Hot Mess On Wheels: Living Dead Dolls Fashion Victims Lulu

Time for the next Fashion Victim in Wave 2...and I didn't have the highest of hopes for her. She had the most prominent content repellents in her design and I never quite got the character, anyhow.

I've discussed Lulu through her Minis edition, and there I outlined my confusion about her aesthetic and age. She's got cute pink pigtails and a tutu, but she has earrings and a tattoo which suggest she's not a child, but instead a young adult who dresses with childish elements. 

On the inherently childlike classic dolls, that's a really hard aesthetic to pull off clearly, and I'm not personally a fan of the mix of cutesy and mature done in this way. I was more open to the Mini rendition for lacking the earrings and having a tamer faceup which all made her work as a cute kid character...who had a tattoo. Eh.

With all of this applied to a character whose real concept is "a roller-skater with a compound fracture", her visual style felt to me like too much on top of her main novelty gimmick. (The fracture is not pictured in the LDD archive portrait above, as the everted bone is on the leg turned away from camera; the Mini has no bone poking out but is bloodied in the same spot.)

FV Lulu has the benefit of clearly being an adult base, making her visual aesthetic clearer, but she's probably the sleaziest of the Wave 2 dolls, and her second costume is a mess and a half.

Unfortunately, the second costume is what Lulu is packaged with. Her hat is off her head to the side. 

For semantic reasons, I'd have preferred if the doll had the opportunity to have never worn this outfit in her lifetime, but we'll get there soon enough.

Of my Fashion Victims, Lulu ended up with her head askew in box, turned up and away from the viewer.

Lulu's plastic window was peeling from the cardboard frame on the top half and the box did not have the choking-hazard sticker my Hollywood and Inferno had. I learned later that the box windows are made of two sheets of plastic--one above the cardboard line with the logo, and one below.

Here's the other side of the box, with the classic-style outfit on display.

Here's Lulu unboxed, looking like Little Miss Country Thing. 

I suppose the name Lulu does have some Southern connotations, and perhaps the woman Lulu was inspired by is Southern, but it still feels fairly out-of-the blue for the LDD character to suddenly display this theming...and it's not even cute. There are ways to do Western with some glitz and fun, Dolly Parton or Barbie-style, and this just looks like a lazy bar-night costume. It's also got that issue Wave 1 outfits have where it has no cohesion with the first outfit.

Lulu starts with her cowboy hat, which merely rests on top of her head, and not tightly at that. It feels a bit undersized. It's all a lump of vinyl with a crackly leather sculpt, and has an ornament of bull horns and a skull on the front.

Lulu's hair is still short pink pigtails with no bangs, but they're tied low here rather than high. The hair has the same texture as Hollywood's, with lots of flyaways and some frying, while one elastic was gone by the time I got her. I retied both sides with newer elastics.

Lulu's face is much tamer than Series 4's, with greatly reduced battering effects, but boy is it striking. 

She has dark pink spots over her body representing grazes and some eye shading, as well as the creepy browlessness of before, but her look is much less beaten-looking. Her Series 4 wounds looked ugly and angry.

I think Lulu's eyes are the standout aspect of the whole doll. 

She has small black pupils, while her sclerae are a radial pattern of red and yellow wedges that's super bold. It's loosely derived from the spoked look of her S4 irises, but more cartoony. S4 had black sclerae around the irises.

Lulu has black lips here instead of red beaten lips, and airbrushed neon pink shading above her eye which could be makeup or stylized injury. With no eyebrow paint, the sculpted brows are easier to read, and Lulu in particular makes it obvious the Wave 2 dolls share an art style with the promo illustration for Wave 1.

FV Lulu is a more yellowish pale tone than S4 Lulu, but has some pink body blush shading. I realized with the FV dolls to follow that the dolls (except for Hollywood) have their skintones applied with (durable) spray paint, giving them a slight gloss and also leaving them susceptible to motes caught in the paint or blemishes from the paint texture itself getting smeared or runny. Lulu looks mostly fine with a couple of dark blemishes. All of the "flesh"-colored FV W2 dolls share this pale yellowish tone and spray paint.

It's Lulu who made me draw a connection between this wave of doll faces and the much later Return LDD style. The inset eyes, raised level of sculpt detail, semi-real caricature, and expressive faces are all traits of Return dolls as well.

Around her neck, Lulu has a black choker that velcros on. It's made of a fairly scratchy soft velvet material.

Lulu's top has not aged well, with its unfinished edges clearly showing with time. It's a white tank with two knot ties in back, which is annoying, especially because it was double-knotted rather than tied in bows. There's also an unfortunate stain on the left breast which creates the illusion that nipples were still present in the Wave 2 doll design. This piece is boring and messy and not fun to use. It's never going back on her.

Both of Lulu's wrists are dressed. On her right, she has three identical black hoop bracelets stacked up, while her left wrist has a laced leather bracer.

The hoop bracelets can and will slide all the way up Lulu's arms, and I failed to catch this in several photos.

Lulu has a vinyl belt made to look like leather and metal. The belt has a round buckle, painted red with a studded X across the middle.

This isn't completely direct, but it seems pretty clear as a visual homage to the American Confederate flag. If the studs were stars and the X was blue, it'd be the flag design outright. 

The belt opens under the buckle with two hidden pegs.

Suffice to say, I am never putting this piece back on the doll. At the time she was made, it's possible it was put on as an ignorant attempt to characterize Lulu as Southern and proud, and even today, many Southerners see it as a symbol of identity and pride. But many people reasonably see it as a hate symbol that idolizes a former sect of the country defined by their unwillingness to end the practice of enslaving African people and their descendants. The Confederacy was formed because abolitionism upset the South, and so the flag is often seen, intentionally or not, as a racist self-report for anyone who embraces it. And the original Lulu was in a series with the one and only Black LDD!

LDD does not have a leg to stand on where I can view this detail in good faith, but the air of ignorance and insulation is stronger to me than a perception of malice. LDD's designers are, from where I'm standing, best characterized as sheltered and incurious and deeply unaware. It doesn't make them innocent. 

With this belt, FV Lulu is now one of two characters I have to consider to be a potential bigot, and for the same reason--the other character is Goria, a literal antebellum Southern belle who, based on her concept, almost certainly would have had a plantation which enslaved Black people. It's become more and more obvious to me that Goria belongs in an uncomfortable roundup and nowhere else. I'll be charitable and assume Lulu is blinded to the connotations of the flag, or attempting to reclaim it--and even then, my copy will never again be associated with it, starting from the end of this very sentence.

Lulu's pants are actually footie pieces.

They're the same rough velvet as her choker, and proved to be very difficult to pull off her legs. They're quite tight, but mercifully left no stains after sitting on her legs for 22 years. The difficulty in using these pants makes a strong argument for forgetting about giving them to Sybil.

Over the footies, Lulu has boots which could be reflecting snakeskin (more reasonable for the Southwest USA) but could also read as alligator, which is more Florida.

My Lulu is not as easy to stand as Hollywood was, but I think her footwear bears some responsibility for being less stable.

Lulu's Fashion Victim is perhaps the most obvious case of the dolls being less gory than standard LDD. In addition to her tamer battering, she has no arm cast nor compound shin fracture, and nary a bloodstain on the spot where her S4 leg was broken (unlike Minis Lulu, who at least referenced the injury with a blood spot while not replicating the projecting bone).

S4 Lulu can be really off-putting, for sure, but I don't see why the Fashion Victim needed to be quite so unhurt, especially with her face being so wild. The fashion doll concept and clothing pieces she wears make the leg fracture unreasonable to implement for dressing-up purposes, but she easily could have had blood there like the Mini.

You can see a bit of greenish tint in the body shading.

Lulu made me realize there are small holes in the bendy limbs where the wires seem to hook in with pins or bent ends.

Lulu was always tatted, but this design seems to replace her arm cast with a sleeve tattoo, moving the ink to the formerly-broken arm as a result...and it's a bit of filth.

Original Lulu's tattoo said "Hell on Wheels", and this doll's...

I mean, do you, girl, but don't expect a lot of gracious reactions to that motto. I feel like "Sex on Wheels" would be more empowered and fun if the slogan had to be dirty.

The rest of the tattoo has some good designs with an eye, skulls, a pentagram, and a cross. I wish the limb paint on the FV Wave 2 dolls could look cleaner somehow, but I think the material creates some vulnerabilities and texture issues a rigid unarticulated arm might not have.

Here's Lulu in her classic-style outfit, and here is where I start to understand the doll, and Lulu in general. She's got a hyperactive energy!

With the crazy pigtails and tutu both puffing out around her, and the doll not looking like a child, I see the naughty wild-girl energy here. This look is far more cohesive and appealing.

Lulu's top honestly doesn't even look like it could shape into clothing until it's on. It's a gold foil fabric with gold ribbon straps and only covers the breasts. It closes in back with a hook and eye.

The tutu has a pink waistband and layers of tulle with sewn-in gold bottoms for modesty which match the top. The gold part isn't as tightly-fit around the doll as it ought to be. A stretch material would be preferable. I think for this less flexible fabric to be used, the leg holes actually needed to be this generous.

Rather than retro stripe-topped tube socks, this Lulu has sheer pale gold stockings. They don't conform to her leg sculpt and aren't finished at the top edge. Not ideal.

The skate boots are better-made than the classic LDD version, with metal axles and much smoother-rolling wheels.

The skates have separate internal walls in the part the foot fits into, perhaps to ensure tighter fit.

Unfortunately, it's really hard to pose Lulu's legs so she can balance evenly on the skates. They don't want to sit flat on all eight wheels. Perhaps that's appropriate--a command of skating was probably lacking for Lulu to have died the way she did.

Lulu's articulation makes her the best rendition of the character to pose in broken, mangled shapes from falling down the stairs!

Lulu's right shoulder swivel is looser than Hollywood's was. Her limbs bend the same. I noticed her left hip swivel either always was or became more loose, with the heavy leg being able to turn the hip by itself. The hinge side-to-side is still tight.

Here's Lulu with her Mini counterpart. Her pale color makes the Mini look positively flushed, and monochromatic with the hair and skin being so similar.

Bereft of a Lulu-sized staircase, I staged Lulu's death abstractly, putting her in a twisted heap on top of a pink splatter, painted on the largest white background I had available.

Here are some basic portraits.

One of my ideas was to pose Lulu kicking her legs outside, inspired by this 1970s student-project music video for the Melanie song "Brand New Key". It's a little literal, but as a music video from before the music-video era, and a student project, it's a perfect little visual accompaniment to the skating-themed song, and I love the visual of the narrator character sulking in her skates.

Still from Nancy Walterscheid's "Brand New Key" video.

This was about the best I could do with Lulu.

There's more I wish this doll's articulation was capable of. I thought of a few poses for her which the FV articulation and engineering isn't up for, while I didn't feel as limited by Hollywood. 

The wire limbs do have the advantage of bending out of shape for the right fractured look, though. It's a nice compromise for the absence of a leg wound detail, and Lulu voguing on a twisted broken leg is really fun.

Here she is skating on the patio.

And against human-sized concrete stairs.

Lulu is definitely the trashiest of the Wave 2 Victims, but if she genuinely has her life together outside her outrageous lifestyle and isn't harming anyone, what's wrong with being messy? Take that noxious belt away, and she's fine. I'm also in love with her off-kilter energy. She's got such a fun zany creepy feel.

Maybe this is another doll elevated by the keen Wave 2 face design, but she absolutely has something of her own. She just has to stay out of that boring and alarming country outfit. The Series 4 look is great, and this feels like the doll design the character design was meant for all along. Classic LDD struggles to wear Lulu's age-muddled edgy aesthetic, but FV sells it perfectly. I think Lulu's active and injured theme begs for a better-articulated body for more dynamic skating and twisted poses, but it took decades for any roller-skating dolls to be made with articulation that suited them, and Lulu is not unique there. Lulu exposes more of the problems with the painted approach to body coloring in this line, and it looks like Hollywood's airbrushing made her the best as such. I definitely appreciate FV Lulu more than I expected to, though she doesn't surpass Hollywood for me. Next up: Inferno.