Eggy's Easter Hunt

Easter is pretty darn low on my list of holidays personally. I don't love the pastel aesthetics and cutesy animals, but it can still be fun to get festive. I'd been thinking of using Living Dead Dolls' character Eggzorcist, the Easter bunny girl, as a holiday feature since her Return doll was revealed...but she shipped in autumn so that plan was a bust. I thought of doing something the next spring, but sacrificed the idea to keep my schedule lighter, along with discarding the "Sadie's deathday party" idea for the same reason. Now, though? Now, I could. (And I plan to do the Sadie project too!)

If you celebrate Easter as the spiritually holy holiday it is, this may not be the post for you. Eggzorcist can be called a blasphemous character and I play into the brand's Satanic horror aesthetic with a levity I understand can be offensive to many. I'm not remotely Satanic myself and it's just storytelling aesthetic fantasy for me when working with the tone established by the dolls. I'm personally fully non-spiritual. I know Easter is a sacred time for many, so if you're among those who cherish it and want it honored properly, then please do so and leave this post here. 

The Hunt

It all started with a basket on the front porch. There were some things in it, but not many.

Fun!

Be vewwy quiet...I'm hunting wabbits!

The first egg was in a pot on the stairs.

It's Octobunny!

Who? Don't worry about it; we'll get there. For now, I popped her into the basket. The eggs won't fit, but the gifts will!

The next egg was on a bush.

Inside was a ceramic bunny...but because nothing can be purely sweet in this hunt, there's also some rabbit bones!

These are 100% real rabbit jawbones, ethically sourced.

Our neighborhood has a host of wild rabbits that go about their business and hop around our lawns and driveways, and a couple of years ago, I found one that had evidently just dropped dead in the middle of my patio. I buried it to dispose of the carcass, but also with some curiosity about recovering the bones at a later date. I dug around now until I found some, but the upper skull evidently didn't survive in one piece. I never found an intact skull after digging around, but I did see broken fragments of what looked to be that piece. Probably my fault. I'm not an archaeologist with the skill or patience to have done this properly. If I'd more carefully 

1. located the bones and

2. removed them slowly and methodically, I'd probably have found the whole skeleton easily and gotten the skull intact. A whole rabbit skull in an egg of its own would have been the perfect thing for this macabre gift pool, but the jawbones are pretty amazing things in their own right. 

The next eggs were in a pair of flower pots side-by side. These are larger.

The yellow egg has tissue inside wrapping something up.

It's LDD Minis Sheena!

And the orange egg has red Bedtime Sadie.

The next egg was on a bush, seeming to lead down a path. 

Inside is Minis Schitzo with a custom set of balloons!

The next two eggs were hanging on the tree by the walk, using Minis noose keychains.

Inside this blue one is Minis Lilith with a modification to give her her chest stake. My original Series 3 Lilith review is here.

The next egg  is pink, and this is more of a homecoming!

 

It's Minis Lottie--a new one!

Lottie was my first LDD Minis doll, selected alongside her Series 3 doll to contrast with the wholesome English doll also named Lottie. The Mini was my main target, with the big doll being brought in for a complete review, but she became a delight in her own right. I had fun weaving all three Lotties into a photo story together, and Minis Lottie sold me on the charm and detail of the LDD Minis line and was quite special to me. However, when I had the idea to make an alternate all-black head for the LDD Minis Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I sacrificed Lottie's head. 

I might not have bothered, since the dye has since faded a little in an unsatisfactory way. I do now have a second copy of the Ghost, though, so I no longer need to swap the doll heads to switch between the original and modified designs. With Lottie's head gone, I also dyed her coat black as an alternate costume for my Minis Sadie.

I always intended to get Mini Lottie back because she's played a notable role in my collection, and the re-acquistion felt even more warranted after I rerooted her big doll into a condition I could be proud of.

Simple hairdo? Yes. This is leagues better than the factory rooting, though.

A tree further off with another hanging egg led me to the back garden.

It's the Minis Bride of Valentine! Her Series 3 original review can be found here.

After that egg, it's clear where this trail has been leading us--Eggzorcist's grave!

Tombstone designed and crafted by yours truly.

I realized too late that using her death date as her burial date is probably unrealistic.

I could have put an X on top, since that's her scar, but I thought the wilted carrot was a more elegant symbol. The poem is a new rewrite of the Series 1 certificate poem. My previous rewrite, when I reviewed the Series 1 doll, was a bigger departure:

A piece of cord tied her rabbit hood snug
And choked her blue 'til she laid with the bugs.

Before we deal with the grave, though, there's one other egg to pick up. It's a small one.

Inside is a bunch of cute plastic bunnies and an Easter skeleton Wigglit! I know 3D printed figures are the new wave of slop, but I'll admit I'm weak to Wigglitz. Their Halloween selection is great for little dots of flavor in a tableau, and this skeleton in bunny ears was perfect for this review.

The trowel by Eggy's grave sends a clear message. Not that digging deep is required!

Of course Eggy would be buried in a massive Easter egg!

Well, I think so, anyway.

Inside the egg is a package and two smaller eggs. The package is cinched with a cross charm with the chain in the wrong end, inverting it.

Having this idea also inspired me to hang another copy upside down in Mini Sadie's bedroom.

Someday I'll wrap up this dollhouse!

Now, if you have any grasp of visual foreshadowing, or know where these specific LDD Minis were sourced from, then there's zero surprise or mystery as to which Eggzorcist I'm unwrapping here.

Yes, it's blue Eggzorcist! All the blue bunnies make sense! This is a Series 1 remake or maybe variant released a couple of years after the original Eggzorcist doll hit the market, and she connected with me more than the S1 doll.  I knew I wanted her for this project.

Of course, in the larger of the small eggs, there's Eggy's basket and roach and Minis blue Eggzorcist.

And inside the last egg is a little prop bunny plush I made to match.

This is quite a stuffed basket of goodies!

The fact that this is the Easter basket I make for myself probably means I shouldn't be participating in this holiday!

The review portion will commence soon!

Since I was doing so much digging for bones and burial, I decided to also do that reshoot of Series 12 Chloe's burial cross-section I'd been planning. This was the original:

The angle over Chloe was too overhead, while the bunny prop I'd thrown into the coffin was impossible to identify this way. My doll deserved a better take on this, and the first improvement was building the cross-section flat on its back rather than trying to make it stand upright. I found this very effective with Chloe's Resurrection variant and snow.

I kept the boxes this was built with and filled them with dirt this time. For the "surface", the dolls and props are leaning against a paper backdrop. I swapped Lamenta, Agatha, and Wizard Dedwin for Tina Black and Jennocide, and gave Tina a human-scale trowel for the recent interment. I also brought in the bones concept from the Res shoot, plus Return Eggzorcist's worms.

With digital edits, I replaced the paper backdrop and the bow and added the poem, while covering the top edge of the cardboard box.

I did a few other variants I wanted to try as well.

This segment has been added to the Chloe revisit from January, too.

Reviews

Octobunny is a character from the visual artist Gus Fink, whose art lives in the sketchy creepy niche of artists like Tim Burton and David Firth. Fink created the Boogily Heads bobblehead toy figurines, and this world of characters also includes the Boogily Bunnies, the group which this toy comes from. Fink has many toys in his name, with plushes, figures, and clip-ons among others. I enjoy some of his visual aesthetic, though I'm not sure how narrative he gets.

Octobunny came with a keychain attached and her documents in a plastic shell with two hanging panels on it.

The tag contained two separate cards and a folded sheet. One card depicts the series of Boogily Bunnies in illustrated form on one side, and a partial profile of Octobunny on the other.

The other card has a portrait on one side and a full profile on the other.

Octobunny is a rabbit/octopus experiment hybrid who sleeps underwater and can spawn at will. This "occupation: mommy" and "makes babies whenever she wants" story sounds like a living nightmare from a certain perspective. I wonder if her name and...birthing emphasis are meant to allude to the famous "Octomom" case that was sensationalized in the news. Not my thing.

I'm not impressed with the grammar.

The folded sheet is a poster on one side and a brief comic on the other, where it tells a simplistic and kind of boring story with artwork that feels less visionary and more juvenile. 

There's a fine line between aesthetic sketchiness/naive style and a lack of care, and I'm not sure where this is exactly.

I don't hold with permanent keychains on toys, so I cut Octobunny's off. She's made of fleece with embroidery, and her colors trade in pink for the beige of her dress, which suits her fine. The ears are vinyl applique. The fabric style likens her to other toys of the era, Uglydolls foremost in my mind. I love Uglydolls, and their own fantasy Uglyverse is so characterful and charmingly-written to me in the tag bios and silly worldbuilding guidebooks...unlike Octobunny's comic.

There was a full-size plush line of Boogily Bunnies, who had posing wire inside their arms and ears. That makes Octobunny in particular very dynamic!

At last, I think we found her.

If you understand basic visual foreshadowing, then there should be absolutely no surprise as to which Eggzorcist doll was inside. 

This is Eggzorcist's rare 2003 convention-exclusive blue doll, changing the Series 1 doll in a few ways I just loved. I've been mixed on the classic Eggy design, but this blue-suit version is absolutely adorable to me and has all of the "innocent antique doll turned spooky" charm I wanted. Her release is classified among the exclusives, which makes sense. She was not released within the same year as Series 1 (though she's of the same era still and is well within the swivel-jointed doll period), she has unique packaging, and her hair and her costume has a few production changes...but she's overall similar enough that she could also functionally be categorized as a Living Dead Dolls variant edition, being basically a standalone variant of S1 Eggy. 

My Eggzorcist came sealed and demonstrating her special gimmick--this doll was packaged blind with a black "body bag", cover, as just 100 copies of the doll had a rare blood-splatter effect as chase variants! This was a case where I was kind of hoping to be given the common version because I like her more, and, as you know, I got her.

The doll has a silver coffin, though Series 5 seems to have beaten her to that game by releasing earlier in the same year. If S5 was first, though, I'm surprised the opaque black plastic coffin lids the S5 variants debuted weren't also employed for the blind surprise factor with Eggy here. Could have been easier than designing the body bag gimmick. The coffin base is just the same as Series 5's pieces. This LDD is the first to use the dark blue tissue that would be so striking in the packaging of Lust in Series 7.

The doll's chipboard reprints the Series 1 design, but with blue replacing white to distinguish it. I like this bit of divergence.

Series 1's chipboard.

Blue Eggy's/

If you consider Blue Eggzorcist to be a variant edition, then I believe this would be the only time a variant had such thoroughly different packaging, and I also think this would be the only LDD variant chipboard to have a different print from the main edition's.

The reused Series 1 character artwork has higher contrast with the hair than the Series 1 doll, but outright does not reflect the hair of the blue variant, which is white. The blue doll's neck cinch is a better match for the art, though, as the illustration doesn't have an outright hangman's noose and looks more like the yarn bow of the blue doll. I wonder if there were two concepts for the hood tie and the blue doll is deliberately trying the version that wasn't realized previously. The drawing's dark hair color and the yarn tie do match the handmade prototype Eggy design, indicating that the yarn tie genuinely is an older idea brought back for the blue suit.

The "body bag" shrouding blue Eggzorcist is not a full enclosure and merely lifts away. In back, it's mostly open and only has a small enclosed section that slips over the head. The doll is wired into the coffin as normal.

The packaging production is matched to the time, with no maddening tissue taped to the coffin walls like Series 1 had. The death certificate is a direct reprint of the Series 1 piece, though, and thus this doll has to be written on my list of exceptions in my FATALogue, as her certificate is not a unique distinguishable design to archive in the pages--another thing that makes her more like a variant doll. Only Series 5 had different certificate prints for variants.

The first copy of Eggy I tried to purchase fell through as so many eBay ventures have recently--the seller refunded me due to no longer having the doll that was listed and I am banging my head against the wall at this happening again and again to me people please keep tabs on your listings and whether they are still viable- That other copy didn't have the body bag to document, though, so perhaps it all worked out.

Here's the doll unboxed next to S1. The three major changes are the colors, the hair shape, and the costume ties.

Blue Eggy, of course, is wearing a sky-blue rabbit suit rather than a white one, which gives her a different take on Easter colors. Her hair has also changed to white with curly bangs, which I think is pivotal in giving her a more old-timey and darling appearance. I like S1 Eggy, but blue Eggy is the one who feels like an actual cherubic bunny child gone astray because her hair can be taken as a natural platinum color for a very young child, and has that toddler wispiness to it as well. She runs on some similar appeal to my adored Quack, animal suit and all!

The hair change for blue Eggy is the most consequential difference in my book, and endears her to me in a whole new way.

Blue Eggy's hood had its ears bent back in packaging, and they don't want to stand up straight as such.

The hood is not sewn to the scalp, unlike with Series 1, and the front of the hood is not closed under the chin, meaning it needs to be more consciously arranged when putting the costume back together. The hood is not tied with a noose, but with a thin white yarn piece which is tied, looped around the neck in both directions, and then tied in a bow. 

S1 Eggy's rabbit ears are a bit more parallel while blue Eggy's form more of a V.

Under the hood, Eggy's hair is a white bob cut similar to her S1 hair, but with fluffier curly bangs. The fiber is pretty erratic and hard to tidy and looks less presentable sans hood than S1 Eggy's.

There are minor facial differences that come solely of the individual copy's execution, but the template/schema and colors are identical. I think the nearly-colorless irises work beautifully with both the white of the hair and blue of the suit.

Eggy's bunny suit is about the same, with pink staining for the belly and a cotton tail on the back. The differences in construction are at the feet. This suit has two more removable yarn bows gathering the ankles tighter, and the foot pads here are white with pleather vinyl fabric, rather than being pink and made of vinyl plastic disks.

I'm sorry to see the pleather foot pads. I thought S1's solution was clever and provided better stability for standing, as well as better longevity.

Pleather foot pads were also done for Return Eggzorcist. 

Not sure if the 10th-anniversary Resurrection-style Eggy had the same. If I ever pursue that doll, I want the wacky green and yellow Japanese edition, but her prices are a bit too rich for my blood.

Blue Eggy's basket is the same color as S1, but the paper grass inside is thicker and bluer, and her cockroach is solid pastel pink rather than brown with the wings painted like an Easter egg.

Here's the Eggzorcists with swapped costumes. The white on white and color on color make some sense, but I like blue Eggy in her own costume more than these swaps or the official S1 design.

I made a token effort to tidy blue Eggy's hair, but mostly just wanted to boil the fabric of her bunny ears and hold them forward with clips so they might be more amenable to facing forward or upright.

The bunny charm I turned into Return Eggzorcist's plush rabbit was a two-pack, so I still had the other one. I did very similar steps to turn it into a bunny for this edition, but dyed it with acrylic paint dilution and tied a yarn bow around, while giving it pink eyes and red smudges all to match blue Eggy. The nose was unstitched from this copy (don't remember when or why), but it looks good.

I added a trimmed Minis noose to the older bunny for some parity.

Of course, all of these LDD Minis came from one place: the second LDD Minis Mausoleum set. 

The Mausoleum sets were repackaged series of LDD Minis in one, with the first Mausoleum containing all of Minis Series 1 (adapting LDD Series 1) and the second containing all of Minis Series 3 (adapting LDD Series 3). No Mausoleum for Series 2. As reason to actually buy these sets, the Mausoleums totaled seven Minis, including two bonus exclusive Minis designs available nowhere else. Mausoleum 1 had Minis of the Sinister Minister and Bad Habit two-pack (adapting the red-mantle versions), while Mausoleum 2 had blue Eggzorcist and red Bedtime Sadie.

As the name implies, the packaging is designed to look like a crypt where the dolls are lined up in a mausoleum's arches. The Minis unique to this sit are placed at the end after the Series 3 dolls. A sticker advertises the mausoleum set as exclusive to Spencer Gifts.

The gargoyle head motifs look somewhat similar to the design on Resurrection-variant Chloe's velvet applique collar many years later.

The box appears to have an original 2003 Spencer's price tag on it, which set the price at $50. That seems a little steep for 2003, but these are seven detailed mini dolls. I'd certainly have been happy to pay this price for these old dolls today, at least.

The sides of the box feature climbing ivy, while the roof has a LDD logo.

The back echoes the arches on the front but fills them with the illustrated portraits of Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3, one group per arch. This makes it odder that Series 2 never got the Mausoleum release format. It could have been a way to provide Minis Schooltime Sadie outside of the stationery set.

Here's the tray the dolls are wired to.

The back includes the noose keychains for each doll, with seven plastic packets conjoined at the seams.

Here's the dolls unboxed. They're a messy bunch, with some grime, decayed elastics, fried hair, and other things to fuss with. Eggy and Sadie can't stand unaided on their fabric footies.

My proper reviews really started after a bit of care, so here we go with the dolls looking more polished.

Schitzo

Schitzo is one of those characters who just barely escaped an uncomfortable roundup.

His name, oddly spelled, is a pejorative for "schizophrenic" and its use here mischaracterizes mental illness as inherently dark or dangerous, while his makeup is patterned off the serial killer John Wayne Gacy's clown character Pogo (who was not used in Gacy's murders; it was just his public-facing vocation). That makes the character feel pretty irresponsible. As an evil clown, though, he's successful. I haven't put him in an uncomfortable roundup, nor do I plan to, because I've discussed LDD offending in the same areas Schitzo does (offensive name, mental illness portrayal, true crime callousness) through other dishonorable dolls, and I have a vision of including Schitzo in a separate double-feature review topic with his girlfriend (perhaps that's a charitable term) Cuddles. When I discuss the clowns' classic dolls, I'm not sure. I'd kind of hoped to talk about Schitzo first through the big doll, but this is how things worked out. Unlike Minis Lulu or Ms. Eerie, this is a Mini I'm getting before the classic doll where I actually wanted the classic doll at the time of getting the Mini first. Mildly frustrating, but I have so many LDD concept posts I want to do that I honestly don't know when I'll actually do the clown one. I just have to take my ideas one at a time and cross them off. Like this post!

Schitzo was the first bald LDD, but he has a tiny black bowler hat mounted askew on that bald head. On the larger doll, I'm pretty sure it's glued, but on this Mini, it plugs in on a small pin that can easily be removed. 

It reminds me of some LEGO or Playmobil accessory parts and I like that this can come out, even though it really doesn't need to. Schitzo's head molding in back had some rough seams that I sanded down, since the mold wasn't designed for bald display. 

Schitzo's face paint, as mentioned, is inspired by John Wayne Gacy's Pogo the Clown.

The blue eye makeup and wide red mouth against white are distinctive influences. Clowns take their makeup individuality seriously, so Schitzo might ruffle some feathers as a plagiarist. Is it bad to steal from a killer if you're also one? Schitzo's makeup adds edgy sketchy marks and sinister swoops lining the eyes, a goatee-like devilish triangle outline under the mouth, and eyebrows which might be intended to look like stitched-up bloody gashes. The design is a little hard to read. His eyes are black voids with white rings, red irises, and white pupils. The Minis toddler-smirk sculpt suits an evil clown. His clown lips came with a flaw, with a textural error and some stray black. I covered up the latter with red paint.

Schitzo's costume is faithful as I expect from Minis, being a baggy black satin clown suit with red velvet ruffles at the neck and cuffs and a vertical line of three red star buttons down the front. I feel like the sleeves are a tad too long here, or else the cuffs are, as Schitzo's hands are easily swallowed up. The suit also needs to velcro tight to make the collar look fitted. The star buttons here are thin sequins while they were plastic on the big doll. They match better than the buttons on the Lottie counterparts, though. Mini Lottie has a different style altogether. One sequin has some red foil nicked away.

The velcro in back did not stick together at all at the top of the column. I glued on a different piece of loop velcro, but the hooks still didn't love that. It works better than before, though.

Schitzo wears the Minis Mary Janes in black because the male formal shoes did not get a Minis mold. I had been sure they did, but it seems not. It was Cuddles who introduced the cartoony clown-shoe sculpt, so S3 Schitzo just wore the boy's shoe. Resurrection Schitzo got to enjoy the clown shoes.

I did some strategic gluing to gather the costume in a few spots in back so it looks a bit better fitted and leaves his hands visible.

Mini Schitzo does not have balloons. The original S3 accessory is notoriously fragile, and I'm surprised LDD didn't use wire for the strings. It also plugs into the hand in a weird way.

A post-S12 doll would certainly have designed a peg of the gathered strings to slip into a gripping hand. 

I tried making a wire piece myself, but had nothing to use for the balloons, so I ordered a pack of dollhouse wire balloons after realizing they came ready-made. 

The balloons seem to be some kind of clay material, with the knots being separate pieces that break off pretty easily and crush into powder. The wire stems had mylar coating which I removed for being messy. I repainted some balloons into Schitzo's designs and dipped them in gloss. One batch failed because the gloss was too heavy and formed milky bumps on top of the balloons, which drip-dried upside down. I was more careful with a new batch and dabbed away excess gloss dripping at the top while they dried. A separate wire piece wraps around the stems to form a loop the hand can slide into.

Mini Schitzo is a pretty good translation, and a very useful prop for a classic LDD kid's bedroom as a little creepy clown doll for the bigger dolls. When I get my Series 31 project together someday, which will involve a bedroom set build, he's absolutely sitting on a shelf or chair. I just wish his suit was sewn a little tighter.

Lilith

Minis Lilith always looked like one of the more awkward dolls to me. I wasn't sold on the Minis screaming face in sculpt or paint, which is a shame because big Lilith is one of my favorite LDD classics.

Here's a closeup of her unboxed state.

Lilith's hair is rooted in the same shape as S3's, with a less prominent and tidy widow's peak. She has some confusing layering in her hair, with some hair on top being cut much shorter to no benefit. 

Lilith's face is painted about the same, but the mouth is clumsy. The red behind the fangs makes it very hard to see she does actually have pointed teeth, and the lip outline looks too thick and cartoony here.

I did some repainting to make the teeth more legible but couldn't do much to make the lipstick and mouth shape more graceful.

Lilith's dress is the same nearly-felt nearly-velvet material as the big doll, and has the same dramatic spiky hem that spreads across the floor--the skirt proportions look more exaggerated and dramatic, actually, which gives her some presence she really needs after her face turned out so awkward.

The dress has a bow on the back like the big doll and opens to that point, needing to slide up the legs rather than opening all the way down like most Minis dresses. 

The collar section is a different, knit material which doesn't look like aged bandages. The dress and torso have no holes and the doll has no stake.

I fixed that myself. The stake is a Playmobil toy drum's drumstick with the ball at the end cut off. 

No Minis version of the pointy boots was made, and Lilith wears the Mary Jane shape rather than the round boots, but the shoes are painted with the same dirty effect as the large doll.

Here's the two Liliths compared. The big doll is an all-time LDD classic in my book. The Mini struggles. The one thing Mini exceeds in is the drama of the skirt. If big Lilith's was a little lower and wider so the points formed a bigger spread across the floor and totally hid her feet, the costume would be improved.

Lottie

My quest to get Lottie back actually inspired this whole post. I figured I might as well get her through the Mausoleum to be able to enjoy even more Minis, and that made me think of the characters as Easter egg prizes!

There's nothing much to say about this doll that I didn't the last time I got her. 

Lottie had way too much hair, even more than my first copy.

On this copy, I not only cut it, but used some glue and fabric glue to flatten down the sides of her bob against her head to better match the silhouette of the larger doll. The hair isn't a solid helmet, but is glued where it needed to be to control the shape. 

Mini Lottie's hair where I left it on the first copy.

The new copy's glue-controlled hair.

Lottie's coat created the same purple stains as the other copy--the coat's can be bleached out, while the body's are stuck. Before trying bleach (which I needed to restock), I tried detergent and warm water, which seemed to lighten the stains in the coat but not remove them. 

Lottie's shoes were firmly fitted and inflexible and I couldn't get them off. With the older Lottie, her shoes were instead pretty soft but felt glued on, and so I gave up on taking those off too (but ultimately was able to; there was no glue.) The ankle paint of Lottie's socks is damaged.

Because I understand how noose knots work now, I did not decapitate this Lottie and replace her neck joint to make her head easier to pop off!

Lottie's ankles have some ugly scuffing.

One thing to note about this mausoleum set involves joint issues. The shoulder swivel rotation is pretty loose across the board, and I had to try working glue in slowly or stuffing putty into the sockets to tighten them, with Lottie's right arm being the worst. The hip joints were also pretty stiff and had to be cracked back into motion, though there was no melted or fused plastic immobilizing them.

I'm glad to be able to put my LDD Lotties to rest now with both in good standing! 

While I'd love to mock up Lottie's parasol in Mini scale, it would probably have to be a permanently open sculpted model since working pieces aren't made this size. Playmobil sculpted pieces are too small for her. 

There really is just something special about this unassuming character design. She's one of my favorite Minis to just throw into a pocket or pose around my desk.

Sheena 

Sheena is a punk rocker (that's where she got her name) and isn't a doll I've ever really wanted. She's certainly interesting, though.

Sheena was the first LDD with flocking to simulate cropped or shaved hair, which is used for her very strange hairdo of an almost entirely shaved scalp of black hair. Her only rooted hair is two long bang sections of red at the front, which are fairly fried here. 

Sheena's flocking is a little worn in back.

Sheena ended up the only Mini in this set with disfiguring vinyl yellowing on her face.

Her faceup replicates the large doll's, with harsh eyebrows whose swoops are filled in by grey shading, black lips, dramatic spiky eyeliner and lashes and black bags under the red eyes with yellow irises and red pupils.

Sheena's other novelty was being the first LDD with piercings, and I'm surprised to see the Mini replicating them with tiny rings pierced into her ears and lip. Minis Lulu did not replicate her larger counterpart's piercings, but I'm glad Minis Sheena did!

Sheena's costume starts with a leather jacket, emblazoned with the green slogan "PUNK'S NOT DEAD" on the back. 

Unfortunately, the leather effect started peeling the instant I struggled to pull the sleeve back on when redressing the doll. It was never going to last. I resolved to peel it, try repainting the jacket with dimensional fabric paint to mimic some of the old finish, while repainting the text. The jacket has a simulated zipper but no functional closure. The collar is unfinished fabric which frayed and needed trimming.

Under the jacket, Sheena wears a white tee with the red slogan "No future! under a red vinyl suspender skirt. 

This is all one piece on the Mini, and opens all the way down the back. This makes dressing a bit annoying and confusing with the suspender straps, as they form an X in back. 

The shirt sleeves are fraying from the allowances behind the seam finishing, and the pleather skirt is liable to peel in time as well. I coated it in glossy fabric glue, but not before marring the color with a black paint stain I couldn't wipe off on the hip. Oh, well. I do think this is a really cool outfit. Sheena feels like a classic punk in the formative UK scene.

Original Sheena has a necklace the Mini omits. 

Sheena is my first LDD Mini with the Minis round boots, replicating the original design. Her painted-on socks are black to match the mesh socks the original doll wore.

Sheena has no spiked bat accessory, and I didn't care to make her one.

Here's the doll with the jacket fixes and skirt preservation. The skirt is messier now because the gloss got particles in it, and the jacket continued to shed even after I thought I'd scrubbed it and painted it well. Ugh. At least, the painted motto on the back looks more authentic with real paint, and I put a touch more design into it while adding an apostrophe.

Sheena is so close to being one of the most impressive Minis, but she's too clunky for this scale and is set up to fail with her clothing materials aging atrociously. She's my worst experience from this collection.

Bride of Valentine

This doll is pretty one-to-one with the original, just without the heart.

The face paint is a good match, though the edges of the scars are more periwinkle than grey here. I'm impressed with them being completely depicted, though.

The dress is another strong match, and the Bride has the gauze applications on her limbs and boots which nicely re-create the original doll.

Probably the best piece for a Minis-scale anatomical heart would be the one which came with the Monster High Skullector Beetlejuice Beetlejuice set...which I didn't get.

Variant Bedtime Sadie (Redtime Sadie?)

Bedtime Sadie started off exclusive to LDD Minis, but did not remain so, as she got her full-size counterpart in Series 7. Redtime Sadie, however, remained exclusive to Minis and this mausoleum set, with no matching variant of the full-size S7 doll being made. With this red and black color swap, it's a little surprising this is just a Bedtime Sadie variant rather than being a Bedtime Sin design. You could even use the pajamas' butt flap for her tail!

The two Bedtime Sadies are a bit different as base dolls. Standard Sadie has wavier hair texture, and it feels a bit messier, and the Redtime color-match from head to body feels much stronger. My copy of black Bedtime Sadie is repainted from the neck down because it was so poorly-matched by the factory. Redtime Sadie's hair is minimally unruly and her bangs are tidier. It's truly some of the nicest Minis hair I've encountered. She also doesn't have forehead stains from her costume. My repainted Sadie in the red costume would make an excellent Bedtime Sin custom Mini base since her wavier hair corresponds to the differences between S1 Sadie and Sin, and she's a junky copy anyhow on account of the necessary repaint. I can put the black costume on the Redtime base doll for a better copy of Minis Bedtime Sadie. If I can get a devil tail and some horns to turn the first copy into Sin, she can wear the red pajamas (and I wouldn't cut holes in the hat for the horns because it's important to preserve the piece.)

Redtime Sadie has the same pajama butt flap, which is more aesthetic than practical. It does open, but it closes with velcro squares that leave the doll totally covered even when the flap is down.

Blue Eggzorcist

I don't know if this Mini's release is generous or mean. She's Mezco's mass-market edition of the blue design of the character, but she could feel like a mockery rather than a consolation for certain fans disappointed by the scarcity of the blue doll. She released in the same year as the big blue Eggy, so I don't know how shared their exact release time was--who came first?

This is my first Minis Eggzorcist.

The doll uses pink glossy applique for the lining of the ears and the pink belly patch, rather than fabric staining the way the larger doll used. 

Like the big blue Eggy, the hood is not held closed in front, and only held into shape by the yarn bow tying the neck. The hood is not sewn to the head, another change since S1 that is shared with the big blue Eggy. 

Minis S1 Eggzorcist used the noose keychain as the costume noose element, rather than having an awkward two-noose situation, but her hood looks shaped in place even without having a noose as part of her keychainless look. 

Eggy's hair under the hood is as expected. 

Minis Blue Eggzorcist changes the face design a bit by turning the sclerae black when the original doll's eyes were just like S1 with white sclerae. 

This makes the Mini version look a touch more demonic and supernatural. It's an unusual touch, and the only time I think a Minis design outright changed a face paint detail rather than executing the face paint in a weaker form like Lulu did. Mini Lulu did outright change a different paint detail, but not on the face--Mini Lulu's tattoo is different from the big Lulu's.

Eggy's yarn tie was knotted once, then the length was wrapped around the neck once on each end before tying in a bow, just like the big doll. At this scale, I couldn't replicate this tie myself, so I retied it in a bow with no wrapping the tails around the neck first. 

Eggy's onesie has poorly-defined sleeves, making her look a bit like a flying squirrel when her arms are spread. 

She cannot stand whatsoever on her fabric footies at this scale. She needs a doll stand. 

She still has a bunny tail!

Mini Eggy's foot ties were overly long to make them tie-able. Since I don't intend to take her out of the onesie, I trimmed the tails short.

Here's the two dolls together.

I feel like every discussion of the LDD Minis ends basically the same way: I find them delightful and impressive with their small size, articulation, faces, and 80+% faithful adherence to the design and manufacturing of the larger dolls they're adapting. I love a pocket-sized doll you can just bring with you to fiddle around with, and if I was onto this hobby much younger, I'd probably have some LDD Minis friends to take on adventures to the playground in the way I did with many LEGO Minifigures at the time. (Not that I'd be allowed them, because they're so edgy!) They really are little marvels in their execution. The tiny piercings on Sheena are really the most. This mausoleum set gave me some issues in terms of quality and aging. The joints had some loose shoulder swivels, Sheena has two decayable pleather fabrics and arrived with yellowing, and the hair hasn't held up the best and has some disappointing choppy layering on the longer cuts. Some of the design is flawed. Schitzo's costume needed a bit of pinching and gathering to sit like it was truly sewn for him, and Eggy's yarn ties are awkward at this scale, particularly on the ankles. Lilith's face isn't the most successful, either, and looks clunkier. Her fangs are harder to read with the reduced size and depth of the mouth sculpt. I also feel like her lack of a stake is a shame, so I fixed that. 

Redtime Sadie, however, turned out to be a base doll of superior quality to my standard Bedtime Sadie Mini. For now, I've swapped the black pajamas onto the Redtime base to have an ideal copy of Mini Bedtime Sadie, and I've put the red costume into Mini Sadie's wardrobe until such a time as I make over my first copy into a custom Bedtime Sin doll.

Because my LDD Minis collection is now significantly larger, I had to expand my display space for them. Any Minis can live in Sadie's dollhouse whenever they please, but to have them outside, I had a little house-shaped wall shelf to store them on the wall above the dollhouse in the basement. 

This was too small after the mausoleum, so I repainted the larger, different house-shaped shelf I mocked up in retro style for last year's Christmas decor. You saw the shelf in my main-edition Nohell review.

I do like that paint job, but it was a little shaky once I put the red designs in, and it's overall not useful for year-round display, so I easily transformed it. I made the cells all LDD pink while the front of the walls and the exterior are all black. Some black errors got into the pink, but so be it. A Minis chipboard labels the shelf. 

One Mini can lie prone in the "attic" while several others can stand in the rectangular cells. My Ms. Eerie must sit because the BJD mini body I rebuilt her on makes her too tall.

Not pictured: Minis Isabel, whose head got destroyed. She had disintegrating hair when I got her, and then received a poor reroot from me, so I need a new copy to reinstate her in my collection. Mini Eggy can store with blue Eggy in the off months.

The smaller shelf is still in place for overflow from the larger shelf. The complexity of the shaping of the smaller piece discourages a repaint to match the big shelf with pink interiors because the roof and base overhang the interior of the cells, and the windows make things messier when color-blocking. I just left it black. Schitzo's balloons go in the attic of Sadie's dollhouse since they're not conducive for shelf display.

I don't do photoshoots for Minis dolls usually, and I'm not starting now, so I just did some pieces with the Eggys. I liked the challenge of sincere Easter pastels and plausible vintage decor photos mixed with the unholy macabre of the dolls at hand--horror photos that pass by on a first glance, but are definitely sinister with a clearer look.

And Mini Eggy in the greenery that exists right now.

Here's all of the Eggzorcists I have, plus the mini plush bunnies I made for them.

I probably like Return more than blue Eggy, because she's so complex and versatile for display and photos. I think I was expecting to be a bit more enchanted by the blue doll, but results were probably always going to be limited by the subject matter versus my personal tastes. I still like her a lot, and more than the original.

This was a fun little project. Given a sufficiently private, complex outdoor space, I'd have had a better time staging an egg hunt, even with pictures to show a full view and "how many do you see in this photo?" setup for more engagement on the reader's part, but it was still a cute bit of theater to set up. Easter isn't my holiday, nor should it be, all things considered, but I'm glad to have tried this concept out and crossed it off my list (pun not intended.) The Minis are also nice to have around, and I'm glad to have Lottie back. 

Sadie's deathday is approaching. Here's hoping I get that all sorted out!