At first, this doll was nowhere on my list for anything ever.
Warning: Lots of creepy spider imagery.
I started off ambivalent to dismissive toward this doll, but then came to appreciate that her nineties-goth style and spider theming made her ideal for Halloween. There may have been an October 2025 where I built a full "honorary Halloween" LDD trio in the vein of last year's, but Mattel Creations disrupted that idea altogether by chugging on and dropping irresistible Skullector surprises; Skullector is on its game right now. I continued thinking about what might be accomplished in this newer picture of my plans, if I could get three dolls together I wanted...and ultimately decided the ideas weren't working for me as something I was really set on. I did want Spider Bite, and got her, but I declined to push into building a larger post around her with a companion doll or trio. I don't like to try to force a project, and decided to let the rest of October carry me where I wanted to go. As such, this is an atypical solo LDD post. Not a particularly spectacular doll, but one I wanted a lot and who got me in the spooky spirit!
Spider Bite comes from Series 17, based on urban legends, and reflects the story of the same name (also sometimes called "The Red Spot"), where a girl has a blemish on her face which she initially assumes is acne, but it grows and swells and bursts into a brood of spiders, revealing eggs had been laid in her cheek. It's a horrific scenario that doesn't actually occur in reality but sounds like it could, making it the ideal urban legend. I would not be at all okay about it if I were the victim myself. This story was memorably featured in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (both the books by Alvin Schwartz and the film adaptation) under the title "The Red Spot". The Living Dead Doll has been criticized for the visual of the burst spot and spiders on her face being messily designed, but I came around to her visual overall being strong enough to celebrate Halloween with. Even as my October shifted and my plans to build a full "honorary Halloween" LDD roundup for 2025 fell deeply into uncertainty, I committed to getting Spider Bite. I wanted her regardless.
This is my second Series 17 doll after Bloody Mary (bonus photoshoot for Mary here, second update on her here). Series 17 isn't fully aesthetically unified, but most of its dolls trend toward a signature bright color and a slightly poppier look, and Spider Bite is one of those dolls. I got her unwrapped and opened with the certificate unwrapped and moved to the front, but the doll was still wired in. Her tissue is a little rough.
Her chipboard photo shows spiders on a web in accordance with her story.
The poem says:
A spider bite to her cheek
She thought was the worst
Until it swelled so large
That it suddenly burst
And a replacement poem from me.
She tried to put on acne cream
The spot burst open and she screamed
Hundreds of legs all in a blur
A spider bite; that was zit for her
Her certificate is the Series 17 vertical poem scroll style outlining the legend. No death dates for this series since the characters are archetypal and apocryphal in nature.
The poem says:
A spider laid eggs in her face in her cheek
All you could hear was her bloody shriek
She was stricken ill and was in need of rest
Unaware in her cheek was a spider egg nest
And a rewrite.
She woke in the night to a sting on her cheek
She saw there a spider and let out a shriek
It swelled for a week and it gave her no rest
She never once thought that her bite was a nest
Here she is out of the box. She's messy, with some gunky yellowish spots to wash, including on her left sleeve.
I gave her and her pieces a wash before proceeding with further photos.
Spider Bite's hair is a bright purple color and is cut short above the jaw with a messy choppy alternative style that reads very retro-goth. It's side-parted to her right and has asymmetrical bangs. The color and cut look great. I love this vibe for a character, even if I wouldn't expect this personal fashion style for the victim of the Spider Bite story. It makes her more cohesive, though!
The hair does have the problem of being rooted behind the line of her colored scalp paint, however.
Spider Bite has lively pale flesh skin and her face paint is very flat and graphical. She has arced high eyebrows that lend her a nervous quality but also make her look gentle and sweet. Her sclerae are dark grey for whatever reason, while her irises are red and red shades around her eyes. She has upper lashes and under her eyes are dramatic black branching marks that look very goth. Her lips are red and lined in black.
Spider Bite has a hole on her left cheek surrounded by a wide red patch, and nineteen spiders are depicted crawling out of the hole and across her face. The spiders are large and look like copy-pasted graphics and can make this face look cluttered. I'm not going to be the first to call this the best possible execution of this visual, but it works fine.
You wouldn't get the same overwhelming effect of a swarm if the spiders were sparser or smaller, so legibility isn't necessarily the number-one priority of this visual. I might have trimmed it down to seventeen spiders instead just to match the series number. The shading around the hole in her cheek breaks up into dots which suggest more of a machine-screened process in this face decoration than is usual. I've seen this kind of graphical dotting texture on one other LDD thus far, who was many series later (Series 34; review date uncertain).
Spider Bite's expression looks frightened at some angles, but she has enough smile in her lips that she could also be read as totally fine with her situation, too. This spider cheek swarm could be a dream vibe to a certain kind of goth!
It's possible this doll's face paint is inspired by the indelible Stephen Gammell illustrations from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. Gammell's artwork is astonishingly grotesque, haunting, atmospheric, and frightening for the target age range of the books--and traumatized young readers cherish and praise his work. New editions of Scary Stories with more grounded, toned-down illustrations have been lambasted by people who grew up with the Gammell art, and the film rightly stuck to the Gammell pieces for its monsters' artistic direction. Gammell's "The Red Spot" illustration is less warped than most of his pieces, but is still frightening and watery and distorted. I think the placement and rendering of the spider wound is quite similar to what LDD did, possibly because they used this art as guidance.
Schwartz's telling of the story names the girl Ruth, but that's a pretty old-fashioned name for a nineties goth girl like LDD Spider Bite to have.
Spider Bite has a black choker made of a closed black loop of elastic that isn't designed to come off. She was popped together with the band around her neck.
Her dress is a humble dark grey striped stretch knit with a wide neckline, and long undersleeves in grey with pleather cuffs and a single spiderweb appliqué on each arm. I had thought it was a widespread web pattern, but it's a single detached web form on each sleeve. The cuffs are very tight and hard to get around her fingers for removing and redressing. The dress velcros down the back as usual.
I really like this costume.
Under the dress, Spider Bite has mesh tights which sit high, above her navel. She has black round-toed boots on her feet with the taller platforms.
There's not a whole lot going on with this doll, but her facial expression and poppy purple, red, and black spiderweb aesthetic make her very charming in spite of her horrific subject matter. I really like her, even more than I thought I would.
For the cover photo, I wanted to stage her at the bathroom mirror where the bursting occurs, and which also allowed me to shoot the doll without featuring the spiders on her face. A side view with the hand covering the gross stuff offers a personal view...
...but the direct rear shot is more dramatic and intriguing.
I didn't have any fake cobweb and didn't know if it was wise to pursue any for doll photography anyhow, mess-wise, but I did get some stylistically shredded white "zombie cloth" to stage her in a cocoon in a webbed lair.
Part of why Spider Bite is an ideal Halloween doll for me is that the spiders I needed to stage photos with were all out as seasonal decorations--no digging for them in storage! Shooting dolls in the off seasons where the best props for them are seasonal decor that's packed away can be a hassle.
I also played with lighting behind the fabric and brought in a felt spiderweb placemat.
Here she is against purple fabric with the spiders.
And here are some goth-photo headshots. In the pictures of her touching her face, her arm is disconnected.
And a watercolor filter edit to nod slightly toward Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Spider Bite is a simple doll with a gross, creepy, and perhaps visually messy design concept, but I think her charms win out as a cartoony purple goth with a sweet face and a classic spider motif. Within the concept of Series 17, perhaps she doesn't shine, but as a Halloween doll, she's a great little piece.
This doll concludes my much-abbreviated Living Dead Dolloween celebration for the year! Perhaps next year will be more busy in this category. Fingers crossed I can get that Jingles!
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