flowers taped to the tray like they were laid across her for burial. Damien has the plastic band holding his hair in place like the other Return dolls.

Here's the doll lifted out.

I had to get his hat, though, so I looked at the next layer. This contains his alternate face, eyes, and wig, his two hats, his three spare hands, his books, his ruler, and his slingshot.

Here's the full S1 legacy costume completed.

Damien's instruction sheet changed some illustrations to show his faceplates, and added a new line on the bottom saying that as the engineering of the Return line is iterated, the head has changed.

LDD, please let me be your proofreader.

I think this line would have been much more appropriate to put on Eggzorcist's instructions before, because she was the one debuting a big shift in the head build design, including switching where the wig prongs were placed. As I found it, Damien's head was built pretty much just like Eggy's and I didn't observe obvious iterative differences.

Damien's first hat is a baseball-cap style, though not really with athletic connotations on this character, and not designed as merchandise for a sports team. It's a costume piece LDD Damien has always had, and it's a nod to Damien Thorn as well, but the only baseball sports LDD was Desmodus, a literal bat-boy.

Photo from Worthpoint.com. The LDD archive portrait of Desmodus does not include his baseball bat.

The Return Damien baseball cap is felt fabric with six panels forming the dome, which feels like an appropriate number for the Antichrist. The interior has a white band shaping or tightening the cap, but this peeks out in a really distracting way and looks sloppy.

I was able to trim it out of view later.

The hat feels almost too small for Damien and doesn't pull down very far on his head. It's not elasticated and doesn't stretch. This was a poor start. 

Damien is the second Return LDD with hair lacking bangs across the forehead, with the first being Eggzorcist with her zombie-head setup. While I'm glad to see the hair variety, I was wary about its viability, since the bangs were an obvious choice to disguise the forehead seams of the faceplate system. Eggy's zombie head worked fairly well, so I was cautiously optimistic. With this first wig, with is long and side-swept, the seam isn't visible until you lift the hair up.

The hair can hang long, which suits either a retro seventies-kid look or a more modern emo tone, but it can also sweep backward to look more formal.

The wig part is rooted for a bit and then stops at a line of hair that falls backward on the cap.

The hair feels pretty nice and looks good, and it's fun that it can be combed to different effects.

I was disconcerted to find the two pieces of the scalp (wig cap and insert) separating when I pulled the wig off the head, repeatedly. The pieces went back together okay, but it seemed like the material on the wig cap was less rigid and let the insert pull out too easily. If that's a consequence of an iterative change, it was a poor one. 

Glue may have to come to the rescue.

This was about where I was getting used to the prospect that this doll was a drop in polish/quality control. A very gloomy thought.

Damien's face has minimal paint and a fairly neutral expression. His skintone is paler and yellower than Sadie's, but has a similar plastic because he's flesh and blood, unlike Eggzorcist, who's...ceramic and blood?

Damien's head seems to be following the adjusted proportions debuted on Eggzorcist, though his eyes feel the largest of the three even if they're not.

His faceplate features solid black eyebrows and dark irritated shading around the eyes, and...that's it. It's very simple.

His blank eyes really disappointed me. I'd expected bright white glossy spheres, like marbles in the sockets, but these are regular Return eyes with iris-chip inserts that create a circular texture on the form, and they look sprayed with a slightly off-white satin-finish paint. This looks cheap rather than stylistic, and I can confirm this is how the doll is supposed to be made. Mezco, why?

Fully-smooth white orbs with a bright and glossy look would be much creepier and feel much higher-quality. These work fine for display, but I know this could be better. Return Sin is going to have two eye sets with one pair being solid red, and now I'm expecting those to be sprayed-over eyeballs with iris chips, which isn't great.

In Series 1, Posey's eyes were exactly as blank as Damien's, but in Return, her eyes seem set to be all pale and sans pupils, but with deliberately defined irises and sclerae, setting her apart a bit. Her photoshoot and pictures of the real doll show that Posey's eyes are not trying to hide the presence of irises.

The eye assembly for Damien and presumably his companions to follow was in a disposable plastic packaging holder inside the head this time, slotted around the post in the middle.

Damien has a second wig, and since it's not paired with a wholly different second head, this is just an optional hairstyle option, unlike Eggzorcist's second scalp, designed only for building her zombie head. This second Damien wig is a kind of pageboy haircut with longer sides and back and very high bangs. I did not like this wig in the promotional images, but in person with the sides a little teased, I think it's really cute and retro! It works for playing Return Damien as a bit younger, while I think the longer wig ages him a bit to preteen at least.

This wig also works well with the baseball cap--maybe even better than the first wig.

It comes out of the head way too easily, though. Any jolt sent the scalp flying off. I can't say Damien's head build is any better than Eggzorcist's and seems a bit lower than par if his wigs' functionality is anything to speak of.

The short hair seems inspired by Damien Thorn's look in the 2006 Omen remake.

Neither wig is rooted the same way as Series 1 Damien's hair pattern.

In The Omen, Robert Thorn confirms his son is the Antichrist when he's told the Antichrist will be marked with the number of the beast. This turns out to be the number 666 marked on the skin of Damien's scalp, seen when Robert moves aside Damien's hair while he sleeps. (I think this moment checking the hair is the film paralleling the story of Samson and Delilah, and later, Robert fraught with the task of killing Damien is alluding to the binding of Isaac, so there are clever motifs in the film--kid's just not a well-done villain.) I checked the wig scalps of this doll, but I couldn't find any hidden markings carved in. I didn't expect to, really, but was inspired to check by remembering that Monster High gave Skelita Calaveras a special factory-stamping code reading "KATRINA" to have the word on her skull as a mirror of artisans carving names in calavera artworks and to reference the holiday icon La Catrina.

Skelita's detail was just taking a routine manufacturing stamp and giving it custom text to suit the character, and wasn't the kind of thing most buyers would ever be expected to notice, so I wasn't surprised LDD didn't do something similar for Return Damien. As it is, only Resurrection-variant Damien is marked with the number of the beast, molded on his forehead where it's visible. If that doll ever became attainable, I'd go for it.

Damien's second faceplate appears to be a simple recast of the first, with no change in sculpt, but it's a little eerier with its lack of brows. The only paint is the eye shading, which is more orange than purple here. This minimalism might make this the least painted LDD face ever. (The inset eyes removing eyes from the faceup admittedly gives it an edge there.) This is the subtlest shift between a Return doll's faces so far, but it makes sense because Damien is a normal-looking boy and, I think moreso in the remake, isn't very expressive. Neither Damien portrayal, original film or remake, plays much in extreme expression.

Damien's second eyes make far better use of the directional gaze feature, and this is almost certainly why we got them--they're humanoid eyes with golden irises.

Here's another problem--they're misaligned. One iris is higher than the other. Eventually, I diagnosed what happened--it's not because the eye chips are somehow misaligned or that the chips' sockets were uneven. It was the arms on the little control stick that had one eyeball hanging a bit higher than the other. I was able to gently bend the plastic a little bit so they were level, and that fixed things, but this is a worrying list of flaws already.

I'm conflicted on the golden eye option. On the one hand, they're there for the benefit of the moving Return LDD eyes, which are one of my favorite features of the dolls, and of any dolls at all. They're also, once fixed, the better-quality eyes of the two pairs. They also suit an Antichrist in disguise as a more "masked" humanoid eye look. All the same, the white eyes are so spooky and so iconic to LDD Damien that it feels a bit like sacrilege (or should I invert things and say "piety?") to have Damien without them.

I wasn't sure going in if Damien would be able to build two complete heads to swap out, or if he only had the one head base on which to build the alternate faceplates, eyes and wigs. Having the ability to make two full heads would allow more quick switches from one assembled look to another, but with the extravagance of two eyes and scalps already, plus the extra costuming, I was ready to find just the one head base. Indeed, there is just the one head base, and also only the one black eye bracket to keep the eyes in the faceplate. I understand why, but the latter is a little bit more disappointing because swapping eyes would be quicker if there were two bracket pieces, one for each pair. I know now to expect only one bracket for Sin as well.

Return Damien's costume is a preppier spin on the more applicable Series 1 uniform. 

The outfit features a really nice blazer and matching shorts. The blazer is sewn to fall open and does not meet or close in front, and has no simulated buttons. The piece has cuffs and tidy velvet trim all around its edges, and the edges of the coat panels and the lower edge also have wire inside to shape them.

Damien's left lapel features an appliqué school crest graphic, featuring a skull, crossbones, laurels, and the sulfur symbol. This is the most concrete indication he goes to a private school. S1 Damien could have been a public-school boy where uniforms are common, like in the UK.

The blazer has hip pockets simulated by strips of velvet indicating the top edge, but they are not dimensional or functional. No actual pockets are sewn in or outlined--just the trim on the implied top.

Under the blazer, Damien has a full dress shirt, which is a separate piece and has long sleeves. The shirt is not tucked in, but why would an arrogant demon prince with a slingshot be so proper?

The necktie is its own separate piece, which looks nice. The knot and structure looks real, and it's wired inside the main tail so it can be shaped, though I don't think this is quite necessary.

The tie is separate, but is a closed sewn loop around the neck and collar, so it's only coming off by popping out the head. Since that is a functional aspect of the Return dolls, this can be done, though only Eggy so far has directly encouraged the function by virtue of having two complete heads that need to pop out for swapping. Sin and Posey also won't have two full heads to swap since both doll's different faceplate options match to one head base piece. 

Damien's shirt has fake buttons sewn on and velcros in front.

Damien's shorts are well-made and velcro in front. A leather belt is threaded through belt loops and keeps the shorts on. The buckle doesn't have a pin and the belt doesn't have holes, but it still stays together well.

The leathery material seems okay. It has a good backing. 

Return Sadie had a pair of fabric underpants which was grasping at deluxe polish, but, to me, felt unnecessary because the fabric was unfinished stretch material that looked cheap and likely to fray. I was thus glad to see the effort wasn't wasted on Eggzorcist, and it wasn't on Damien, either. Still don't know what Sin or Posey will do. It's also possible LDD would have deemed underwear layering a waste on Damien because very few people would even see they put that detail in. The shorts are a hassle to take off and LDD didn't provide trousers in the generic supplemental Return LDD accessory pack, so there's no reason to take Damien's shorts off when there's nothing to swap into their place.

Damien's body sculpt looks to be the same as previous Return dolls, which didn't surprise me. LDD never had gendered body sculpts as the standard anyway, and the Return sculpt wasn't at all restrictively feminine. Return Eggzorcist's body was all glossy rigid plastic for her ceramic effect, but Damien's plastics are all comparable to Sadie's, including vinyl hands.

Damien's body had no plastic wrapped around it for stain protection, which seemed fair enough due to his white shirt, and his shorts didn't seem to stain him, but the molding seemed sloppier on this doll than previous Returns, and the plastic somewhere on him had a chemical smell. 

Damien's footwear is based on the boots and socks of his original doll. Here, his knee socks are a ribbed knit in dark grey and the boots are extremely detailed in sculpt.

From previous LDD releases, Damien's socks are most similar to Carotte Morts'.

Damien's socks are very tight, enough to feel tacked or glued to his thighs, but they aren't. The boots are not really designed to come off, though, with no slits in the back to pull them down. I think heating them might let them slide off, but trying to pull them off without heat would likely pull the ball-joint feet off inside the boots. (The socks, however, might let you fish the feet out since they'd still be inside the socks?)

Here's the texture on the bottom, which also shows off the dirt paint job.

Damien's second hat is a whoopee cap, though many people would call it a "Jughead hat" if they had to put a name to it, due to its appearance as Archie Comics character Jughead Jones' famous headwear.

The whoopee cap is made of the same felt as the baseball cap, but in-universe, it would not have been made from another copy of the baseball cap.

Whoopee caps were repurposed worn-down circle-brimmed men's hats often worn by young men, who would cut the brims in a zigzag shape, turn up the brim like a crown, and decorate them with pin badges or bottle caps poked into the cork lining as a trend. This fad passed and soon Archie's Jughead was the only place you'd ever see one, and the reference eventually became so obscure that Jughead's hat was mistaken for, and then turned into, a straight-up crown shape without the dome inside. It's unlikely a young child would be able to wear a whoopee cap, since they were made from men's hats, but it's a really cute piece and I love seeing one represented on a doll. The crown shape also suits the Prince of Hell pretty nicely, if we're to assume LDD Damien is an Antichrist figure like his inspiration.  Like the baseball cap, the fit on this hat is small and high on the head.

Damien's alternate hands bring his total to five, like Sadie, rather than six like Eggy...though his are a different kind--he has just one typical gripping hand for his left, and two variations of the same hand for his right. 

The two nearly-identical right hands are pointed forward with fingers curled in, but on one copy, they're pressed against the palm, and on the other they're relaxed and create a gap where something can slot--it looks like a trigger hand for a gun he doesn't have, and this latter hand can be used to hang the strap from his books or more expressively grip onto his ruler.

I don't understand the purpose of the hand with the fully-curled fingers when the more relaxed version looks basically the same and has more functionality. It's even worse because they're both for the same arm. If one of them was a left hand, having both with a pointer for each side would have at least a little more merit. The hand with the curled-in fingers feels like a waste, and I'd have much preferred a second classic gripping hand so Damien had one for each arm like the other dolls before him. Sin has a gripping hand for each side as well as two flat hands and two devil-horns posed hands, with three matched pairs and, unlike the other Return dolls, no hand styles unique to one arm. Posey has two exaggerated zombie hands to match her scary ghoul face option, two flat hands, and a hand to hold her flower on her right, but it doesn't seem to be the same gripping hand shape as other Return dolls.

The relaxed pointer hand on Damien appears to be the same as Sadie's lone "pointer-finger" sculpt.

It wasn't even a new mold...so why in Hell did they make a nearly identical, worse version of the sculpt for Damien alongside the one they had?

The first accessory I looked at was the slingshot. This is a bit caricatured in size, but fits the art style and is well sculpted and painted. The band is actually elastic, adding some authenticity, and a strip of leathery material serves as the pouch.

The elastic is strong enough that Damien can't pull and hold it back with tension--the cord will pull his arm back to relax, but it's a cute piece. 

Damien's stack of books derives from the Series 1 doll like the slingshot does. The books have a new touch of being held in leather straps with a handle for carrying, but the books are separate pieces slotted in. The middle book is wrapped in tissue to protect it.

The buckles on these straps do have pins and, it seems, just one hole on the straps to secure them at the right place, but the books can slide out and in sideways with careful handling, which is easier. The strap can be held on the curled fingers of the relaxed pointer hand or in the gripping hand on the other side.

This grip is a little precarious because the strap is flat and a little wider than the crevice of the curled fingers.

The strap isn't long enough to go over a shoulder, and Damien doesn't seem like the kind of boy to carry the strap on his elbow like a purse.

Inside the bundle are three books and the hidden poem! I wanted it to be in the books somehow, but I thought it wouldn't be because the books looked solid. Nope. They're separate pieces and it fit between them invisibly! I'm so glad that the hiding places for the poems have all felt clever and satisfying thus far. I really wonder how Sin will hide hers in a fun way, but it's got to be something with her giant magic circle platform, right? Posey seems like she has the least potential for a good hiding spot. Really only her dress or optional cloak might be able to hide the poem, and that wouldn't feel as tricky.

The first book is made to look leather-bound and is called Scriptures of the Damned and has a dark red embossed cover.

The second and third books both look canvas-bound, and the second book is called The Summoning: Second Book, Dedicated to Abaddon. The illustration depicts old-timey children dancing around a circle to summon a demon, though the book looks wholesome overall beside the title. The artwork, at full resolution, might not have anything demonic about it and could be depicting ring-around-the-rosie or something. I can't be sure the circle is a demonic sigil. While the boy on the left could be Damien with shorter shoes, these children in the cover aren't identifiably LDD characters. "Abaddon" can refer to a dark abyss of destruction or an angel who stands for that place.

The canvas texture makes the text hard to read up close.

The kid on the right almost looks like they're wearing traditional Chinese clothing, and might have a braid down their back. It reminds me a bit of LDD's Hopping Vampire, but his robe's cut is longer and doesn't have a symbol on the back.

The possibly Dutch or possibly Alpine girl in the middle is also reminiscent of no LDD character. This might not be original artwork.

The third book is Satanic School Readings: Stories for Children from the Lake of Fire Book Company, depicting a goat's head over the All-Seeing Eye and skulls. 

The top right corner has a registration skip with the graphics misaligned and raised above the rest.

All of these fictional books seem like appropriate study material for the Antichrist. The pieces are all solid vinyl and don't open, but the sculpting and paint is good.

Damien can hold a book in his gripping hand.

A fourth book is included in the "Super Fun Pack" supplemental accessory set, though it's not intended for any specific character and it wouldn't be able to fit into Damien's book strap alongside the other books.

The poem is printed on a non-glossy paper which seems like a break in style and a drop in quality, but this is how everybody's copies are coming. The piece does confirm each Return Series 1 doll is being drawn in a different art style. Sadie and Eggzorcist were close enough in style for me to not be sure if the rendering differences were meant to be so clear. On the poem slip, Damien is drawn with the short wig, whoopee cap, blank face, and blank eyes.

Return Damien's last accessory is a short school ruler which goes to 6(66) inches, precisely the gag that was called for. I'd have been mad if LDD didn't do exactly this.

This piece doesn't seem to scale well with Damien (he'd need to be tiny for a six-inch ruler to size up on him as it does) but it's cute and the gag measurement is more valuable than accurate 1:6 proportions.

The piece isn't wood, but it looks proper. I almost wonder if there's a pun on "ruler" as "leader", since he's based on the heir to Hell? The bottom says "Errie Demon Milk", which confused me. Was this an anagram? Well, you can't spell "Damien" from it. Turns out, this refers to the phenomenon of dairy companies advertising with branded rulers that made it into schools. As to "Errie"...well. This is LDD. This could very well be a typo of "eerie" that made it into a sculpted, molded prop design. But it seems so egregious especially since a certain Series 4 character with a Mini and Resurrection proves LDD does know how "eerie" is spelled. I'm guessing this might be a messy attempt to reference Erie, Pennsylvania, with the double "r" instead of the double "e" attempting to make it look more like the city in PA so the joke lands, because "eerie demon milk" sounds like word salad and less like a dairy company. I'm not sure the gag lands right and it might be distracting. There was no cipher message on this doll at all, so I think this lower edge of the ruler could have been the place to put one. 

On that note with the ciphers, some things to add.

Sadie's message was recursive advertising telling you to look into the brand you're already participating in, but I've since learned what the link is.

Translation: FIND ME @ LDD.SADIE

"ldd.sadie" is the handle for the brand's current Instagram account. That's what buyers were being specifically directed to.

And while Eggy didn't have a cipher message, her variant doll called the Bunny of Doom did, scrawled on the back of her sign!

Photo from viddywelldolly on Tumblr.

I used the cipher emailed to Sadie buyers to decode this, with the Doomy sign having two messages oriented in different directions. The different rotations tripped me up when I couldn't recognize any of the glyphs on one message, and then realized I was viewing it upside-down.

Doomy's sign says "GO 2 MEZCOTOYZ.COM" and "SEARCH LDD 4 ME"...so more advertising to someone who probably already has a good idea what the doll is and where she comes from, or at least, has enough information to find out and doesn't need any prodding to follow the rabbit down the hole. These messages are a little weak, but the decoding is a fun activity. I wonder if Damien not having a secret message is an indication that he's getting an alternate release too?

According to reports, the Bunny of Doom did not have a poem slip, by the way.

There's a third layer to the trays, holding Damien's overcoat, which seems inspired by his Resurrection-variant doll. This is a soft fleece piece that feels very cozy and makes me a little jealous. It velcros in front and has the same crest on it as the blazer, marking it as part of the same uniform. This would be used in autumn or winter as part of the uniform out of doors, but would be put away the rest of the year.

If you're Satan's son, are you the big man at your evil school, the chosen one the rest of the students can't ignore? As a rich-kid possible Hell prince, Damien seems like he'd be all kinds of privileged in his sphere.

Main Return Eggzorcist didn't have this third tray layer, but I think the Bunny of Doom did to hold her plush bunny blanket. Sin has a cape and Posey has a cloak, so both dolls will have this third tray layer.

The coat has wide shoulders that look a little padded, and the collar is a little tricky to fold down. The sleeves hang long and the piece has three simulated buttons on the front. 

The coat can be worn over the blazer, or the shirt alone. It's a nice piece, but, like the other optional costume pieces provided in this line, won't be my default. I like the Returns done up like the S1s. 

That's all the pieces of Series 1 Damien reviewed, and I'm disappointed. I wanted more polish, more assurance that this was the A-game, but smelly plastic, disobedient scalps, rougher molding, uneven eyeballs and cheaply-made white eyes all feel like a blow after the high standard set by Sadie and Eggzorcist. There's enough wrong with this doll to make him feel like a high-quality fake, but that's not the case. He's too good for a fake, the text copy on this doll is all in line, and from other reviews, I can tell this is just how the doll came to people, even those who ordered direct from Mezco. Granted, other buyers haven't been complaining or noticing issues, but the eyeballs, the matte poem slip, the small hat fit--those are all confirmed to be this doll's standard. I really hope it's not more of the same with Sin.

And yet, even a Return doll who's slipping is still very impressive and dynamic. 

One of the most memorable scenes in The Omen is when Damien's nanny lets him and his tricycle onto the second-floor landing where his mother is, and Damien runs her off the side of the banister and watches while she struggles to hang onto the edge and then falls. It's a creepy scene, but also a sign of how wasted the potential to portray Damien as malicious was--he's merely let out on a straight shot by his nanny, not intending to ram his mother off the side, and when he watches her struggling, he's not doing anything--think of how striking it would be, how loathsome he'd become, if he had plucked her fingers off instead. Well, anyway, I staged the scene with Damien and Sadie. Sadie is tied on tight with a sturdy clear line to the banister, under both arms, so she'd be taking no real falls. The line is erased in post.

Then popping out one of his hands caused his hair to fly off, and I'd had it, so I took the short wig downstairs and gently, slightly bent the prongs on the cap outward a little so the piece would stick in better. This seemed to work. 

Here he is with the same head setup, wearing the coat outside.

I was waiting ages for a school desk I'd ordered Damien, so while that was in limbo, I thought of the idea of making him a little swing to hang from a tree. It's made to look like a wooden board (oven-baked clay) and is hung from cord, with one end terminating in a noose.

Here he is in the pose on his certificate, borrowing Sadie's gravestone.

And a couple of portraits.

Return Damien didn't do much to make me adore the LDD character personally, particularly not after such a poor showing from manufacturing, and the character himself just isn't nearly as inspiring to me personally as the other two I've reviewed from the Series 1 gang so far, but I did definitely find what's so enjoyable about him. His rascally academy-kid persona and demonic element allows him to be mischievous and wicked, or haughty and cold in equal measure, and you need a mean little boy in your doll collection sometimes. I'm not done with his photos just yet, since more occurred after both dolls were written up.

Series 1 Damien

S1 Damien arrived sealed, with his hat evidently being packaged totally loose because it had fallen off.

No clear elastic band holding it on in evidence.

His chipboard poem has a unique effect where it's done like Damien himself has edited the text by crossing out and replacing a word. It follows the same S1 quirk of capitalizing nouns in antiquated fashion. 

This little boy

Has a trick up his sleeves

At least one Slingshot

and three Books to read bleed

This is why you're still in school, Damien. Books can't be bled, unless perhaps an incantation makes them? But that just sounds like an undue mess.

To rewrite the poem, I had Damien totally edit the contents of a fully bland sweet poem to his purposes, with both versions of the poem rhyming in their structures.

This quiet empty schoolboy

Is gentle and sweet evil's new heir

With his dapper pressed suit slingshot of souls

And his hair combed all neat  books of despair

I was dreading the tissue situation, since my previous Series 1 dolls had the tissue of the doll trays taped to the inner walls of the coffin, forcing me to tear and damage the tissue to lift the trays out. I was shocked and delighted to see this wasn't at all the case with Damien, whose tray lifted out smoothly with no taping to the coffin!

However, I did encounter an atypical fold of the tissue, which folded over the back of the tray. I've never seen this before. This made it a bit harder to snip the wires around Damien's ankles.

I later saw evidence that my copy of Damien, despite not shipping from there, may have been a Japanese edition of the doll. Series 1 for Japan had a couple of manufacturing differences that are inconsequential but identifiable, so perhaps this was how the tissue was handled at that facility? It's better than it being taped to the box!

I'm very surprised LDD didn't have Damien born on June 6, 1976 for a 6/6/6 deathdate and a reference to the year of The Omen's release. Instead, his deathdate is Febuary 26, 1972, though he did at least die at 6:06. If there were sixty-six minutes in an hour, then surely he'd have died at 6:66.

February 29 is leap day, meaning it's only on the calendar once every four years because the calendar is most consistent with natural phenomena when we leave that day out three years out of four. That's an unusual date to have, and those born on leap day are entitled the classic joke of only counting their birthdays by leap day occurrences, meaning someone can crack about being a quarter of their age due to having a quarter of the precise birthday anniversaries someone would have from any other date. The leap day in 1972 doesn't seem to have any specific thematic associations with Damien as pertains to events on the day.

On my deathday calendar, I put Damien's February 29 in at half opacity and asterisked the number to signify it's leap day and only sometimes present.

Demon Sin is the Series 1 doll with a 666 deathdate, dying on 6/6/1966.

Damien's certificate poem says:

And there was Damien with a soul as empty as his eyes

The wee little lad pronounced D.O.A., he was already dead inside

LDD got quite British there, didn't they? Here's a rewrite.

The leap day's child laid there, empty eyes to match his soul

Dead long before the morgue, they said, and chaos was his goal

Here's the doll unboxed.

Series 1 Damien kind of feels like he's a series too early, since his schoolboy theme would be ideally suited to Series 2, which has an undeclared but visible school motif, what with Schooltime Sadie, cheerleader Kitty, prom queen Deadbra Ann, and even Lizzie Borden easily filling the role of (a very concerning) schoolmistress. If Damien and Lou Sapphire, a gentlemanly devil, had traded places, Damien would finish Series 2 perfectly, though Lou would admittedly be pretty redundant with Sin if they shared space in Series 1.

Damien's classic baseball hat is a lighter grey than Return's and a softer felt, and has a little black bobble in the center depicted by a squashed pom-pom, which might be standing in for a flat button piece on a real cap. The hat is sewn in four panels, but three are visible from the front the way it's done.

The hat isn't tight or held on by anything, but the fit looks nice and it displays easily. 

A similar cap would also be worn by Girl Scout-themed exclusive doll Cookie.

With less paint around the eyes and any palette beyond red and black, I might have put this doll on my list.

Damien's hair is black and center-parted, and it's really showing where LDD was in design and manufacturing, because it's a little messy and a lot of his scalp is painted black to cover for inelegant rooting, including the sides of his head and sideburns.

The hair has shorter sections cut that might be intended to lay over the painted sideburns, but this is honestly a really crappy job...and I can't help but be ridiculously charmed by it. Look. I get it. This is unfair. Series 1 LDD absolutely has beginner's privilege and gets away with simplicity and ineptitude I'd call inexcusable for anything else. But Series 1 is also earnest and also consciously retro in its visual styling, such that these weaker choices instead read as oddly authentic and endearingly kitschy. I expect better from LDD. I expected a lot better from the quality of Return Damien. But I'm really gentle with Series 1 and often legitimately affectionate toward its amateur moves. This isn't condescending "aww, look how cute, they really tried". It's "this sucks but it's so honest and feels so right in this context". I'd be curious to see how 13th-anniversary repro Damien's hair is made. I'd assume it's more fully rooted and better cut, but perhaps the variant that mimics the Series 1 doll closer scrupulously re-created this? I know Sin's anniversary variant was scrupulous enough to match S1 by not letting her hold her pitchfork!

Damien's face is comparably simple to the Return doll he inspired. He has pale flesh-toned skin and blank white eyes, which he and Posey debuted for LDD. His eyebrows are black and not too steep or long, but they still look wicked, and his lips are unpainted. 

He needs a wash, but you can see what's going on. The eyes have thin black outlines and are shaded with solid rings of lavender. I know LDD would be airbrushing them later on, but the color is subtle enough that it still successfully blends out into the rest of his face.

The most similar LDD faceup to this later would be on Series 23's Teddy.

Despite Damien wearing boots and Teddy wearing fabric footies, Teddy ends up taller thanks to the ball-joint LDD sculpts!

Teddy doesn't have eyebrows, and his mouth is shaded in. He also has blue eye outlines and airbrushed eye shading, and blue smudging on his face. With his bear hood off, Teddy has brown hair that matches his suit and separates him further from Damien.

I like Damien's face. It's a bit eerier than the more cartoony Sadie or Eggzorcist, but it still feels retro and cute. 

Here's a test of what he would look like with "filled in" eyes that match the Return design.

Again, it's a bit of a loss. I think the Res dolls succeed in giving him irises and pupils, but S35 and Return's takes on filling his eyes in feel lesser to me than the classic blank white.

Damien's costume is a similar felty fleece material to S1 Sadie and Sin's costumes, and depicts a closed school jacket over a shirt, tie and shorts. The outfit has a charming large "kiddie fit" on Damien with looser tailoring that makes him feel more like a retro doll, similar to the rest of the series.

The jacket closes in front with two plastic snaps, which are unusual for LDD. I might have preferred velcro because these snaps don't seem to really "snap" in place and the top one was undone in the coffin.

The jacket is all black with no special details, but the sew is okay and the fake buttons above the snaps are nice. The sleeves are unfinished but the lapels, front panels, and lower edge are. 

The snaps acted up again later, and this time, it was clear the clear plastic material was breaking apart, ruining the already poor pinhole connection. I replaced the snaps with metal ones of just the same type, which needed to be (clumsily) sewn in to keep them in place. Glue wasn't cutting it.

Under the jacket, Damien has a sleeveless short/shorts combo piece in the same fabric, with the shirt being white and having an attached necktie in the collar. His arms were stained by his jacket.

This "Ken doll cut" of the lower layer makes him less displayable without his jacket, but there's a charm to it given the doll's overall aesthetic. The necktie is proportionally shorter than the Return doll's, but the Return doll looks a bit more grown, anyway. The inner seams of the collar area are poking out in a distracting way that might call for trimming. On the shorts, a belt has been suggested with a clumsy band and buckle made from the same black fabric, which, like the hair situation, is really crappy in a very darling way. 

Damien debuted the round-toed boots for LDD, and his are the more common version with the shorter platform. They're black and cast with flexible vinyl, and brushed with brown paint. His shocks are high and come about to his knee, but are white and made like the typical classic LDD sock.

Series 1 Damien's slingshot has a less twiggy appearance and looks more finely carved with a symmetrical curved shape and a very thick ribbed handle, though a woodgrain effect is still present. The pouch is depicted by a pom-pom on a cord, and the string is not elasticated.

Series 1 Damien has no way to hold the slingshot short of pressing it under his arm when it's lowered to his side. Series 35 Damien, with the gripping hand, reportedly still struggles to hold the thick handle, with the grip being stretched enough that the slingshot isn't held super tight. I would be punishing myself trying to put this in a typical LDD gripping hand, but I've discovered a certain Horseman of the Apocalypse had a more relaxed hand shape (not sure if molding error or mold variant?) and the slingshot works okay there.

Here's the two slingshots together.

Neither Damien has functional pockets to stash these in, which is a big disappointment. Return can at least hold his or thread it through his book strap, but Series 1 is at a loss. Maybe the only thing I really like about Series 35 is that his jacket has functional pockets the slingshot can go in. Resurrection-variant Damien also seems to have real pockets on his overcoat, which would be another appeal in addition to his unique head sculpt, but I don't know if he has the S1 accessory set.

Despite not being able to hold his slingshot, Damien's palms are pierced. This is what makes me think he's a Japanese edition, because I know the S1 dolls from Japan had palm piercings despite their accessories still not having pegs to let them be held. My Sadie and Eggzorcist don't have these piercings.

Looks like they've formed a dance line!

I don't know why the Japan dolls had palm piercings if the peg system wasn't being used yet. I think Series 2 debuted the pegs, with Lizzie Borden's axe being holdable with a palm piercing. Perhaps Japan's run of LDD was later and thus fell under the new manufacturing directive for the brand's doll arms by that time, but the S1 accessories weren't being modified to take advantage of it. 

If Damien was a Japanese doll, then the pierced palms and difference in tissue on the tray could be explained by that. I first thought this was unconfirmable because the copy on the packaging looked unchanged...and then I looked at the foot of the opaque coffin lid and saw this sticker. Confirmed: this is Japanese Damien.

It's kind of cool I ended up with at least one of the Japanese Series 1 dolls. It's an interesting little niche in LDD history, and the Japanese copy handled the coffin tissue way better than the non-Japanese dolls I'd gotten from Series 1 previously. While both versions of Series 1 were made in China, there was evidently slight changes in manufacturing and oversight and possibly two different sites of manufacturing that created some tiny differences.

I don't believe any further LDD series had Japan editions with manufacturing differences.

I knew Series 1 Damien came with books in a stack, but I'd never actually seen the books, nor did I know if they were individual pieces. Turns out they are...and I kind of love them, even more than the Return editions. 

S1 Damien's three books have no known titles or specific subjects, just using thematic graphics on the covers, but they're great. He has a grey book with a black circle filled with abstracted pentagram sigils in white, a dark red book with the sulfur symbol on it, and my absolute favorite: a bright red book with a black circle filled with a very modernist 666 design. I'm obsessed with the modernist book. It really suits the retro tone of Series 1 LDD, and it's such an appealing graphic design to me. I do wonder if the graphic should have been rotated 90 degrees to read upright, though.

Like so?

The sulfur and pentagram designs are actually dimensional carved sculpts on those books, but the modernist book is entirely flat and achieved solely with paint. 

All of the books have bright white sculpted pages, and clean sculpting. There is no texture across the books, and nothing on the back covers. Despite the books being different sizes, with the 666 being largest, they do have pretty similar scoring texture on the spines. 

I love Series 1 Damien's books. The Return set is much more detailed and better-made, but there is such a charm here. Damien would benefit from a backpack, but I wasn't delaying this post further for the purposes of getting him one. I might still, but I'd throw that in a brief update and edit this post for that when it happens.

The Series 35 mystery Resurrection-style dolls reproduced the accessories. Damien got the same three book sculpts, but they had different colors and the flat-cover larger book had a totally different graphic depicting an anniversary seal of Sadie.

Photo from Flying Purple Monkfish.

Like most of the rest of Damien, Series 1 did it better to me. Only the quality and the slingshot display options really make S35 a contender to me.

I took S1 Damien down to wash his face, trim his hair, and whiten his clothes with vinegar. 

 Here are the two Damiens set up with their comparable pieces. 

Return Damien looks a lot more colorless and dead next to S1 and his face is really successfully creepy with its minimal paint, realistic sculpt, and huge blank eyes. He's, like the rest of Return, a striking art object on the shelf. Series 1 Damien is, like the rest of S1, a real darling with clumsy, earnest old-school toy appeal.

I've been photographing the Series 1 dolls as heads on a black backdrop and making similar poem compositions with their chipboard text in the same style, so here are those pieces for Damien.

Damien looked good in the whoopee cap climbing a tree.

And against a wall.

The two Damiens were shooting together outside, so Return started bullying Series 1.

And they posed with the gravestone Omen-style. Return makes the visual much clearer with his more capable articulation. Return borrowed S1's hat because I left his own cap inside.

And a couple of portraits with Series 1. Turns out, he's mildly blacklight-reactive.

And continuing the theme of wallpaper portraits with colored lighting:

But this review wasn't getting finished until I staged a classroom. I knew I needed four key components--a teacher's desk, a time-out stool for naughty kids, a student desk, and a chalkboard. 

To make the teacher's desk, I took the other spare wooden shelf from the narrow doll cabinet I've shown before, and cut and glued some poster board to be the three walls forming the desk, with the shelf as the top surface, not attached. The naughty stool was made with a rough circle of baked clay and three dowels for legs. The chalkboard was bought at the craft store, though I honestly should have sprung for a larger one to have it look better. Oh, well. And the desk...

Well, I'd been scouring online markets for a school desk piece that would fit Damien, and was really liking the style of desk with a sloped top as a hinged lid to the compartment inside. I thought I'd finally found an offering that was in this style and suited Damien...only for the package to not arrive for over a week after it missed the marker of the day my mail alerts said it was scheduled to come in. The seller had said they would be mailing it soon in a message to me, but after this much delay, tracking suggested only a shipping label was issued and that the mail service never received the item. I was feeling frozen and losing patience, so I requested a refund due to unresponsive seller...but now what do I complete the scene with? There were other offerings for the set I'd ordered--a doll and desk sold at the Cracker Barrel of all places, but these listings were clearer on the fact that the desk was resin with a floor section attached, and I didn't want it as much, knowing that. So I decided if nobody was offering what I wanted, I'd just have to make it for nothing. I constructed the desk roughly out of cut and painted foam board, with duct tape inside hinging the angled lid, and used wooden parts for a pole and circular base--all things I had on hand already. I made a chair out of more foam board and wood parts. I'd made a paper dunce cap labeled "DEMON" to fit Series 1 Damien into the scene with, placed on the naughty stool. I then emptied my closet to use the walls as the classroom, and dressed the scene with a globe pencil sharpener, the books, Damien's Series 1 death certificate, and some classroom paper decor.

I like this setup, particularly with the foreground desk and death certificate. Here's all of my Return/Series 1 tableaux now, all themed with the new doll subduing the old: 

Here's more pictures of the Return doll in the setting. Using the desk was fun, showing off the hinged functionality I threw in. I also really liked this kid's painting piece of Damien himself taped to the wall. All of the wall pieces were painted with a cotton swab, and I liked the stylization of Damien on a grave here.

The desk and chair are certainly flimsy pieces, but bless them, they did their job.

I think Return Damien looked really good on the naughty stool. This picture could be a painting:

This is the photo that makes the doll more worth it for me.

Here he is at the chalkboard.

And sitting at the desk looking back.

He also looked good leaning over the teacher's desk.

I don't get a lot of color variety with this doll. He certainly has dynamism and presence, but I'm hard-pressed to embrace any photo palette for him besides "moody and desaturated". I feel like the Series 1 doll takes to color much better thanks to his more toylike retro look.

Here's the whole gang as it stands now.

I think the Damiens are the most similar pair of dolls so far. Return Sadie has a blatantly changed haircut and bladed weapon, Eggy has a drastic tonal change making her gory, grimy porcelain, as well as a pretty different costume cut, and Damien...he's just more posh. While each Return LDD is designed to be able to mimic their S1 genesis, the Damiens are the closest lookalikes. Return Sadie and Eggy made up like S1 have heavier inherent character-design differences unavoidably setting them apart.

And yet, it's the Damiens I have the least enthusiasm for. Maybe this character didn't click with me, or maybe the generic creepy-doll thing he could suit has been exhausted by all my work with the Sadies, leaving Damien's niche more directed into the specific school setting, which didn't activate me as much. I think Return Damien is a nicely thought-out doll, excepting the useless closed-finger pointer hand. His quality was an issue, though. Series 1 Damien has lots of charm, and I might even pick S1 over Return in this case, while I couldn't rate one over the other on the duos before. But even S1 didn't light me up creatively. I wasn't at all in the nonstop-ideas photo flow I had experienced with Sadie and Eggzorcist (x2). Perhaps part of this has to do with the accessories being less dynamic to me and driving fewer photo concepts? Maybe even the two dolls' higher similarity is the problem because they don't offer such distant aesthetic niches to me creatively. 

I think Damien could well be the slump of this series. I kind of hope so, inasmuch as I'd like things to swing back upward, because I think Sin's more vibrant look and devil theme will give me a lot of fun, and Posey looks to provide lots of material for "antique-dolly haunting" and "grotesque graveyard zombie" aesthetics. I don't want to say it's because Damien is a boy that his dolls don't work for me as well as the pretty similar Sadies, because I'm a big defender of boy dolls. But I guess he's not one of the most interesting flavors of boy doll to me. I'm glad I committed to making this a comprehensive Return review and comparison for the Series 1 legacy, but I liked the previous two entries much more. 

See you with Sin soon.