Alive, Then Dead, Then Alive, Then Dead, Then Alive: Living Dead Dolls Posey, Unburied Again

Return of the Living Dead Dolls Posey did something no other Return LDD did--made me fall entirely in love with the design in a millisecond. There was just this instant surprise and powerful click with what they did here, all the more surprising when my feelings for the original Posey were mild fondness but never huge enthusiasm. I'm very familiar with that instant-click obsession when I see a particularly great new toy character design, but these ultra-special reactions are fairly rare and precious. I would never have expected Return Posey to give me that awe, but she blew me away.

[Catch up on this review series with these links here: Sadie, Eggzorcist, Damien, Sin]

Who's Posey?

Posey in Series 1 was buried alive, and is the grimiest, dirtiest-looking doll in the series as a result. She had the least bright retro tone on account of her lacy dirty dress and blank eyes and bumpy face and cut. The other dolls looked more like 1960s-contemporary pieces gone a bit south, but Posey's doll is perhaps more antique-styled, more of an attic doll or a lost toy from a generation prior.

Posey's deathdate is 1970, though, so she's actually the most recent death of the S1 cast. I do see the seventies in her, but her lace and grime make her also pass for someone from much further back. 

It wasn't expanded upon much, but Posey did get her own half-twin lookalike (akin to Sin for Sadie) with the release of graveyard ghoul Abigail Crane. Abigail, released in a two-pack with graverobber Mr. Graves, has Posey's dress and hair in black and a similar face with blank eyes and a scar. 

Abigail only had this standard release, while Sin had a fair run copying Sadie. LDD did make these two zombies intentionally similar, though, as highlighted by Posey and Abigail being directly paired as a duo when they were the only two characters made into 18-inch porcelain dolls.

Posey's design template was also more loosely imitated later on for the unfairly-generic "Victim" doll paired with Count Orlok/Nosferatu.

Why didn't they attempt to make a doll of Ellen Hutter from the original silent film? She's in the public domain!

Posey technically has as many doll release formats as Sin. With Sin, Posey shares appearances in Series 1, LDD Minis, Resurrection, 13th-anniversary remakes, Series 35, and Return, and, like Sin, Posey has only one exclusive standard-doll release format not shard by the majority of Series 1...but Posey has more variants within that special release, pushing her design count over Sin's by a tad. Damien is the only Series 1 character whose editions are always part of a release shared by the majority of Series 1's cast.

Posey's run gave her the first Resurrection of the Series 1 cast, appearing in Res I. I don't love her purple dress, and especially don't like her variant with the bloody mouth.

Maybe this variant is growing on me, but not enough to seek out actively.

No thanks.

Posey's special exclusive release was just Posey dolls, with no other characters released in the set. This exclusive Posey was released in four color palettes--white, pink, red, and black, and the dolls were the first LDDs cast in translucent plastic for stylistic effect (it didn't glow in the dark). I think the pink and red editions are really pretty, and these dolls are special for including a gravestone for her--one of three in the brand, including Abigail Crane's and Return Sadie's.

I'd like to get one of these for the headstone if nothing else! That would be a major asset to this review, but alas. The Pink and Red Poseys would make pretty Valentine dolls, too. I wouldn't know which to choose! The aftermarket could choose for me, though, depending on what's available. No promises; they're not a priority.

Posey's "second Resurrection" in Series 35 gives her a lighter dress and a sweeter look with subtler bruising rot around her mouth. She feels more seventies to me, but I'm not super interested in getting her.

Her 13th-anniversary remake is one of the group whose design differences I could only identify with the original S1 and revision side-by-side. Her variant anniversary remake is a direct replica of Series 1 on the ball-joint body. 

Checking In On Return LDD

I'll admit this is a pretty late review--for how obsessed I was with Return Posey from first looks, I ultimately didn't rush out for her. Part of that can be blamed on my more meandering focus this year--2025 has shifted my primary attention down multiple toy brands that carried me further from LDD as a priority. Another part of it has to be the disappointment with the full reveal of Return Lou Sapphire. I'd found him promising and exciting from his first look, but seeing his full kit...he's such a heavy reuse of Sin's parts, and is more expensive, to the degree that he feels lazy and insulting. Both of his faces are Sin's sculpts. He reuses her flaming crown and pitchfork and tail and her hand shapes. He has hoof feet, which is cool, but his accessories don't feature his Series 2 gentleman's cane, nor does he have a significant bonus costume piece unlike all previous Return LDDs. Lou doesn't strike me as worth the price. That worries me about the prospects of subsequent Return LDDs. I'll go for any that really intrigue me, especially if it jumps to a more pick-and-choose "greatest hits" character schedule rather than a sluggish repeat of the original series exactly. I want to see some of LDD's greatest and wackiest dolls Return-ified without having to wait through every LDD character ever. Lou hasn't killed Return for me, but he broke my streak. I'd get him for cheaper than a normal Return doll, but certainly not at his elevated price. 

Still, I was committed to Series 1 of the Return dolls after coming this far, and decided to get it done before the year was over, priority or not. I might have gotten this done in October if I had less planned for the time and if Series 1 Posey was available, but at the moment I tried looking for her then, her only copies for sale were the anniversary reproductions. Late November gave me a window to cross the two Poseys off the list at last. 

Return Posey

Here's the coffin unwrapped.

The photo portrait on the back shows Posey facing forward and almost filling the frame while in her cloak and carrying her flower. The background scenery is hard to make out, but it looks like an underground dungeon.

Here's the lid off.

Posey comes assembled with her most "classic" look. Unlike Sadie, her floral accessory is not laid across her in the doll tray as if for burial. Posey's single flower is in the accessory tray.

Out of the coffin and freed of the plastic band holding her hair down, I wasn't disappointed. Posey looks as good as I hoped. Mezco's official promo photos don't flatter her much, but in person, she's so eerie.

I shouldn't have delayed on this!

Posey's hair is long and brown and wavy and center-parted, similar to her original hair, but more reddish brown than golden brown--less close to blonde. The wig cap has some visible spots through the hair, but it's overall fine. The hair gets pretty billowy and voluminous, perhaps overly so, when combed. It might look more luxe than is appropriate for the design, but that's how doll hair works.

Her wig felt a little harder to fit in her head, and had similar issues of the actual wig cap separating from the scalp base, though it's easy enough to fit the parts of the scalp back together.

Posey's face is greyish rather than a living flesh tone, suggesting a longer time buried than the older doll. It's textured with veining and decay and features some open wounds and gashes which are filled with glossy red paint. The forehead gash of the classic doll is present as expected.

I like the bruised and gross colors for the shading. I'm also struck by how childlike Posey looks. The other Return dolls look slightly aged up compared to their originators, but Posey is the first true baby-face in the Return line. The other dolls look like older or meaner children, while Posey is just a soft-faced seemingly gentle soul.

Sadie's first face.

Eggy's first face.

Damien's first face.

Sin's first face sculpt (albeit shown with hair unflatteringly out of the way).

Posey's face makes her look extremely sweet...and jarringly realistic. Not since Sadie have I been struck by the amount of eerie lifelike quality in a Return doll's face. Her sculpt and paint have the same quality of looking a little too real, though Posey's aesthetic is less cartoonish than Sadie's. Posey looks right off an antique painting or sculpture using a child as a symbol of tragic innocence. She's a very disarming doll, and I love how simultaneously tender and terrifying her face looks. It's a fantastic paint job and a wonderful sculpt. 

Posey's all-white eyes have been translated brilliantly to have a defined iris while still looking eerie as all get-out. The iris is translucent plastic over a white backdrop, while opaque white is painted over the surface of the eye to create the sclerae. This eye design might not have been correct for Damien, but it's perfect for Posey, and I much prefer this over Damien's painted-over opaque white eyes which were clearly still molded with irises. The blank eyes and the dark shading around them also create the perfect creepy visual in her face when seen from a distance, and when Posey is in low light, her eyes pop even more. 

The white eyes also beautifully coordinate with the color of her dress, an effect which Series 1 and her brown dress didn't offer.

Posey is the first truly browless Return LDD. Eggzorcist and Sin lack hair brows, but their sculpts have defined brow ridges all the same. Posey's face is fully browless, helping her mix of soft and eerie. Other cute browless LDDs include the Series 12 Chloe and Frozen Charlotte dolls.

Speaking of that white dress popping with the eyes, Posey's dress is probably my favorite Return LDD garment so far--and that says something for such a minimal doll costume! 

The dress has a high-necked lace ruffle and a high seam with pleats that the skirt falls from. The sleeves are gathered at the shoulder but not quite puffed, and have lace cuffs, while the hem of the dress is more gathering of the base fabric instead of lace. All of Posey's editions are made to look like they're wearing vintage nighties as if dressed for bed, but this is my favorite of those costumes.

The fabric is the perfect cotton texture and the dress is artfully stained with brown all over to age and dirty the piece. It's a beautiful piece and looks great. The dress secures in the back in a nice way too, having strings of the same fabric tying it closed behind the neck, and nothing else. 

It opens to the chest seam to come off, but I love that it doesn't use velcro. I was so impressed with Sadie's dress for having a real zipper, and this dress having a ribbon tie brings back the more old-fashioned or high-end doll clothes style I'd wanted to see from more of the other Return dolls. This isn't the kind of doll dress that should have velcro, so I'm glad it didn't.  Perhaps the dress could have been cut to open a little lower to make it easier to slide on and off, though. It actually doesn't pull down the body this way--I was able to take it off by popping the doll head off and raising the arms and pulling the dress up that way. Since this doll's head is intended to be removable, that's all fair.

Posey's base look has no other clothing except the third pair of cheap LDD undies in the line. They're the same as Sadie and Sin's and not too impressive, being white stretch fabric with unfinished edges.

One big problem--basically my only problem--with Posey is that her hands and feet which are on show don't feel color-matched to her face. The hands look outright green next to the head. I think this is just the result of the paint job beyond the head being so minimal rather than the casting color of the head and body being different. I think all of her body parts are one color, but everything beyond her face has far less paint. Posey does have off-white nail polish, but I wish her skin paint was more consistent because the hands and feet are going to be visible most ways you display her.

Posey's coffin has only two tray layers--the doll's and the accessories'. Her extra clothing piece fit in her second tray layer, so she doesn't use a third layer for it. That kind of exposes how few extras this doll has, but does she need them? The accessory tray includes the pieces for Posey's alternate face, her three alternate hand pieces, her flower, her shackle collar, and her cape.

The flower fell out before I took that photo, but I found it on the floor later.

Similar to Return Eggzorcist, Return Posey's alternate face is a fully ghoulish zombie head that breaks from all conventional doll aesthetics, featuring a corpselike rotted look with the jaw slack in uncanny fashion. The skintone and scars are retained from the other face, but a couple of wounds are absent on the ghoul version of the head, which feels like a lapse in continuity. It's acceptable as a sacrifice to optimize the display of the ghoul face, which looks great, and the scars derived from the S1 doll are retained on both Return faces.

It's especially nasty how some of the nasal cartilage is still present below and to the sides of the rotted cavity.

Also like Eggzorcist, the ghoul head includes an alternate head base as well as the alternate faceplate.

Eggzorcist's alternate head, minus eyes.

For Eggy, the extra head base was to give her zombie head a complete look because the zombie face was so unlike her porcelain-effect body parts. (However, since Eggzorcist is tightly hooded, the alternate head base may not have been strictly necessary unless the face sculpt altered the fit and required a tweaked base.) For Posey, whose skintone is the same between faces, the second base is definitely included because her ghoul faceplate has such a different contour with the long jaw that a new head base was needed to seamlessly complete the head. Posey also has only the one scalp/wig piece, while Eggy had an alternate cap for her corpse head with much sparser hair, and the wigs weren't designed to swap to the opposite head builds.

Also unlike Eggy, Posey also has alternate hands to match this ghoul face design. These are horrifically gnarled clawed corpse hands with a paint job on par with both faces, unlike the softer hands. 

It's interesting. Posey's skintone doesn't change between her faces, unlike Eggy's, so maybe the hands were provided because they're more versatile on Posey and not locked to one face option? They work great with the cute face as a jarring detail that serves as a major warning that something's not to be trusted.

I still think Eggy deserved matching zombie hands or mittens to cover her "porcelain" hands so the zombie face looked like it belonged.

The effect of the ghoul mode is striking. It turns Posey into a transforming monster who wears the face of innocence as a a lure. You see her walled up in a crypt looking heartbreakingly dear and try to help, and then she becomes a ravenous corpse, successfully preying on your good nature. I love the horror of a dangerous shapeshifting monster in the body of a genuinely endearing child.

Posey has just one alternate "normal" hand sculpt, which is a mold unique to her. It's designed for her to hold her flower with a narrow delicate realistic grip, and is unlike the gripping hands of the prior dolls. Posey is the only Return LDD so far to not use the typical Return gripping hand (either right or left) in her kit.

Posey's single flower recalls her Series 1 accessory, and is like Sadie's bouquet flowers, having a wire stem. The bloom is white with pink fade on the petals, and the stalk has a thin tight clear tube of plastic around it which slides into the grip of Posey's pinching hand so the stem stays in place in her hand with friction. 

Posey comes with a neck shackle, which puts an interesting spin on her. She's now a creature chained up in a crypt, and could be framed as a medieval character if one wanted. The shackle is rigid plastic with a metal pin hinge and has a rusty metal chain which is loose around the pin and can come off when the shackle is open.

The fit of the shackle is a bit awkward, which I suppose makes sense. Her ghoul chin gets in the way, though she makes more sense being restrained while in monster mode. The collar of her lovely dress also feels in conflict with the shackle on a visual level.

Posey's extra clothing piece is a cape of beautiful yellowish green velvet. 

The cape ties with strings of the same fabric around the neck and the hood has wire inside to shape it, but not the edges of the cape. Sin had a hoodless cape with wired edges that made it much more poseable. The cape adds to the tone of Posey feeling more medieval this time, though I'm not sure it fully suits her character design. I do think I see velvet being a bit of a theme for the Return dolls, however, with Sadie and Sin using the same material for their dresses. Is this a kind of meta-nod to the Return line's ethos to be a high-end remake? Series 1 used humble felt-like fleece, so Return uses velvet in its place? Damien and Eggy don't use the material anywhere, so it's not fully consistent, but three out of five use it, possibly as a statement.

Return Posey doesn't come with a gravestone, which is a shame. It could have made sense for her to be the Return doll with one instead of Sadie. I understand why she wasn't--Sadie never got a gravestone before, and Posey did. Sadie also suits it as a mascot of the brand whose design broadcasts what LDD is all about. Still, Posey is the character more directly associated with burial and a cemetery setting.

To address her hands and feet, I finger-rubbed some thin bruise-colored paint onto her childlike hands and her feet so they looked like they belonged to the same doll as the faces and ghoul hands. I wish LDD had done this themselves, but it was an easy fix.

Here's a better look at the pinching hand sculpt post-repaint. The pose is basically the same as the Return gripping hand, if the fingers were curled in tighter.

Here are some pictures of Posey outside. My street isn't ideal forest scenery, so I did several pieces with photo edits for a foggy atmosphere that hides the real background that was shot. First, Posey clawing out of the grave with both face options.

(Please give a round of applause to the three real worms I dug up and used in the photoshoot as guest stars. I don't know why I never thought of using them before!

Here's Posey with the ghoul hands and her hair hanging long.

And sitting on the gravestone.

Here's the ghoul face on.

I didn't get much out of the shackle. Much as I'd love to shoot in that kind of scenery, castle locales are my weakness right now. I don't have the right facilities to frame as that kind of space!

And some pictures with the cloak.

While it postpones, if not totally ruins, my plans for Resurrection Frozen Charlotte, the snow melt is wonderful for Posey since her olive cloak and auburn hair really shine in a misty, gloomy autumnal atmosphere. I wouldn't find synergy in winter snow.

Here's a couple portraits to cap it off.

Return of the Living Dead Dolls Posey might be, on one hand, the most generic archetypal horror imagery in the Return doll line. She's a combination of every creepy little girl who's a zombie or possessed, and also looks like every typical dirty scary haunted doll prop you'd see in an abandoned house setting. And yet, she's also a nearly flawless execution of that imagery and the most perfect character design of the Return dolls we've seen. She's a fantastic haunting little zombie girl, a perfect creepy attic doll. Her childlike neutral face absolutely aces the mix of darling and dead you want to see in a creepy little girl. And as a nightmarish shrieking ghoul, she's also a perfectly executed image, recalling the best of possession and zombie horror with her extended jaw and gnarled hands. Posey is horror through and through, and rises above triteness by nailing her familiar aesthetics and giving them some zest. For a doll with fewer parts in her kit, she's still very compelling and versatile for horror displays and decor. Really my only criticisms with the doll are that her cape doesn't fully suit her, her shackle is a bit awkward, and her hands and feet needed a better paint job to blend with her face. With that taken care of, though, she's absolutely killer and reaches the highs of Sadie and Eggzorcist. Series 1's Return crew finishes strong.

Series 1 Posey

My copy of Series 1 Posey is unsealed but not unboxed. 

While this happened to be the cheapest option for Series 1 Posey at the time of purchase, it's also a copy whose coffin was signed by Ed Long and Damien Glonek, which makes it pretty special.

Damien's signature is incredible--turning a pentagram into a D and trailing on a devil tail? That's absolutely brilliant. 

Kudos to the fan who was smart enough to take the plastic wrap off first before getting the coffin signed, since the signature on the actual box is far better than one on a plastic wrap that forces you to keep the doll sealed. I've gotten one other signed LDD item--a copy of Minis Sybil who was signed on the plastic wrap, so I wasn't able to keep that one's signature. I still documented it in photo form so I can compare with Posey's coffin. My Sybil had evidently been signed by Ed, whose signature is far less decipherable. The Sybil signature matches the non-Damien signature on the Posey box.

Mez Markowitz also joined the LDD team, but I'm assuming for items this early in the brand, only Ed and Damien would be signing copies. Mez became a designer later in the game.

Here's Posey's chipboard. The stray lines around the illustration seem to be part of the original artwork, and aren't deformations of the surface the image is printed on. Strange. Perhaps they're worms?

The poem says:

This little girl is

Out of the grave

With one simple Rose

bloodied with rage.

Doesn't flow. Also, the rose we get is pristine. How about:

She rose from the grave

With the flower they left her

Mistaken for dead

'Til life was bereft her.

Posey died on August 8, 1970, at 4:01 AM. Death times are unusual details. I couldn't find any relevant reference behind this date.

The certificate poem misspells Posey's name (really, guys?!?!) and says:

Poor little Posey was buried alive.

Somethings won't stay dead, even after they've died.

And a rewrite.

Poor little Posey was buried alive.

This killed her, of course, and yet she survived...

I'm not sure where Posey's name comes from. A posy (as in "a pocketful of posies") is a small bunch of flowers, while LDD Posey has just the one. Floral posies aren't spelled the same as LDD Posey, and the name with an E is more likely to be a surname. 

Here's the doll unboxed. As with all non-Japanese Series 1 LDDs, the tissue was taped to the inner walls of the outer coffin so it couldn't be removed without damage. Posey had some decayed elastics around her socks, the purpose of which continues to elude me. 

Posey's hair is long, golden brown, and slightly wavy. It's the longest of the Series 1 dolls and takes on a dramatic silhouette.

Unfortunately, it's fried like so many LDD dolls' hair is eventually, and so it doesn't comb smooth and it catches a lot. This is a doll that suits the bad hair texture, but it's always unpleasant and lamentable. I wish LDD hair aged well. I've ordered some black saran hair for rerooting to see if I can't fix some woeful dolls. My number-one priority is fixing Sadie and giving her back glossy hair like she had in her first months opened, while I'd also love to reroot Chloe and add hair, it not fully reroot, on my Lottie. I also ordered a different color that looked to be a match for my poor Faith. My first LDD of all deserves it.

Posey has a pale flesh skintone and debuted the head sculpt with bumpy skin patches. While Posey is a swivel-joint doll, this head sculpt was adapted for the ball-joint head system later on, with Posey herself being able to benefit from it by having a few ball-joint classic LDD releases. 

The bumps are accented with some pink dabs and smears which give a bruised effect, and some of these marks are even on non-textured parts of the sculpt. Posey's eyes are blank white like Damien's, though she has dark blue shading around them which matches her lip color. Her lashes are long and on both lids and almost give the eye sockets a shriveled quality, while her eyebrows are thin short arcs of brown which slope inward a little. Posey has two gashes on her head, one coming down from her right forehead, and one down her left cheek and jaw. The gashes are black lines with red around them, but I don't think the branched effect of the lines looks very good. Return Posey retains these face scars.

Posey's Series 1 dress is cut oversized, with huge lace for her collar, cuffs, and hem. The sleeves hang long and wide over the hands and the feet are nearly fully covered. The whole dress has a stained-brown effect implying it once would have been white.

The dress opens down the back with velcro like normal. 

Posey has typical LDD socks and Mary Janes, which is a little odd, honestly. I think the barefootedness of her later dolls makes more sense. The shoes are a unique color to match her dress, but this is sprayed-on paint like I saw with the later doll Tina Pink--it's not the color the vinyl was cast in.

Here's Posey in the grave.

A bit of street is visible here, but that's okay.

Standing up in light, her golden brown tones blend her into the scene.

Here she is by a mossier tree.

And the photos I make for all of the Series 1 dolls:

Then came the cover photo, my finale for the Return/S1 cover photo set! All of these images have foregrounded the Return doll in some position of subjugating the Series 1 original to make them look like usurpers or conquerors as high-end remakes. Sadie's was by far the most basic, and Damien's was the first fully setting a bespoke storytelling scene moreso than a display tableau. Sin's took things further still, so I knew I needed to finish strong with Posey's photo. The idea was right there--new Posey keeping old Posey buried in the ground. It took a few tries to stage it in a way I liked. I first wanted to have Return Posey standing by the grave with one ghoul hand holding down the stone above a buried S1. My first attempt to stage it was okay, but S1 wasn't deep enough in the ground, and Return's eyes weren't catching the camera.

The two dolls also weren't posed right. Return was too far to one side while S1 was too obvious. I liked downplaying the S1 dolls in the photos more. I got closer when I realized I should just pop S1's legs out to let her bury deeper, and this pose idea worked better.

Series 1 Posey still feels a little too obvious somehow, and this pose doesn't show off what I love most about Return--her utter sweetness. I finally got the right pose when I knelt Return Posey down and leaned her head on the side of the gravestone, like those sentimental carvings on actual gravestones with grieving women draped down. S1's flower sits in the gnarled hand as Posey leans down on the stone above her sister. While Return is not fully centered, she stares out with her head in the middle just so, and she may be vulnerable, but she is also very much on top of the original doll, and keeping her in place. The posing is just right while suiting this Return character, and with the right photo edits, it's an absolutely Gothic picture. I'm in love with the atmosphere and contrast in this image. This might have become the best cover photo of this series. 

I think Return Posey is a strong ending to the series. Series 1, not so much. She's fine, but I wasn't very captivated by her in terms of photo potential. Maybe her bad hair put me off, or maybe the doll herself ended up a little boring in my eyes, but of Series 1, she might actually be the least interesting and compelling to me. She has her appeal as a grimy zombie doll, but doesn't do anything particularly special with it the way Return does, nor does she have a special retro-style charm to her the way other Series 1 dolls do.

I'm abstaining from comparing all of the Return dolls or recapping all of the serial photo pieces here, because I have a conclusion post for this project coming right up where those comparisons will make more sense. 

Return LDD seems to be chugging along, but it's always going to feel unclear where it's going until we see more and more. I probably won't go in for Lou Sapphire because he doesn't earn his price tag and the need to hop in on every doll has ended after the Series 1 set. I hope for more good things in the Return doll line to come, but I'm glad to feel off the hook for the future. Frozen Charlotte. The Lost. Chloe, Hazel and Hattie, Agatha. Just to throw a few I'd love to see out there.

Next up, my final wrap-up of this project that nearly crossed into three calendar years!