It's April 26, and you know what that means: it's Sadie's deathday!
Warning for very irreverent use of grim imagery.
There it is all marked on her calendar.
And doesn't she look excited!
Hm.
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| -Oh...you're here. Sorry, there's no party today. |
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| -My unbeating heart just isn't in it. Decorating didn't really get me in the mood... |
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| -And I already told them to leave. |
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| -I don't know. The deathdays started out alright. They used to be wonderful. |
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| -But I've had so, so, many deathdays. More deathdays than birthdays! |
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| -...and one unbirthday. That was nice. |
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| -At this point, I'm just not even sure what I see in the mirror... |
It's My Party, and I'll Die if I Want To: Sweet 16 Sadie
Sweet 16 Sadie is the mascot of Series 28, designed to honor sixteen years of Living Dead Dolls. It was her sweet sixteen of being a doll character in the real world, but as far as her character backstory goes (at least, the Series 1 version's backstory!) her sweet sixteen deathday anniversary would have been the year 1985, seeing as her Series 1 deathdate was in 1969. Bedtime and Schooltime have different deathdates, each different from Series 1 Sadie's. Celebrating, Resurrection, and Series 35 keep the Series 1 date. Sadie aside, the four other Series 28 dolls are new characters (I've already reviewed Tina Pink for my own birthday last year). Sweet 16 is is Sadie's fourth of five main-series appearances (four more than any other character got) and her third redesign to be based on a themed context after Schooltime and Bedtime Sadie. Most of Sadie's series dolls are early, in the range between Series 1 and 7, so 28 is a late recurrence for Sadie in the numbered series. Sadie's final classic series doll was the Resurrection-style release in the "mystery doll" pool of Series 35, where she or one of five other redesigned classic characters in the Resurrection style could be the fifth in any set of Series 35 dolls purchased direct through Mezco.
Despite being the center of Series 28, Sadie is also the odd one out, as the four new characters have more of a structure. Each is stark white of skin and individually themed with a color they're in some way named for, with Ruby being red like the gemstones she ate and shares a name with; Hayze being all purple (as a pun on Jimi Hendrix's song "Purple Haze"); Onyx being black and white, with her name referring to black and white two-tone onyx stones; and Tina Pink being directly named for her color and following from Tina Black, who was inspired by the same person known to the creators. Sadie here is stark white and matches the others well enough, but her color palette isn't distinct from the group and isn't clearly built on a color concept in the same way. It must come of being a character originally designed for a different purpose and not named for a color. If I'd wanted to balance Sadie more, I'd maybe have made Onyx more black instead of split black-and-white and let Sadie represent white in the group. Her variant has inverted costume colors that remind me of Lottie, and maybe that could have been the main dress instead? I can't complain, though. The doll we have is nice.
Sweet 16 Sadie was the first doll I ordered, and I staggered the dates so they wouldn't all arrive at once...but the two guests came first and Sadie arrived last. Behind-the-scenes did not reflect the story presentation!
My copy was sealed.
While I had felt Sadie had an unclear color theme in her series, it seems LDD have coded her as representing the color black, since her chipboard has different (and fewer) colors than Tina Pink's!
Ruby's board uses red elements, and Hayze's uses purple, while Onyx's mixes black and white, since Onyx represents both shades in contrast. Sadie's is clearly assigning just black as her color, for however much Sadie also pretty clearly contrasts black and white.
The chipboard poem says:
A bittersweet sixteen
Being the living dead
Sadie can cry at her party
Or so it's been said
I had already guessed by her bizarrely morose appearance and bleeding makeup that Sadie's design was referencing the Lesley Gore song "It's My Party", and this poem seems to confirm. "It's My Party" was a 1960s hit sung by a teenage Gore, with the songwriter (who wasn't Lesley Gore) inspired by his daughter's heartbreak at her sweet 16 party. That already lines up with Sadie, and the clincher is the song's famous refrain: "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to". The last line of the chipboard poem alludes to that very lyric and it all explains why Sadie is weeping. (Lesley Gore herself identified as a lesbian and would come out publicly later in life, leaving her a somewhat inauthentic singer for the song, but she wasn't known as such at the time, and interpretations that 60s Gore was deliberately singing it to interpret the singer as pining for the new girlfriend are probably not accurate.)
Also, as I wrote her musing about above, Sadie's poem alludes to her crying because a deathday anniversary is a melancholic thing for somebody who could have had living birthdays in their place. It's oddly poignant for LDD and Sadie herself. Who'd have thought she'd ever have insecurities and regrets about being dead?
Here's a rewrite.
Once her deathdays outnumbered her birthdays
A bittersweet sixteen was had
It's her party and she'll cry if she wants to
'Cause being dead for so long is just sad
While the other Series 28 "invitation" certificates combine the deathdates and the poems by working the dates into the verse, Sadie's doesn't, leaving this edition with no concrete deathdate. Her invitation has no border around, or else it has a black border that can't be seen. Tina Pink had a pink border on her invitation, and I'm sure Onyx's is white, Ruby's is read, and Hayze's is purple.
It's odd to me that the text and colors of the S28 invitations change, but the photo shows Sadie on each rather than the doll in question each time.
The Sadie invitation poem says:
The very first one of many to come
Sixteen years later, a party for some
When she died, there wasn't much of a care
Now she does what no one would dare.
I don't understand the last line. I need concrete verbs, please. How about:
The first of an unearthly horde of dead dolls
Now hosting a dastardly party--for some.
For sixteen long years now she's haunted these halls
So forgive her now, please, if she starts to look glum.
Here she is unboxed. She had an elastic tying her hair in a ponytail for packaging.
Sweet 16 Sadie's design is not a direct follow-up from any previous doll, but similar to Return Sadie, seems to be a concerted homage to traits of previous dolls, befitting the anniversary occasion. The 13th-anniversary birthday Sadie was just a reimagining of the Series 1 look alone. Sweet 16's party crown and lack of the Series 1 accessory set removes her in my eyes, from being a "basic" edition in the way Series 1, Resurrection, and Return are. Series 35's Resurrection-style Sadie is another party-themed edition with an eye design and dress similar to Celebrating Sadie, but she also has the classic accessories and no party hat or crown, making her count as a "basic" edition as well as a party one. Sweet 16 without the crown and with the classic accessories would be more of a basic edition in the club with S1/Res/S35/Return. As such, I'd say there are four basic Sadies (Series 1, Resurrection, Series 35, Return) and three party anniversary Sadies (Celebrating, Sweet 16, S35), with S35 in both categories.
Sadie has the LDD spiky tiara, with the first I got being on the Queen of Hearts Inferno doll.
When I got Inferno, I made some errors in my assessment of the crown. Because the shape was pinched, I thought the peg holes for the crown were placed wrong in the doll's scalp, and the crown was deformed by pushing the crown until the pegs fit into the wrongly-placed holes. I also thought there were three crown pegs--two on the sides and one on the back of the ring opposite the skull decoration. (I never actually said there were three pegs in Inferno's Wonderland review, but that was my thought then.) Not so. Sadie shows me the crown is just shaped like that, and there are only the two pegs on the sides. Checking Inferno again proves her crown was manufactured and placed correctly--just with glue in the hair when securing the pegs in the scalp, and the spikes being bent. I went back to edit the Inferno review as such. Sadie's crown spikes stand up better and more legibly than Inferno's, and her crown is glued in, but didn't saturate the hair around the pegs with glue.
Sadie's hair is black and center-parted like usual, though it's not as long and straight as the prototype photo made it look.
I could work with the waves, but the intended design is straighter. Not expecting the best texture results.
Sadie's face doesn't much resemble the Series 1 doll, but it has the same crisp cartoony rendering style. My copy has significant paint errors, unfortunately.
Multiple prior Sadies seem folded into this design, similar to what I saw in the Return doll in a different way. Here, the pink eye makeup is rather Series 1, while the Manson forehead scar is directly from Series 2/Schooltime, and the two pale eyes could be influenced by Schooltime's matching white irises. Sweet 16's eyes are subtly mismatched, though, with her left eye being blue like Celebrating Sadie (Series 35 would do the same later). Both Celebrating and S35 have a Series 1-style black eye with white pupil on the other side, though. The stark white skintone is shared with the two variants of Resurrection Sadie. The facial expression is unique here, with upturned eyebrows and a frowning lip paint, plus streaky runs in the eyeshadow to make this Sadie look very sad. There's some grey around the eye inside the pink, but my Sadie has missing black paint on her left pupil and some other skips and misses with the paint colors. Shame. I can fix the pupil, at least.
This version of Sadie's costume is another take on the classic Wednesday-esque dress, and is arguably one of the Sadie costumes to be constructed the closest to the Lisa Loring TV version of Wednesday's costume.
The Sweet 16 outfit has a distinctive cut, being the only version of the Sadie look to take the form of a coatdress. It's tailored around the waist with a flare at the hips, and has a lobed white collar, decorative buttons dotted down the front, and a ribbon bow tied between the collar lobes. The fabrics are the same fleece as the Series 1 Sadie, Sin, and Damien dolls wore, and while it's a cute throwback, I kind of wish nicer fabrics had been used instead. I think the outfit is too detailed and tailored to use the retro simple fabric of the old dolls. The velcro is one-sided, with the hook strip applying directly to the bare fleece on the opposite panel.
Sadie's coatdress is her only clothing layer, and she has typical LDD white socks and black Mary Janes.
I took Sadie's hair to boil and painted in her left pupil.
Here's some portraits.
She's really endearing. I tend to gravitate to the most downtrodden, heartbroken Living Dead Dolls with a protective instinct. It's unusual to see Sadie looking sad, but it activates an affectionate impulse. The doll is really pretty, too, and her felt costume has its charms.
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| -That's enough gazing at myself...though I do look very pitiful. |
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| -I was just writing a sign to put on my door so I won't have any other "guests". I should hang it right away- *knock knock* |
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| -What is that- |
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| -Yoo-hoo! I have ARRIVED! -Curse my existence. |
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| -Heeeyyyy, girlfriend! So delighted to be celebrating your deathday! Oh, look! You wore a crown just like me! Haha, it's almost like I'm the deathday girl! -You wish, don't you? Go to Heaven, Deadbra Ann. -No, I think I'll stay. |
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| -Now, where should I put this gift--oh, that's perfect! -No! I want you to leave! -The door's open! Quick! |
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| -NO! -Hello, Sadie! -Hello, Sadie. -Gifts are in here, girls! -Why are you here??? -We got the invitations. -Invitations??? Wait, did you-? |
What? Sadie, what are you looking at me for???
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| Well...I guess I have a party. |
Deadbra Ann was unfashionably early, proud as ever, and let in more guests that Sadie didn't want...but hey...Sadie knew her from school.
(Prom) Queen of the Dead: Deadbra Ann
Series 2 was bound to get me eventually. Out of a cast of "eh", Deadbra Ann rose to the top as a genuinely interesting doll. Series 2 was loosely themed as a school concept, coinciding with the release of the "back to school" stationery set...because LDD still believed they were fine for eight-year-olds at this time and blissfully sold gory horror to an ill-advised demographic. In the Series 2 collection, we had Schooltime Sadie, cheerleader Kitty, and prom queen Deadbra Ann, but snazzy devil Lou Sapphire worked fine enough in the setting and prim Lizzie Borden could be posed as a nightmare vintage schoolteacher. Series 2 didn't have special packaging branding for a school theme, nor a series subtitle, making its theming less overt than later series would have. Series 5 was the first true themed series. Series 2 overall has a predominant red and black goth aesthetic with Kitty, Lizzie, and Lou, and I don't adore S2 Sadie, though I'll probably end up getting her someday as my horde of Sadies inexorably runs through her major releases. Deadbra Ann sticks out successfully to me for having a pretty outfit and a less starkly stylized color scheme (though still quite red), and I've grown to love her face paint. While the crown and sash made me think she was a good party doll for this roundup, I worried it would be too redundant...then I reasoned that an evil prom queen who got mauled by rivals might be just the kind of person to try to upstage the birthday girl at her party.
Deadbra Ann's name is a retro or Southern-style compound first name, inserting "Dead" into the more normal name "Debra Ann", with "Debra" itself being a variant of "Deborah". "Dead" fits neater into tbe spelling "Debra", though the goofy morbid pun does technically deprive the character of the typical nicknames "Debbie" or "Deb". She'd have to be "Deddie" or "Ded", or maybe just "Dee" or "D.A.".
As a spooky prom queen, Deadbra Ann seems to take a bit from the most famous horror-prom story in Stephen King's Carrie (and Brian de Palma's classic film adaptation), though her gory zombie look is significantly distant from a telekinetic bullied girl who was humiliated by having blood poured over her. Resurrection-variant Deadbra Ann is a direct Carrie homage, however, being unharmed and mostly alive-looking with blood cascading down her.
This doll is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, of all Living Dead Dolls on the aftermarket. I gather she was exceptionally scarce? She is a really cool doll, and I'd be proud to have her even if she wasn't an inherent bragging right, but yeah, no. Nobody who owns and has listed the doll is ever likely to actually sell her for what they're asking, unless there are billionaires in the LDD collector sphere who wouldn't even notice the cost.
Here's the Series 2 coffin!
This doll now means I have at least one doll from Series 1-18, and the only series I've yet to collect from now are Series 19, 20, 21, 30, and 35. (I have made progress behind the scenes on the eventual Series 31 and 34 projects, but haven't fast-tracked either. I'd love to put together the mega-project for the S31 this year if possible, though.)
Deadbra Ann's chipboard art depicts her sans crown, and the anatomy of her facial wound is a bit wonky, looking flat as if it extends sideways rather than wrapping around her cheek.
Not sure if the crownless look is part of an old design draft where she didn't have one, or if it's to make her fit better in the frame. The chipboard poem is in the classic early-LDD "doll includes:" style, saying:
Our prom queen comes
With a bouquet and tiara
Risen from the dead
And ready to scare ya.
I'm glad they stopped capitalizing non-proper nouns in the Series 2 poems. This one only rhymes if you pronounce "tiara" super American, though. How about:
Prom queen of the dead
With her crown and bouquet
All red as blood
And pale as decay.
Deadbra Ann died on March 13, 1973, specifically at 7:14 PM. I'm not sure if there's a thematic purpose behind this date. The novel and first film of Carrie followed this date, so it's not a match to either.
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| The names on the Series 2 certificates are quite large, like Series 1's. |
The poem says:
Maimed by jealous rivals on prom night
Turned queen to carcass by morning light
Deadbra Ann is back without a breath
To turn each night into a dance of death
How about:
Last year she was killed after winning the crown
By rivals who hated her--they did quite a job
Now she returns to her school with a frown
To ruin the prom night--a grim danse macabre.
Series 2 already cleaned up its act by ceasing the practice of taping the tissue liner of the doll tray to the coffin's inner walls--thank goodness. Here's the doll unboxed.
Deadbra Ann has the first use of the spiky tiara crown in the brand, and it's flexible vinyl...but has some differences from my Inferno crown beyond the color.
It's a tad firmer material-wise, with much neater spikes, and isn't glued in! Inferno and Sadie's crowns both are.
I don't know if the crown being loose was the norm for S2 Deadbra Ann or if I got lucky somehow, but it definitely doesn't seem as if mine ever had once had glue that no longer bonds the crown. I'm leaning toward it never being glued. That would explain the decayed elastic that was around her head for packaging. Sadie and Queen Inferno had no such thing, and their crowns are glued. I got Deadbra Ann before Sweet 16 Sadie in my behind-the-scenes timeline, so this was actually the doll which made me check Inferno and realize that her crown not only wasn't deformed, but also only had two crown pegs.
The doll's hair is light brown leaning reddish blonde, which I greatly appreciate, and has a nice color blend with strong highlights evenly mixed in.
Had her hair been black, she'd have looked too similar to the other S2 dolls, and as with dolls like Agatha and Gretchen, I like the choice of a less stark hair color to make this doll less stylized. The hair has rounded bangs and is cut with shorter sections in front, and the same length layered over the back. It's meant to be above the shoulder and long down the back, but doesn't sit that way as-is.
Deadbra Ann was the second LDD to use the torn-cheek face sculpt, and the first within the numbered series.
Doom, the wedding groom, narrowly preceded her in the exclusives. She's my second swivel-body doll with the sculpt after Honey, and I have the ball-joint remake thanks to the Ember variants. I really like the way Deadbra Ann's cheek wound is painted, featuring strings of skintone spanning the wet red gash which create the illusion of gaps in stretched skin between the top and bottom. That's something no other LDD with this sculpt has done. The bloody wound is glossy and gross, and drips down her chin and ear, though the shading is too much under her lips, and I want to wipe some off so the "clean" side has more contrast. I wish this paint was a little crisper since it has some blurring that hurts the look a bit in my eyes, but it's very cool.
It's also absolutely inappropriate for LDD's target age demo at this time. This was the brief early period where LDD made the very ill-advised attempt to set 8 years as their recommended age minimum despite their horror content being too extreme, and Deadbra Ann is a prime example. Fortunately, the brand wised up with Series 3 onward being set at a minimum age recommendation of 15.
Deadbra Ann's eyes are totally flat blue in classic LDD cartoony style and she has fluttery-looking lashes painted on her upper lid area. Her eyebrows match her hair and have a harsh swoop, while the smudgy eye shading technique introduced by S2 sinks her sockets in with purple coloring. The lips that survived her mutilation are black with blurry purple around the edges. The paint totally obscures the neutral-to-smiling shape of the intact side of the sculpt and sells the frowning expression perfectly. Dee's skintone is a very pale neutral grey color, with dark washing bringing out the texture of the gory sculpt. I think this face design does a great job of contrasting gloomy glam with zombie gore, and I prefer any mutilated doll to have the attitude to push the horror into camp. "So what if I'm ripped open and bloody? I'm still a beauty queen!"
Deadbra Ann wears a prom sash over her shoulder, which is a ribbon emblazoned with the words "Danse Macabre", tying into her certificate poem naming the "dance of death".
This is a fairly high-brow citation, as Danse Macabre refers to an artistic movement with the theme of memento mori--reminding the audience of mortality and the inevitability of death. Danse Macabre works feature imagery of the dead dancing and reveling and leading the living to the grave. The name is also the title of a famous orchestral piece, in case you wanted to imagine a specific song Deadbra Ann's dance floor might be moving to. It's not exactly what teens would be likely to groove to, but I love the song. Maybe today, she'd be moving to Gaga's musically-unrelated "The Dead Dance", though the refrain "dancing until I'm dead" is a bit surpassed by an actually dead girl on the floor! The sash is sewn to the dress in one spot, on the right shoulder, and cannot open at any point. It inhibits undressing. I had to pop one leg out to take the costume off. Deadbra Ann laying claim to the sash and tiara look as a prom queen is probably why LDD never did a beauty-queen doll, since pageantry and prom result in a lot of visual overlap in costumes.
I'd never had a good idea of what material the dress was before, but now I know it's a slightly rumply fabric--not sure the name, but it's fancy-looking and old-fashioned without being satin. The dress is all burgundy like deep blood, with lace trim around the collar, waist, and hem. A white rosette sits on her left collar. A ribbon belt also trims the waist, and the sleeves are kinda doubled with armhole loops as well as hidden ribbon straps which the arms slide through first.
The dress nearly reaches the floor, and so I was pleasantly surprised by her shoes--LDD Mary Janes in a unique red tone to match!
Deadbra Ann must be the first LDD to wear the Mary Janes sockless, perhaps as a token effort at a party shoe look, but she'd have benefited from being released once the sandal mold was in production. The lack of socks was an unpleasant surprise to counter the shoes' color being a nice one. The shoes are loose on her as would be expected without socks, but I've had LDDs worse at standing in shoes with socks--including number three in this post!
Deadbra Ann has the LDD bouquet piece, which has white roses splattered red with blood.
I'm honestly surprised this piece and paint weren't reused directly for either the Alice or Red Queen dolls in the LDD in Wonderland line because it's quite similar to the white rose bushes getting painted red. Series 2 also addressed some issues with Series 1 by adding the palm-peg accessory system, including a speedy remold of the bouquet that had no peg in Series 1, where it appeared with Sadie. It seems the peg system was already in development by the time Japan got their copies of Series 1, as the Japanese release of the S1 dolls has palm piercings, though the accessories are exactly the same as the original Series 1 pieces, with no pegs added.
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| Japanese S1 Damien compared to non-Japanese Sadie and Eggzorcist. |
Lizzie Borden's axe also debuted with the palm peg, though Lou Sapphire's cane provided no way for it to be securely held by the doll. Nor sure if Penny and Schooltime Sadie's cleavers had a peg, but Red Riding Hood's version of the piece didn't, as she has a gripping hand from later in the brand.
For a prom queen, I'd love a longer bouquet sculpt with a paper wrap design to really look like prize flowers, but I can probably make such a piece myself with craft-store wire flowers and paper. I think Dee's flowers are still good.
Deadbra Ann has black fingernail polish.
Deadbra Ann's hair fiber is not great quality and not especially orderly, but looks leagues better boiled into shape, and this is where I really start to love this doll. She's stunning.
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| Shading reduced under her lip as well. |
While I prefer Series 2 and Resurrection-variant Deadbra Ann, her Resurrection main is a respectably gnarly design that adapts the spirit of the original. Her gore detail includes several patches of exposed bone!
Deadbra Ann is only tangential to Carrie, so I didn't feel obligated to reference Brian de Palma's film with her photos, and I knew her origin story would be different. If I somehow had the Res-variant doll, we'd be going full de Palma, but here, I figured, in order to not have to edit her costume, she would have been killed at a horror-themed prom event that turned genuinely gory when a slasher attacked from behind the stage curtain. I staged Deadbra Ann in a position where I felt the lighting was even enough on her face, while Return Sadie holds Gluttony's knife from the black curtain layer, only visible by her hand.
I then did some photo edits to copy and mirror the intact side of her face and clean up her gory texture while letting her keep a goth makeup look for the prom theme. It's fascinating "de-ghoulifying" a doll design like Deadbra Ann's. This hypothetical "before" looks so different!
Here's some more portraits.
I turned the last one into a yearbook photo.
When I did the Sadie Alice dolls, I found a white rose paper pattern and splattered it red. I knew that would be perfect for this doll, too, but I turned it into a photo-op prom backdrop with red bloody streamers, taking it to the level beyond just using the blank paper as a portrait background.
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| I used the crown peg to keep her hair swept out of her wound! |
Then I staged a dance floor on my kitchen floor, using a black blanket to remove the background once I had my setup. Photo edits added the fog.
And some more shots in this scene.
I surprised myself with this doll pick. I'd thought she'd be my concession to Series 2, the doll from the series to finally enter that space and give it a try, but I like her far more than just being "the only Series 2 doll I could justify". I think she's a pitch-perfect goth horror prom queen design. Her colors are perfect, her paint and shock factor are strong, and her costume and accessories are nice, with her removable tiara and functional bouquet peg being very nice to see. My only issues are her hair quality, which is typical, her shoes being loose, and her dress not being conducive to dressing and undressing thanks to the sewn closed sash. Otherwise, I think she's a really strong character design with rotten glam and attitude.
Sadie's door knocked again.
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| -The great GreGORY? - [...] - Hey, eyes down here! Happy deathday, dollface! I'm yer entertainment! |
And just like that, all eyes were on GreGORY.
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| -...so I says, "that's up to the big guy attached to my back!" And he says...nothing! -[...] |
Everybody, Give Him a Hand: GreGORY
The third doll was difficult to choose. I could have picked another character Sadie appeared in a series with, so someone else from Series 2 or a non-Series 1 edition of one of her Series 1 castmates. Celebrating Sin would be an obvious pick, but I just don't want her. When thinking of entertainers, I could have picked Schitzo the clown, who comes with balloons, but I'd prefer to get him for a review alongside Series 12 Cuddles. What about another guest from Sadie's canonical party in Series 28? I wasn't going to throw all of Series 28 together all of a sudden and I don't feel certain I want them all, and decided not to further the S28 collection this time. That left me with GreGORY.
This is a doll I've been interested for a while. I've discussed this horror ventriloquy archetype before. While intended to be a fun amusement, and relying upon genuine talent and skill, ventriloquy, like clowning, is a trade long saddled with a reputation for being uncanny and unsettling. The art of throwing your voice into a toy with a creepy doll design and an inhuman puppet jaw is easy to see as more ghostly than whimsical, and the idea that the dummy of the duo truly is its own sentient entity has taken off for horror purposes, either through depicting the dummy as fully autonomous and inhabited by a spirit, or by depicting the dummy as an aspect of the ventriloquist's personality split off into the avatar of the dummy as a distinct being. This Living Dead Doll mixes the supernatural terror with an oddly bloody twist. The way GreGORY's name is rendered is no coincidence!
I tried to stagger these orders out over a few days so they wouldn't all arrive at once. Didn't work. The big dolls all came the same day! My copy of Greg is unsealed but otherwise untouched.
GreGORY's shoes were off in the coffin, though not because they were supposed to be. The dummy is packaged separately in the front, wired down around the neck and ankles by Greg's right side.
Here's his chipboard.
The poem says:
Gregory the ventriloquist
Had an act that was rather crummy
Through one of fate's little twists
It is now he who is the dummy
And a rewrite:
Gregory the ventriloquist
Was losing cash at lightning speed
He couldn't book a theater
His act was really crummy.
He looked into the darker arts
And found his doll a voice from Hell
He grew in fame but lost control
He really was a dummy.
GreGORY died on July 1, 1956, close to the date of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's final performance of The Charlie McCarthy Show on the radio.
I frankly can't believe a ventriloquist radio show ever got greenlit for one episode, as half of the novelty is lost without the visible live performance to really prove one's skill. I'm sure the recordings had a live audience watching the legit act, but at-home viewers could have easily been listening to a voice actor alone in a room with no puppet, for all they knew. I guess the comedy was good enough for radio by itself, but it's an odd idea. I wouldn't want to watch an orchestra performance on a TV with the volume off.
The certificate poem drops a bit of a spoiler and says:
With a gag over his mouth and a chopped off hand
The great GreGORY has lost all control
He channeled the dead through his dummy
And they are taking over his mind, body and soul
And a rewrite.
His dummy speaks clear while poor GreGORY's gagged
And he's really lost all his control
He asked for a demon to talk through his doll
And it cost him a hand and a soul.
Here's the unboxed doll(s).
GreGORY has a vintage formal look fit for performing at a theater hall. His hairstyle gives him an early 20th-century look or older, maybe a bit of Poe or Houdini, and his colors are mostly muted.
The doll's hair is curly and black with pretty visible gaps in rooting rows. I gather there's no one way this doll's hair can turn out, but the shaping looks nice. The fibers are very erratic and messy, though, and I think I need to comb some shampoo into his hair to tidy it a bit.
GreGORY's face is muted with dark airbrushed taupe eye shading and small brown irises looking down. His expression is very nervous and suits a ventriloquist who has totally lost control. His lips have a bit of pink paint in the middle.
GreGORY's most unsettling detail is the fact that he has a cloth mouth gag, guaranteeing that any words coming out of that dummy are truly not from the ventriloquist! This gag is a piece of fabric wrapped around the face and falling between GreGORY's lips, and is not intended to be removed, being glued on and tied in back. It's not glued in the lips, and in some later photos at the deathday party, I failed to realize the band had slipped below the lips. Oops.
The doll is wearing a tuxedo, with a jacket piece that has asymmetrical sleeves--one sewn in the shape of a rolled-up cuff on the arm with the dummy. The jacket has short tails in back and closes with two snaps under the decorative buttons in front.
Under the jacket, GreGORY has a one-piece shirt and pants piece, with vertical panel ruffles on the shirt and no sleeves. The grey cummerbund is totally hidden by the jacket, making it a nice surprise, and is a removable separate piece with a velcro closure, like The Great Zombini's.
Greg's piece, unfortunately, is a hairy nightmare of loose threads on the back side. LDD satin tends to have this problem.
GreGORY has simple white socks and black dress shoes. The socks had crumbling elastics around the ankles. Unsurprisingly for this time in LDD, the shoes are not tightly molded, and may be the loosest LDD shoes I've encountered. Like, inexcusably so. Dang. I swapped them with Carotte Morts' pair. Carotte has thick socks, but GreGORY's shoes are still loose on him, though not quite as badly.
GreGORY's dummy is exactly sized and facially shaped like a Living Dead Dolls Mini, but is cast as one vinyl piece.
The dummy has orange hair in a tight-combed style which would be carved wood on a real puppet, and the face has freckles and red lips, with paint outlining the dummy jaw (not functional). He's clearly not designed as a mini-me of GreGORY. If he was, that could add more of the psychological horror to the concept, but given that there's clearly something twisted and haunted going on here, it's fine that the doll doesn't look like the ventriloquist. As to how GreGORY is carrying the dummy...he isn't! The poem kind of gave it away.
This is the true gimmick of the doll--GreGORY's right hand is severed and the dummy is attached to his exposed bone! This is why the jacket sleeve is sewn into a roll on this side, so it's not covered up!
This implies some darker supernatural bond between the two, as if the connection of organic matter and blood has empowered the dummy or fused it to the ventriloquist. Maybe this was a ritual advertised as the shortcut for the world's best ventriloquist act--cut off your hand and bond your arm to the dummy to bring it to life with a demon who can speak independently, letting you put on an act whie you are provably unable to talk! If nobody sees the gore, they'll just think you're the best in the game. What spectacle! What fame! What pain and terror and loss of agency!
It reminds me a little of the film Dead Silence, which features a gruesome plot twist where a person is revealed to have been a ventriloquist corpse puppet hollowed out in the back for their entire screentime. The film came out the same year as LDD Series 14, so it might not line up for GreGORY to be even a tangential reference.
GreGORY introduced this special right-arm mold with the torn wrist and exposed bone.
Both wrist bones are in the sculpt, painted oddly dark greenish yellow, and the dummy has a "keyhole" shape in its back to fit them both in, as well as blood paint where the doll and dummy make contact.
I know for sure that The Hook in Series 17 used this arm sculpt with his removable hook hand, and Fairy Fay, introduced in Resurrection IX, used it with no attachment to depict the brutality of her Jack the Ripper mauling. (Fortunately, Fay is believed to be a fictitious victim spun up during the Whitechapel murders, and not the identity or alias of any single real woman killed by "Jack".) I believe the Evil Dead Ash doll used it under his chainsaw attachment, too. I'm not sure what the arms of the post-Hook dolls with the same hook prosthetic were like under the hooks, since their prosthetics were not removable (or, at least, they weren't intended to be). I'm interested in The Hook, and in the Madame, who uses the same prosthetic, but it felt only right for me to first discuss GreGORY, who introduced this arm sculpt. As is typical for LDD, the right hand being missing renders the character left-handed by default--a superstitious mark of darkness. No LDD character with one hand has the one on their right.
I did the shampoo comb to keep stray hairs out of the doll's face, and also did minor surgery on his left hip. It was going through a big bump when I turned the leg, making me worry about the leg getting stuck or the peg not being secured in the torso. I popped the leg off and trimmed some of the friction spikes away, and it moves less tightly. The leg still bumps as it turns, but the peg is secure in the torso and now I feel sure the leg won't break the joint.
The dummy is a really fun gimmick...but is it actually a good one? See, the question came to my mind--why wasn't this a LDD Mini? I was right in thinking they were the same size and style, and making this a Mini with a hole in the back would greatly increase the realism and display value of the dummy. Real dummies aren't rigid single pieces of plastic, and using a Mini as a doll for a doll should be a natural concept. So I thought about making that happen! I tested boring a hole into the back of a LDD Mini that was wrecked, so it seemed viable.
I know that LDD Minis are sculpted very similarly to the Kelly/Tommy dolls of the era, so finding a suit wasn't too hard. That era of Barbie toddler dolls is a source of compatible LDD Mini clothing. (The only Minis male suit is Lou Sapphire's, which isn't a style match or fixable color match for Greg.) It looked like Ringmaster Tommy's coat could dye black, so I had a lead.
For a Minis base doll to customize...well, I ended up with a second set of Xmas Carol Minis after I thought I lost the original box and decided having an original copy of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come would be good for swapping with my modified one. I also thought this could give me license to try customizing Past to fit the book more, as I could keep the other copy in original state. Anyway, having this second set of Minis gave me a spare copy of Christmas Present which I don't need to modify based on the source material, nor have two of. She had red lips and eyebrows I could keep for the dummy and a pale flesh skintone. I ultimately lost the entire original faceup in the repaint process thanks to false starts.
I got the Ringmaster Tommy doll next.
He's a playline doll whose clothing is designed to come off. His jacket with tails is a good style match for GreGORY, better than I thought--I wasn't sure either doll had tails when I bought the Tommy (well before getting GREGORY himself!), and was lucky to find that both jackets do! The Tommy jacket closes in front with a chunky but functional snap, and the white under the jacket is just a scarf tied around his neck in a single knot which fills the space between lapels. Tommy has boots which are a poor match for the dummy, so the dummy will keep the Minis Mary Janes.
Here's the Tommy outfit on the Mini body. It's a good fit! The left arm is more covered by the sleeve than the right arm, but I realized it's the doll arms that are mismatched lengths, not the sleeves. When this Minis body's arms are posed the same by the doll's sides, the right hand hangs lower.
Here's the jacket dyed. I was very pleased to see the dye made the button and plastic snap turn black...far less so to see the red stitching of the coat was now extremely visible. I had to use black paint and a tiny brush to cover all the red thread. Here's that done.
I repainted the head as best I could, compromising the airbrushed shading with what I was able to do by brushwork. I sculpted hair onto the head with air-dry clay. The rooting holes on the head limited how high the hairline could go on the Minis head, so that's changed from the official dummy's design. and then modified the head and neck to create a ball joint for the best floppy-puppet posing options. I cut the neck open wide and filled it with a LEGO ball joint coupling glued inside to the best of my ability, cutting the head open enough to let the joint move. I glued the white scarf to the belly so I'd have it in position as a "shirt" for the jacket, and made a bow tie out of some elastic pieces and glued that on. I also applied gloss dips to the head and hands for more of a varnished artificial look compared to GreGORY, who is a doll who's an order of hierarchy less of a doll than the puppet.
After all this, the glue for the LEGO pin holding the neck ball joint seeped into the arm joints, and I twisted a joint peg off trying to move it.
Good thing I still had the body I tested the back hole boring with--the Mini Ms. Eerie piece which, fortunately, didn't need the original head peg it lost since I was modifying the dummy with a ball joint! I transferred and repeated my steps so the new body worked, and I finally had my upgraded display-optimized LDD Mini dummy!
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| Inside the head is a LEGO action-figure bracket ball joint piece 4598442, with a ball piece inserted and the grey ring glued onto it in alignment to give the head more height on the blue peg. |
The two dummies are not perfect matches, with limitations in hand repainting and the molded rooted Minis head restricting the hairline options for the custom, but the Mini can do much more!
Here's the back. Blood paint seals the hole cut into the cloth jacket.
Display options are much expanded here, and the articulation on the custom dummy gives him the sinister character this horror trope deserves.
Here's a vintage portrait photograph of him as a person of interest. This doll's story puts him later than this photo aesthetic, but I thought it was fun.
This is a more contemporary publicity shot:
I got a blue costume cape as a curtain just for GreGORY's sake. I'd been struck with the certainty that he'd look excellent framed against a blue stage curtain as opposed to a red one--perhaps because of his dummy's hair color? The cape itself is a bit of crap and had a split seam right out of the package, but it served its purpose.
Here's a show poster.
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I feel like the doll's face can look too smiley under the gag thanks to the head sculpt, but the right lighting makes him look just as scared as he's meant to!
The official dummy is more photogenic, but the custom dummy is more dynamic. It's a tradeoff.
Last year, when shooting a diner scene for Peggy Goo, I drew some 1950s-style LDD celebrity caricatures to decorate the diner wall, including one of GreGORY.
I really liked the composition of the piece, and I liked it just as much with the real duo.
This was the strongest, but I did a couple of variations too.
As Sadie's party carried on, Deadbra Ann discovered a cake in Sadie's kitchen.
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| -Looks like somebody wanted a party after all, hm? -No, I don't! Put that back! -Nonsense. I'm sharing this for your own good. Eating a whole cake alone is so unattractive. -I hate you. -I know. Oh, look at Jubilee! She's already vomiting in anticipation! |
Well, Sadie could never resist a ritualistic gathering around open flame.
Sadie made a private wish, then the cake was passed out. GreGORY looked longingly, but he didn't say he wanted some, so it all went into gumming up the dummy's mouth.
Then it was time for presents, and Deadbra Ann insisted on starting.
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| -I saved the best for first! -I doubt it. |
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| -Oh...gross. |
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| -It's a doll of you? |
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| -I thought you'd want to have something to remind you of your most gory classmate! -I truly, completely hate it. |
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| -I don't! Hey there, sweet thing! How's about a night on the town? |
Here's the Mini doll. My copy had an original Tower Records price sticker on the plastic wrap.
Here's the contents-doll and noose keychain in its plastic packet.
Mini Deadbra Ann has no crown officially, which is tremendously disappointing. I also didn't know how to remedy this. Playmobil doesn't have any that are visually close enough...then I realized Deadbra Ann's blind-box vinyl cartoon figure had a crown sculpted to likeness which I might be able to cut off and install on the Mini doll. I ordered the figurine to see what my prospects were.
The Mini doll's hair is the same color, shape, and erratic quality as the big doll's.
The Minis line did not mold a ripped-face sculpt, so Mini Deadbra Ann and Doom have their gore merely painted on, rather than molded as well. The look is simplified and not as impressive, and the smirking expression is a stark contrast from big Deadbra's scowl.
The dress is a pretty good miniaturization, though the sash is stained by the red clothing dye. The neck is more swallowed by the Mini dress, and there are no ribbon straps inside--just the armholes. The sash is not removable, same as the big dress.
The Minis shoes are the same color, though since Minis mostly wear socks in the form of paint, the shoe fit and stability is better on the Mini.
Here's the 2-inch vinyl figure I'm harvesting for the crown. The sculpt and paint is actually really nice, and she'd be well worth keeping were my purposes different.
It wasn't hard to cut the crown portion away, and I glued the head of a sewing needle to the back wall of the tiara and cut the needle short to serve as a peg to put in the Mini's head. Here she is with hair tamed and the crown in. It's probably smaller than an actual Minis version of the tiara would be, but it's fine with the Minis proportions and art style being more toddlerish and I'll take a visually accurate tiara over a proportionally perfect one.
As with the Liliths, I vastly prefer the classic full-size doll to the Mini translation, but it's still nice to have her around.
Sadie stopped the dummy in his flirtations with the inanimate doll and asked for the present that came with him.
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| -Ah, now this one's a beaut. -[...] |
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| -Looks bloody. |
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| -Oh. -[...] |
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| -I get to have the Great GreGORY's hand? That's honestly...amazing. -Heh. Big boy didn't know we was giving it to you! |
The hand is from my ruined first copy of LDD Viv. The inside is stuffed with air-dry clay and a Q-tip stick for the bone, then painted.
Tina Pink stepped forward with her gift.
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| -...what is it? -It's a moon idol I made. |
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| -Hang it on the wall so the moon will always be full with you, even if it vanishes from the sky. |
This is just a clay sculpture, painted. I tried using air-dry clay but it was drying too slowly and delayed the photoshoot by a day while I waited. I got the piece done with oven-bake instead to keep myself on schedule.
Last came Jubilee's gift.
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| -You get the same thing for everybody, Jubilee. |
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| -Maaybe...but come on, who deserves it more than you? You're like, the reason for it all! |
This is the copy of the pin that I unwrapped last year. I kept the second pin from Jubilee's gift in its original plastic.
But wait. After all this, Sadie deserves a gift from me, too.
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| -Oh. That looks nice. |
It's a purse! Made exceptionally shoddily by yours truly!
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| -It looks nice. Very deathday. The strap is an awkward fit. |
Yeah, I know.
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| -Oh, there's something inside- |
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| -Excellent. |
You know what to do, Sadie.
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| -I certainly do. |
This was fun to put together. Here's a view of the full set. I put a black board behind for views of the open doorway, not present in this photo
My computer screen provides the window view, and the pink ribbon covers the gap between angled walls on that side. The panels are all held together with nails.
I'm glad to have put this little Sadie celebration roundup together.
Of the three dolls, I'm surprised to say Deadbra Ann might actually be my favorite, and she'll be very pleased about that. I think her design is very strong and she looks great with some hair tidying. GreGORY is a fun novelty concept and I got good work with him, but he didn't enchant me the way I expected. Giving him a better dummy was a good project, but it also didn't make him a high-tier favorite. I still like him a lot. Sweet 16 Sadie is charming, but her hair is a bit messy and her design is pretty situational with the affixed crown. I think I prefer the birthday energy of the Celebrating doll, but Sweet 16 is pretty and characterful in her own way.
Sadie got a pretty good haul and a pretty good maul from this party.
Sadie got a pretty good haul and a pretty good maul from this party.
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| -That was the worst party of my entire unlife....you really do understand. Thank you. |
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