Time for the third doll in my Fashion Victims Wave 2 series! On the one hand, this might have been a doll I could pass on altogether. On the other, she might be one of the best designs in the small FV line!
Series 4 Inferno is another LDD demon character, but with heavy emphasis on a fire theme, as she has red hair and a flame-styled dress as well as embers for eyes. She has some of that classic LDD retro-kiddie charm to her styling, though mixed with a tougher bad-girl leather element in the dress fabric. I ought to love Inferno, and to have her on the table to compare with the Fashion Victim. She's even the first LDD with the folding bat wings piece!
I've hesitated and declined to get her thus far, however, due to being aware her dress's leather-effect coating can age atrociously (unlike fellow S4 doll Sybil's pieces, evidently). This is a prominent concern for the Fashion Victim too, but I'm encouraged by a picture I saw of one copy's second outfit fully peeled which looked totally acceptable. I don't know if this is the case for both, but if the costuming looks good even without the leather effect, that's great news.
My enthusiasm for demon characters is also limited by my photo/creative prospects. I like the design; I just don't know how much work I could get from it. I'm a little more interested in Inferno's Minis counterpart, due to the doll replicating the wings in miniature. I was impressed with fellow S4 doll Sybil's Mini for achieving functional parity with her larger counterpart's rubber arms and straitjacket binding and opening chain collar, and Mini Inferno seems to be another feat of functional replication, if a bit less impressive. Minis Inferno does also have the horns she needs. She and Mini Lou Sapphire do; Mini Sin doesn't...but I think that may be fixable.
Since I didn't go out for S4 Sin, this Fashion Victim is my second LDD Inferno doll after the Queen of Hearts.
Inferno has two other character designs following the Fashion Victim, from Resurrection V. Both dolls feature nonstandard feather wing attachments which look to attach to the costume, not the doll, and both have the LDD devil tail in black. The fire element is de-emphasized. Main Res Inferno has an awfully clunky-looking hairdo and isn't too compelling.
I quite like the variant, since I'm partial to any classic red devil. She also has the least "peelable" outfit of any Inferno edition, with a matte fabric dress.
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| Looks like her horns are flocked? |
Neither Res Inferno appears to owe anything to the Fashion Victim. Only Sybil seems to have lent some design influence specifically from a FV incarnation to a Res one.
Alright. Here's the Fashion Victim's box.
Choking hazard sticker is present.
The box has full detachment of the plastic window pane below the logo. It's a separate piece from the window section above the logo.
Here's the back side.
And the doll unboxed.
Inferno comes in the take on her classic outfit, and in it, Inferno is probably the most similar any Fashion Victim gets to her original doll, with the details being basically one-to-one. The biggest differences are the proportions and footwear. I'm not sure who's the most distant from original to FV. Hollywood's skintone and hairstyle are significantly changed, but her classic outfit is a strong match and she keeps her swollen eye. Maybe Lilith back in Wave 1? She has a different haircut, a different skintone, and no clothing resembling her Series 3 original outfit, plus no stake gimmick.
Inferno's face sculpt is not unique, but her head is different, including her black demon horns. These are sharper than the classic LDD horns, but comparably small and cute, and less mean-looking than the Return devil horns shared by Sin and Lou Sapphire. The horns force her to be the only Wave 2 Fashion Victim without a hat in her repertoire. I couldn't confirm whether the horns are molded in and painted or plugged into holed bored into the mold Lulu and Sybil share.
Inferno's hair is ginger red and wavy and seems to be decent quality without a lot of aging damage.
As the horns picture showed, it's not rooted particularly densely, nor tightly around the horns, so trying to arrange the hair without big bald spots seems to be a losing game. There's no defined parting, either.
Inferno's skintone is the pale yellowish color of the other "human-colored" Wave 2 dolls, but her face has some flaws. Here, it's very evident that spray paint was used to color her skin, with the texture flaws that comes of it, and it looks like a blob of paint ran near the corner of her right eye, creating a contour error.
There are other flecks and blemishes in this paint that can't be easily fixed, and I can't fathom why the head was not simply cast in the vinyl color that was needed. Shading can be done with surface paint, but the whole skintone? Hollywood's airbrushing idea looked better.
Inferno's face changes no real details. Her eyes are the same red sclerae with sparky sunbursts for pupils, though the outline of the actual iris chips in the inset eye are very obvious with this design, since there is no iris and the design does not use the edge of the chip in a circular shape.
Her makeup is all black and some redder shading accents her face.
Inferno uses the exact same wing parts as classic LDDs with the folding demon wings, and they match the Series 4 Inferno set, which were the first of such wings in the brand. This is the only Fashion Victim with any classic LDD parts as such. Her left wing has a loose pin but it has no screwdriver receptacle, so I have no way to tighten it. This is as high as each wing joint will turn--the one on her left can be pushed further, but springs back down a bit.
Inferno's dress is a replica of her Series 4 outfit--simple black leather with long sleeves over layers of flame-cut fabric as a skirt.
The sleeves are fitted tight here, while the skirt is shorter. On Inferno's other dolls, the black edge was also flame-cut, while here, it's a more simple jagged shape. The dress goes on in some funky ways with her wings, too.
It has two shoulder straps that cross over the back in an X before snapping in place, and two straps attached to the waist that velcro across to meet as one.
The dress also has velcro to hold the dress together above and below the wings, which doesn't fully close. S4's dress had none of the strappy shenanigans and just had the velcro over and under the wing piece. This is the first FV W2 doll I've seen any velcro on. As ever, the wings are glued in and not intended to be removed. I never thought this was necessary, as the pegs do just fine at securing the wings by themselves, and on this doll, this outfit outright holds the wings in place by itself, so glue is even less needed. I tried wiggling the glue out because it's so much easier to dress long hair with no wings, but the wings didn't budge and I was risking breaking the assembly if I kept trying.
The dress is hard to pull off Inferno's arms, and I don't have great confidence in the leather material aging well beyond this point of full unboxing and handling, as mentioned. The unfinished flame-cut fabric is also frayed with age. The dress has sewn-in leotard bottoms for modesty.
I'm not convinced the straps are strictly necessary for this dress, but unnecessary straps and goth-punk fashion are inseparable concepts.
The last parts of this look are black socks and black platform shoes which are unique to Inferno.
The only repeated footwear sculpts in this wave are Hollywood's two identical sets of heels. I really wish the socks were still red like the S4 doll's. That was a fun touch.
Inferno's second outfit ensemble deserves some genuine applause, because this proves LDD was capable of making a sexy doll with kink fashion themes in an appealing manner that didn't feel disrespectful! What a different series Wave 1 could have been with this approach--and indeed, since we saw the Wave 1 dolls drawn in Wave 2 style, they could have been this way if the toy engineer(s) had the right direction. Inferno in her leather corset looks good! She looks like a badass!
The corset is a leotard cut while the black ruffle skirt is a separate piece that slides up and down with no closure/opening. The corset also uses velcro to close.
The corset cups the breasts with a generous neckline and is the same leather effect as the dress, while red velvet spikes trim up the sides. The spikes have come unglued from their adhesive, which is the melty, stringy uncured-looking glue I've seen before on some LDD elements. I need to use proper fabric glue to tack these accents down.
On her arms, Inferno has fingerless gloves which separate the thumb and other digits. The gloves are a stretch material and sewn as simple tubes with tiny thumb holes in the sides which were so hard to find, I took some pictures without using them and wondered if the thumb strap look was only made for the prototype doll!
I got Inferno rigged up in the gloves by pulling them up the arm with no hand, popping the hand in, and then pulling up the fabric until the thumb found the thumb hole. More red velvet spikes trim these gloves, sticking out of the sides. I'm nervous about the unfinished edges, but the gloves look great. It's tricky stretching them up to take the thumbs back out again.
Finishing the outfit, Inferno has long soft vinyl boots which cover most of her legs.
This is a really fun costume that proves the first Fashion Victims could have been really good sexy dolls if LDD had found the magic art style sooner.
When I tried to melt down the paint blob on Inferno's face and repaint the area, I found pretty imperfect results. Up close, it's obvious Inferno had work done, and not great work, and she definitely has a "bad side" now.
It could look a lot worse, but could be a lot better too. I share blame for this with the factory, because Inferno had issues as made, but I didn't make her better than factory state. I was still able to work with her for photos. It helped to bounce light off the repaint patch to obscure its textural problems.
I then put her in front of a candle and bounced some red light in to create a flaming illusion diffused through her hair and wing membrane.
It works well with fire edited in, too!
Here she is domming FV Sadie and showing her what a sexy doll deserves to be.
And another shot with the pitchfork.
Here she is in some high-contrast closeups which suit her 2000s-edgy temporal aesthetic and cover up her flaws.
She already looks like a million bucks in that first photo; it's extremely her and very flattering, but I added flames for the cover version.
I then put her back into her original outfit and got a couple basic portraits on a flame bandanna background.
This was where I stopped. It's as abbreviated as a Living Dead Dolls photoshoot has gotten for me. I'll admit I burned out fairly quickly on this doll. Part of it is because flame demons don't actually give me many sparks or offer that many creative ideas to me that are within my capabilities. Part of it is that I have too many irons in the fire at this time for me to push for more work with a doll who doesn't light me up. I have other posts piling up to release, and gracious, I can't wait on Sybil any longer. I actually finished her second of the four!
I was dealt a really bad hand with this copy of Inferno, which contributes to the relatively cool temperature of my assessment. Her head paint was done pretty poorly, and can't be easily or attractively addressed. It's beyond me why the head could not just have been cast in the correct base color. Her wing also has a loose screw that can't be tightened, and the corset spikes were peeling away. Even with individual flaws aside, Inferno is poorly set up for posterity, with unfinished fabric edges and leather that are waiting to deteriorate. The hair rooting is also subpar. I think there are zero visual character design problems with this doll, but even with a pristine copy, I'd still be worried for her upkeep. I think the paint problems did really hurt my outlook, and maybe I'd have a warmer assessment with a better head. I don't know if I like this doll enough to seek a replacement head/body, but I do feel bad for my copy ending up in such a bad state.
Inferno is probably going to be my least favorite of Wave 2 by default. And it's possible she'd be there even if she was the best-made copy of the doll out there. Her design is perfectly fine. In all regards, she's every definition of the word hot. She's just nothing mind-blowing to me. Not a richly inspiring doll in my taste, though what I got from her was great and undeservedly good for a doll in her condition. LDD deserves some acknowledgment for nailing a sexy kink aesthetic here. She's good, but not the right resonance with me personally, nor an ideal copy of this doll. I'm comfortable with her being the one dud of my group, for sure. If it had been Sybil, I'd be inconsolable. So, thanks for taking the hit, Inferno. I got my grail about as good as she gets. See you for her review very soon.
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