Furiouser and Furiouser: "Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland" Inferno as the Queen of Hearts by Mezco Toyz

This was always going to happen. I've made it overwhelmingly clear that I adore both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass and Living Dead Dolls alike, and I'm pleased and chagrined to say that I found the fusion of the two to be really enjoyable-LDD didn't mishandle or misunderstand the material by my judgment! Still, they were hanging in limbo for me collection-wise, primarily because they're quite a hot item on the aftermarket. The catalyst for finally getting into this LDD line was finding a seller who I've arranged to buy a few nice items from, including Sadie as Alice, at the start of June. But while Alice would be the logical place to start reviewing this doll line, logic isn't the parlance of Wonderland...and I ended up finding a good deal for Inferno as the Queen of Hearts and getting her in first.

I'm sometimes willing to rearrange review material out of the order I get the dolls in, but it didn't feel quite right to re-sequence things, because otherwise I'd either be putting the Queen at the end of a longer post that I wanted to center on Alice, or I'd be postponing her review to a later date, which is something I generally dislike doing because it makes me feel unproductive. So enjoy this illogical choice for entering the brand! I think I will have all potential "LDD in Wonderland" dolls as their own topic posts, but I'm not planning a specific structure or timeline for completing the series. It'll happen as it happens.

"Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland" preceded "The Lost in Oz" as the first LDD side series based on literature and made up of a cast of existing LDD characters put into the roles of the book characters. No LDD characters are shared between the two lines, which I appreciate. The Oz line doesn't have nearly as demanding prices online, so I collected some dolls from that series earlier. I still don't have Dorothy or the Lion. While I like the fantasy world of Baum pretty well, Carroll's will always be supreme in my heart. I think the Oz line ended up doing more as far as making subversive horror twists on the original story--Purdy and the Tin Man take real human organs for a brain and a heart, the Wizard is a bloody mad scientist, the Munchkins eat people, and Toto is roadkill. In this Alice line, the spooky vibe is mostly aesthetic without any real twisted morbid swerves on the original storytelling. Alice is bloody in the variant set, but that's about it. The Alice set is passable as a goth artist's illustrations for the original book because the content of the dolls really doesn't contradict the original text in the way the LDD Oz designs do.

As far as either line goes, I've still yet to be getting any of the Oz/Alice pieces after getting their LDD halves' original dolls. I'm expecting Sadie as Alice to be the first case where I got the LDD original before I got their version cast in the literary lines. Thus far, though, I got the originals of Dr. Dedwin and the Bride of Valentine after getting their Oz editions, and only own Purdy, Walpurgis, and now Inferno through these doll lines where they're playing someone else.

These LDD Wonderland dolls are said (on the unverifiable but often correct LDD fan wiki) to have released in coincidence with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland film, which would place them at 2010...and that feels way too early for me somehow. That can be confirmed externally, though--people have posted YouTube clips showing off their LDD in Wonderland dolls, with the earliest dating to 2010. These dolls are fifteen years old! I don't know why that feels so wrong to me. I just have this assumed sense they would have been later in LDD's classic run than that. This means they actually precede tea-party Series 23 (explaining why the Wonderland dolls never used the LDD teacup and teapot sculpts; they didn't exist yet!) and they come before the "Lost in Oz" set by a few good years (Oz was 2016). The closest LDD main series to LDD in Wonderland was Series 19, meaning Sadie as Alice precedes 13th-anniversary Celebrating Sadie and 16th-anniversary Sweet 16 Sadie. This is a huge shift in my framework of the LDD timeline somehow. I just never thought these dolls were so relatively old!

"LDD in Wonderland" wasn't the first dark Alice adaptation . The video game American McGee's Alice was the first big edgy-Alice story, though its sequel Alice: Madness Returns came after these Living Dead Dolls. Still, "LDD in Wonderland" was a good take on the story. It probably should have been called "Sadie in Wonderland", though. In the series, LDD mascot Sadie takes the role of Alice, Eggzorcist is naturally the White Rabbit, black-cat girl Jinx is the Cheshire Cat, mad Sybil is the (Mad) Hatter, and, more tangentially, fire demon Inferno is the Queen of Hearts (though the online archive misnames her as the Red Queen, who is a chess piece from the second Alice book). The Wonderland LDD set had variants who all had white skin and all had different coloring. In the cases of Sybil, Inferno, and Jinx, the variant coloring separates the dolls further from the LDD cast members and makes them feel more like full adaptations of Carroll's characters, while Sadie and Eggy still read as themselves, with Sadie's dress colors flipping and Eggy getting the red coat of the Rabbit often seen in classic imagery. I think Jinx may have been a limited release or exclusive to a certain retailer, because she's not photographed on the front of the box and the line was initially advertised as only having four characters. She had two variants like the rest and completed a typical set of five characters, though, so she's not comparable to the Wizard of Oz, who was a bonus sixth character exclusive to the Oz series' variant set. If I were collecting this Wonderland line by order of appearance in the book, it would have to be Alice, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts. I could see a re-cut review edit of the line in that order being possible when I eventually have them all.

Inferno goes for the least money in this doll series, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why, since I think her design is pretty spectacular. I think both variants of the doll are stunning, and both are the cheapest of their sets, but I selected a good-priced copy of the main. The doll and purchase grabbed me before I could get Sadie in, so this is how the order goes!

The LDD in Wonderland dolls come in narrow rectangular window boxes with a top flap, in the same dimensions as the later Oz boxes and most LDD Presents dolls. The Wonderland dolls have a flap panel on the front covering the doll window, which features a photo of all of the dolls except the Cheshire Cat, and the name of the doll inside the box. 

Next to a "Lost in Oz" box.

The text on the Wonderland box is not rendered in the most legibility-friendly manner, but while the LDD website archive decided to annoy me and call her the wrong name, the box gets it correct: Inferno is playing the Queen of Hearts.

The box sides feature the LDD text logo.

The back of the box shows the only hints of the Cheshire Cat doll, with her eyes and especially her smile being isolated in darkness above a tree branch which Alice is looking toward. 

I suppose the Cat makes as much sense as anybody for a more elusive release if she really was made the "extra" character for the series. This artwork also serves as a useful hint that the doll's painted smile actually glows in the dark to replicate the Cat disappearing with only its smile left at the end. The back is also decorated with text quoting the book, using the line "We're all mad here". This quote actually comes from the very scene depicted in the photo, where the Cheshire Cat speaks to Alice before she comes upon the Hatter's tea party. 

Even on the same spread as the illustration!

I love that the pull quote is directly matched to the imagery, and that the composition of the image mimics John Tenniel's original artwork. This feels like an indication that LDD was paying attention and does care for the Alice story, because a cheaper adaptation might have pulled a quote from elsewhere.  The doll line skewing more toward Alice than LDD in sensibility also supports that impression of a love for the story. After the Burton movie came out, people started quoting its original lines as if they were Carroll's text, associating them with the books when they weren't. I hope LDD wouldn't have been those people if this doll line was released firmly after the Burton movie was part of the consciousness. 

Opening the flap shows a keyhole-shaped window framing the doll inside, and a wall of clocks, a checkered floor, and a bottle of size-changing elixir on its side. The flap was once held closed with a circular velcro closure, but one half of the velcro has vacated the box, on the side opposite the flap, so it doesn't hold closed anymore.

My Queen of Hearts came previously opened, though the tape closing the top flap was intact, suggesting it was peeled off to open it and spread back down to re-stick it. The doll is held by a contoured clear plastic tray, and would have been tied down by twist wires in the standard three spots--neck and each ankle.

The cardboard insert behind the doll is a swirling vortex of playing cards, cookies, teacups, and a watch with another keyhole in the center.

Taped to the side wall on the lower right (from our perspective), there's a printed card in a plastic sleeve, advertising the LDD in Wonderland printed storybook. I may end up getting this during my journey through this line.

Here's the doll removed.

The casting may be the weakest element of this doll design, because I'm not sure Inferno makes much sense here. Is it some idea of fire as a metaphor for a volatile temper? Maybe, but it's not like Inferno was portrayed as especially angry before, and she was a childlike character at debut while the Queen is an adult-coded doll. 

Inferno's original doll, from Series 4.

I personally think LDD Lizzie Borden would have made far more sense in this role--she's an adult figure with an updo and has an axe perfect for chopping heads! But however miscast Inferno might be in the role of the Queen of Hearts, I can't say she doesn't absolutely kill in costume. This doll looks amazing.

The Queen of Hearts starts with the LDD crown piece, which is a bit tiara-like but has a full ring that attaches to the head. The front has spiky arrowhead points, swirling "metalwork", and a skull in the middle. 

This crown debuted on Deadbra Ann in Series 2 and has also been worn by Deadbra Ann's Resurrections, S24 demon queen Agrat-Bat-Mahlat and Sweet 16 Sadie in Series 28. This crown is affixed with pegs and glue into the scalp, and is a pretty soft plastic, making its shape and the ring shape a bit warped the way it was put in. I'm not sure earlier dolls with the crown ever had it in a more rigid and fragile plastic, but I feel like the way the holes were drilled into Inferno's head forced the shape to bend and distort to fit the pegs in. I've seen tidier LDD crowns. The glue has saturated some of the hair around the peg holes, and the plastic feels likely to tear before I could break the glue and get the pegs out, so I'll leave it as is. I can understand that with this hair texture, gluing the crown in could be necessary to keep the hair from pushing against the crown and popping the pegs out of the scalp.

The doll's hair is a vivid reddish orange color, brighter than Inferno's previously in Series 4, but tied to the character all the same. I'd likely expect pure red or brown or black for this character as pure Carroll, but the bright orange suits the Wonderland aesthetic while tying into the LDD "actor" in this role. The variant has black hair which removes her from Inferno but suits the Carroll character well. The hair is curled and waved above the ear and has a great old-fashioned look, and I love the symmetrical parting and swoops from the center of the forehead, with a slight widow's peak. There are some stray hairs to tidy out of the face, but it looks good.

I hadn't been sure of the Queen's skintone, since it seemed she could be either flesh-colored or stark white. While illumination easily washes her out so she photographs exactly stark white with no editing or filters required, it turns out she's actually a very pale slightly greyish flesh skintone that makes her look like bisque ceramic to me. Next to Carotte Morts, whose colors are comparable, her hair is more saturated and red while his skin is obviously colorless.

A photo with Daisy Slae was able to capture the vinyl difference between the Queen of Hearts and stark white even better.

The White Rabbit is the only Wonderland LDD with stark-white skin in both editions. All of the variant dolls are, but it's a change for Alice, the Hatter, the Queen, and the Cheshire Cat. 

The pale skin and the wavy reddish hairstyle do give this Queen a similarity to Helena Bonham Carter's costume as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (2010), the misconceived Tim Burton film which didn't understand the appeal of the source material and wrote a weak generic fantasy story but did have respectable visuals. I also give a slight nod to her name, Iracebeth of Crims. It may not be quite Carroll, but it's clever.

The Red Queen from the Burton film. Her head is oversized a la the John Tenniel illustrations, but this is given a needless backstory and explanation in the second film.

(The film almost had the right spirit by starting the plot with Alice unwilling to grow up and follow society's adulthood plan for her, but then didn't base the Wonderland vignettes on those sentiments as allegory. It should have been written as a full sequel where Wonderland reflects Alice's doubts about entering adulthood.)

I once had a doll of this Queen because I liked her design--it was the fairly cheap Jakks Pacific retail doll from the Alice Through the Looking-Glass line, but she was based on the first film mostly. I liked that she included the oversized head, even if it was still a tad smaller than it should be.

I had to get the Jakks White Queen for the crown, because in the second film, the Red Queen had been deposed and the crown was given to the White Queen. The White Queen was a poorly-made doll. Her dress fell apart. I should have held onto Iracebeth, because she's not cheap anymore. 

These Living Dead Dolls coinciding with the Burton film could be largely taken as just smart timing, but if there is any direct unlicensed cashing in by LDD, it seems to be with the Queen, whose look can be seen as echoing the movie's. I'm not mad; I love the character design in the film despite the character getting the wrong name. It certainly doesn't seem coincidental that the dolls launched in tandem with a high-profile spookier Alice movie, though. LDD seemed to time that purposefully. This is especially supported by LDD years later reimagining their Beauty and the Beast dolls as a more traditional beast-man/princess duo during the very year Disney released their reimagined Beauty and the Beast in its live-action remake. Man, to think even that early on in the run, the cracks were showing in the live-action Disney remakes, and Beauty and the Beast is still one of the better ones compared to where we are now.

I really like the face paint on Inferno here.

Series 4 Inferno had red eyes with no irises and orange fire sparks as pupils, while this Inferno has black pupils in roaring vertical flames for irises, though the sclerae are still red. Her mouth is overpainted with an exaggerated cartoonish tight-lipped frown swooped all the way down, and she has a muted red heart mark on her left cheek, which makes sense because she's a playing card (unlike Alice, who is marked with a spade for no good reason). The Queen's eyebrows are red and have a huge swoop and symmetrical angry expression, and her eyelashes are so huge they fall in front of her brows! This face paint is very bold and flat, with no airbrushing or eyeshadow at all. I think it works.

It's actually the face of this edition that puts her above the variant to me: while the variant is photographed with black sclerae that contrast the flame irises, they seem to be a lighter grey on the produced copies of the doll, and the lipstick color changing to red reduces the effectiveness of the paint's attempt to disguise the real lip sculpt. With the black lips of the main Queen, the real corners of the mouth show through less. Even so, best results are had when the Queen's face is lit from below or seen from a polite distance so her sculpt doesn't break the paint design. While eye paint that contradicts the sculpt can be distracting, it's not as troublesome as mouth paint that contradicts the sculpt and fails to hide it well. The Queen's painted lips don't work well to hide the real corners of her mouth. It's possible this paint idea would work better on the sad "pulled-in-lower-lip" face mold that debuted much later on Resurrection Frozen Charlotte. We never got to see the sculpt painted angry (its other use was Resurrection-variant Maggot, also looking pitiable) but it's sculpted into a frown and would probably suit scowling chacters.

Inferno in Wonderland here is the only version of the LDD character to lack wings of any sort, this after Inferno being the first winged LDD at her Series 4 debut. No wings makes sense for the Queen, but less sense for Inferno, and it's another reason Lizzie Borden would have been a keener casting choice. 

Inferno's first clothing piece is her villainous triangle collar. This is a separate costume part not attached to the dress, though it lines up with it as if it is. The collar has a loop sewn closed around the doll's neck, meaning she was popped together through the collar and would need her head removed (ironic) to take it off. 

The choker neck strap has a red plastic heart jewel sewn into the middle...and the collar piece is black vinyl-coated shiny fabric, alongside much of the doll's bodice. 

Inferno always wears some form of leather, but it's usually made to look like leather leather. None of her faux-leathers across her dolls seem to age well, though, which is odd because Sybil right alongside her in Series 4 used a faux-leather material that has held up absolutely flawlessly. 

I do think the doll could have rocked the collar in white as well, even though as designed, it's meant to look like the same piece as the dress. A white collar would work, but just wouldn't be as edgy, and would be more similar to Tim Burton's design.

I dreaded the vinyl fabric situation of this doll, but at least I have glossy fabric paint in my arsenal to potentially halt any deterioration. I much prefer the LDD Wicked Witch of the West having her villain collar attached to the dress, split by the velcro closure in back, and it being made of satin.

The dress is pretty fancy.

The bodice has a vinyl-coated corset section with ribbon "laces" crossing over the open halves, and the vinyl fabric continues onto the waist accent flaps and some parts that cross the shoulder. Red satin ruffles trim the waist flaps and the top of the bodice, as well as red satin forming the layer under the "corset. The sleeves have big shoulder puffs of red satin and red satin cuff frills, while the body of the sleeve is black with plasticky red pinstripes appliqué'd onto the fabric.

The pinstriping is probably my favorite detail of the costume, but I'd have preferred a printed fabric because I have no idea if this will degrade. I'm also pretty surprised the Queen doesn't have nail polish.

The skirt of the dress is pretty simple, featuring a black stretch fabric over red satin without special trimmings. The skirt also has no petticoat tulle or other fluffing inside to fill the shape and keep it structured, so it feels a little limp.

The black layer over the top is sewn down at the sides of the skirt, but can be opened a bit.

The panel on her right has an edge curled in on itself, which didn't flatten with hot water.

The dress has a lot of loose threads from the satin material...and the pleather has its issues. I'd have recommended swapping all the pleather for black satin, but the satin itself is so messy that it wouldn't be a perfect fix! The pleather itself is badly grained and roughened around the back of Inferno's shoulders, and it needs sealing badly.

The doll is wearing the pointy boots in flat black with no socks, but her legs seem uneven in length. Come to think of it, she'd have been released right around the same time as messy Rose and Violet... maybe I just need to be wary of 2010 LDDs. It looks like that was a bad time for LDD manufacturing and leg evenness. The pleather wasn't to blame on the time period; that'd go bad no matter when it was produced. But the uneven legs and the sloppy threads are issues. 

The variant Queen of Hearts changes the skintone to stark white and switches some red and black around, such that, if LDD had left off her heart marking, she could have worked as a depiction of the chess-piece Red Queen from the second Alice book. I think it could have been smart to have the variant be the other red-associated Carroll Queen, but it would be a deviation when none of the other Alice LDDs are playing alternate characters in the variant set.

Again: on the produced doll, the sclerae are visibly grey, not black. It's also interesting to me that the neck strap of her collar remained black while the rest switched to red, and the sleeves look unchanged, with none of the red/black colors reversed.

I took the doll down to try to paint-seal her vinyl fabric. While I first tried painting her collar while she was wearing it, I was too nervous for the hair, so I tried taking her head out to separate the collar. I was so scared to heat the area because I didn't want it to wreck the pleather (quicker), but I found I was able to pretty easily pop the head out by wrenching it off the ball joint. I...may have made things harder for myself popping out the heads with heating. I do hold that it was right for rebodying my broken-hipped Chloe since her pegs were all so fragile, but in the opaque-plastic pegs era starting at least by Series 18, it seems safe to pop out heads just by pulling and turning them. This done, I painted the collar without worrying about her head.

I took the repair slow, using gloss paint with plenty of drying time, and then using some glossy fabric glue brushed on, which improved the texture by reducing the tacky feeling of the vinyl or painted vinyl alone. I put the dress on a dummy LDD while it was being painted, since I needed the arms posed to give me easy work around the bodice but I didn't want to paint Inferno. I only painted Lust's dress while it was on her because taking the costume off was what made her hood's upkeep so poor and another doll wouldn't wear the costume as well. While working with the fabric paint, I made a few slips onto the red satin, but panicking and scrubbing with water and liquid detergent got the paint out without permanently staining--maybe because the paint itself takes time to dry or because the satin and detergent were the right combination of factors to get it out. I also tried constructing a tulle petticoat with some tulle gift wrap glued in pleats around an elastic band. It seemed to help a little bit.

With the doll's head out, I decided to cut her neck socket a little wider to make decapitating the doll a gimmick to exploit. While the concurrent Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland plays on the Queen's famous threat by showing she's actually had it carried out many times, I thought it would be an interesting twist for the Queen of Hearts herself to be decapitated. It's a gimmick LDD has only done for the Headless Horseman character, and it's a shame because there were many other reasons to have dolls with heads designed to pull off. Mary, Queen of Scots? Marie Antoinette? Somebody not a queen? I couldn't overdo it for the Queen of Hearts because her head still needed to hold a pose, but I found a good degree that made it easier to pop on and off. 

I also decided to make her an axe, because, Lizzie Borden or not, LDD's Queen deserves one with which to off those heads. I sculpted it out of oven-bake clay, with the heart-shaped blade pieces gluing on after. The sculpting is imperfect, of course, but does the job. I also put a Playmobil flame accessory in the top to make the piece a little more "Inferno". 

I tried piercing her palms and putting a pin in the axe as a peg handle, but the pin was too loose in the palm for the heavy piece. I switched to a wire wrapped around the pole with a gap for her fingers to slide into, which could rotate around the pole for either hand's use. This also let me rotate the axe's angle while she held the piece to make display more versatile.

A handle system like this is what I'm planning for making Series 1 Sin able to hold her pitchfork piece. I still haven't heard anything about the Return doll I ordered.

Inferno pairs well with Walpurgis as the Wicked Witch of the West. Both are the villains of their literary doll lines, both are dressed with similar costumes including pointy collars, and one is red while the other is green. The contrast and pairing is better with the Emerald City variant Witch I have, who is more green than her main edition.

And here she is with Ever After High's adaptation of the Carroll character, Lizzie Hearts.

Here are some portraits. In some pieces, I edited a bit on the face to remove some shadows and let her painted mouth dominate over the sculpted contours.

To not waste the palm piercings I was regretting, I let her have an actual heart to hold (the LDD Tin Man's copy).

Here she is with the pieces for croquet, reused from Alistair and Lizzie's game.

And illustrated as an actual playing card.

To stage the cover, I wanted a Wonderland tableau of iconography, though my first setup felt a little flat and perhaps less focused on the Queen of Hearts.

The second piece looked like an oil portrait, but I wanted more of a scene than a posed setup. I decided to take her on the grass at night to stage some pieces for croquet. The darkness and contrast (plus some editing to color) helped make the scene specifically edgy and goth and LDD. The extra decapitated doll head helped. The spiral is a dimensional-spiral wood plaque from the art store which I got and painted for the purpose of pairing with Wonderland LDDs.

I was lucky to get a photo I liked because during this shoot, my phone flashed 5% battery, at which point it drains to nothing in two minutes, so I had to pack up and work with what I had!

Having gotten the LDD Queen of Hearts in-hand, it's easier to understand why she was cast to the bottom of the series in the aftermarket. Conceptually, the character casting doesn't really make sense, and the face paint is a fun idea but the physical sculpt fights too hard against it. Her quality has issues, too. She's got unstable vinyl fabric itching to fall apart, her crown was a bit messily pegged into her scalp on my copy, and her satin fabric has lots of loose threads, plus her skirt isn't shaped or filled out. She's also a 2010 LDD with all that evidently entails--uneven legs seem to be a common issue then. I may be expecting a little less from the quality of the rest of the Wonderland pack now. A lot of work was done on my end to make the Queen both protected for posterity and upgraded and tidied for desired effect, as well as adding my own changes to her display functionality. I think she's a pretty, fun doll at the end of the day, but she's not a premium product and she requires a lot of work to keep her well and make her look her best. Though her variant is very pretty, the issues with the lip paint fighting with the head sculpt and the peeling leather and frayed satin all make me less willing to pursue her. When Inferno as the Queen of Hearts does look great, she's a blast, but I can see myself having a nicer time with the rest of the dolls in this line.