Hatter Madness 2, or "Nearly Truly Tenniel": The Barbie Silver Label Alice Collection!

This doll was the reason I committed to a whole project of Alice Hatter dolls. One of the forthcoming dolls was likely going to be reviewed this year regardless, but when I discovered this particular doll existed last December, I needed him absolutely. I could have gotten him immediately, but instead I realized I found a niche series topic I could chain with other doll Hatters, both on my radar and newly discovered. Barbie making a Mad Hatter is not super unusual...but this art style, with proportions inspired by the illustrations? That instantly made him a must-have.

This comes from a 2007 Barbie Silver Label (ought to be "quicksilver label" in his case) "Alice in Wonderland" collection. The line was designed by Sharon Zuckerman and consisted of three dolls--two Barbies playing Alice and the Queen of Hearts, and the Hatter...as himself. The Hatter doll is an oddball. He's not classifiable as a Barbie character base in cosplay in the way the other two dolls in this collection can be called versions of Barbie Roberts. This definitely isn't Ken in costume. He's kind of a hybrid doll build with an original, quite detailed head sculpt of the style you'd see more often on a porcelain art doll. It's not at all a fashion doll face. "Elderly realism" and "fashion doll" almost never cross paths outside of licensed dolls. Just look at what the Licca doll line considers to be grandparents:

Not sure if these are meant to be the grandparents of Licca the character, or if they're her maternal (Japanese) or paternal (French) grandparents (or one of each), but old people generally look old wherever they're from, and these two visually aren't even pushing fifty. Look, I know children will see a thirty-five-year old as practically a mummy, but if these are Licca's grandparents, then how young were they and their children when they became parents??? The most elderly thing about them is their clothing!

The Silver Label Hatter's style also feels far more vintage than his co-stars', and makes an effort to look "ripped from the page" and match the iconic Tenniel artwork. The other two dolls are more loosely interpretive and modern. Like, the Hatter is giving "Grandmama's cabinet of precious darlings" while his designated Alice, in addition to her age-up removing her from the source material, could not have come from any decade but the 2000s. Like, oh my god.

God bless time-capsule fashion dolls, and I truly mean that in every sense. Of course Alice needed a Bumpit in 2007-

The Silver Label Queen of Hearts is far more beautiful than in the book, but she's pretty stunning and I love her mallet flamingo!

If I did a Queen of Hearts doll series, I'd happily add this one to the queue. Part of my work is already done for me if I want that--spoilers, but I've already reviewed two Queen of Hearts specimens from the lines also featuring in Hatter Madness!

The packaging for this Silver Label Alice collection is shaped like the open spread of a narrow but thick book, perhaps presaging Mattel's later Ever After High line and its book-themed boxes.

The box is evidently the same size as the others in the line, so the Hatter is perched upon a simulated chair to elevate him and fill a bit more space with his diminutive size. I like the use of foreground popout elements to bring space into the scenery.

The box backdrop is layered and depicts a lovely painted scene of the Hatter's tea party with the March Hare seated at the table and the Dormouse in the pot where he's stuffed at the end of the book chapter. A watch is dunked in the teacup next to the Hare, also demonstrating good attention to the book.

I don't know what the "GE 13" sticker on the window means; it must have come from a prior handler. The text blurb in the upper left corner of the box is a sticker, not a print. Probably to make it easier to customize the three different packages for this line?

The back of the box is made to look like the book's cover, while the sides accentuate the page design.

The copy on the back is a little daft, as it describes Alice as meeting the Hatter and Queen of Hearts "all through the looking glass!" when only the Hatter may be claimed to be met under those circumstances--and only then as the basically identical character called Hatta who appears in the second book. Otherwise, no, the Hatter and Red Queen categorically were not met through the looking glass. Looking-Glass Land is the domain of the second book only, while all of the dolls in this collection come from the first! I could also get nitpicky and say the book title deserves to be rendered in full as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". 

The more curatorial copy on the box is actually the most interesting to me--for one, it discloses that the doll has a stand!

 I hadn't even begun to think of this doll having one, since I'm so conditioned to not expect stands with my dolls! That's a treat! 

The other thing that fascinated me was the explanation of the confusing collector labels of Barbie at the time. Mattel has changed their branding and labels for collector dolls and clubs, but this sorts out what each color means for a doll of this era--Pink Label is apparently a collector piece minus the massive scarcity or direct-order exclusivity (they could be found at retailers?); Silver Label (like here) is the lowest tier of scarcity, and it goes to Platinum at the rarest. I really like the Pink Label Wicked Witch of the West with the 1959 Barbie sculpts, so perhaps she's not so rare? Doesn't seem to make her less expensive, though.

The Hatter's box is made of sealed plastic on all walls, in the type of packaging usually, paradoxically, assigned to plastic cutters that are used to open this type of packaging! There's a cutout finger hole in the lower left corner, though, and the back panel zips open along the perforations.

Here's the backdrop removed. 

There's a real art to packaging backgrounds which activate a display while remaining empty enough to let the toy shine. I also love the temporal guarantee a real artist did this! Mattel has been pretty poor on that front today.

I like that the doll's tea things aren't also in the backdrop art. His pieces are distinct and not redundant with the painting, while fitting in with the painted pieces.

The Hatter had a little bit of everything holding him in. Soft plastic leg straps, plastic ties holding down his coattails, twist wires, a plastic shell on his accessories, and gaps in the cardboard holding in his hat tails. 

The box is constructed like a lot of middle-to-late-G1 Monster High and prime-era Ever After High boxes, where the cardboard unfolds in back to reveal a space where the doll stand has been stored. The certificate of authenticity is here too.

The certificate feels proper, printed on a textured piece of matte paper. 

The doll stand has the familiar Barbie collector base, with a short pole that's basically just a wedge with a sliver of a cradle. It's not a true saddle stand, but the theory is the same and it's more effective than it looks. The height is just right. If the Hatter has at least one foot on the base, the pole stabilizes him, and it's not so high that his feet can't sit flat on the base. One of the most common problems with saddle stands is when the pole height doesn't fit right with the doll's height and shoes, and can't even be adjusted. 

The back of the box describes "whimsical fashion", and while I think that adjective can be thrown around sometimes, "whimsy" is truly the million-dollar word here. It's the very first description that comes to mind with this doll. Everything is exaggerated and fun with a lighthearted zany vintage-toned style. Fanciful vintage pastels and patterns like this are an absurd but very charming aesthetic, and I think it works well for the Hatter. Zuckerman has amplified the whimsy, to be sure, but John Tenniel drew a dotted bowtie and a grid-patterned waistcoat, plus dots on the Hare. The doll just took that and ran with it!

The elephant in the room here is that this Hatter doll has quite unusual proportions, giving him a short stature and an oversized head. This is a hallmark of Tenniel's iconic imagery in the original illustrations, owing to Tenniel's background as a political cartoonist. The Duchess, the Queen of Hearts, and the Hatter in particular are notable for this type of proportional exaggeration in the original art, and it's always a delight to see adapted designs carry over the proportions of the Tenniel depictions. This doll makes me miss my Jakks Tim Burton Red Queen even more! I could have two big-headed Alice dolls with Tenniel proportions! (Granted, the big-headedness of the Red Queen being treated as fully literal in the film, with a backstory for how it got that way, was a complete mistake, and it ought to have been left as visual surrealism.) 

Proportion is a visual theme throughout the rest of the doll to balance his surreal head/body combo with other elements of his costume exaggerated.

The Hatter's hat here is black velvet stuffed with paper, and has an absolutely massive blue ribbon band. I'd say the hat is darker than illustrated, but black-hatted Hatters are as common as Hatters with brown or colored hats of fainter color value. The ribbon band with the massive bow is the doll's own; Tenniel's Hatter only had the price label. 

This is the second Hatter I'm reviewing not to include the famous label on the side of the hat, and I believe I'm only going to get two (for this series' criteria) who do have it. In lieu of that iconic detail, he has two fabric roses tucked into the hat band. They're pink, which would please neither the Queen of Hearts nor her soldiers!

The hat is tagged to the doll head in a few places.

The Hatter's hair is derived from the Tenniel illustrations' swooped shape, though this Hatter seems decidedly more elderly than the illustrations, and so his hair is grey. The hair has some gel in it.

The doll's hair reminds me of Quincy Endicott from the post-2007 cartoon miniseries Over the Garden Wall (one of my favorite pieces of media ever).

Endicott takes no small amount of cues from Carroll's character, including a similar look, association with tea, and a fear of going mad. He's not meant to be an adaptation of the Hatter, but could be seen as a version of the Hatter employed as allegory for fears of senility.

The Silver Label hat fits snug even without packaging tags stapling it on.

When I first took the hat off the doll, I got a big surprise!

Now I know why he wears the hat!

The Hatter is rooted with the full Ben Franklin! He's bald on top! The hair isn't particularly dense where it's present, either, but ought it to be for a man of this age?

There are some black fibers that need brushing/washing away. The plastic tag left a hole in his forehead that nothing is hiding. The owner is probably not supposed to cut it, but it can just be read as a skin spot.

This rooting pattern is clearly stylistic and literal rather than being the company cheaping out by covering a half-rooted head with a hat. The doll could easily have been fully-rooted, and it's obviously deliberate baldness here. It's funny, though, that you're not encouraged to be aware of this detail, seeing as the hat is tagged on! I genuinely love to see it in a doll. It's so refreshing to have traits that are never featured in dolls due to beauty standards.

The same goes for the Hatter's face mold, which is pretty exquisitely sculpted and painted with a vintage doll effect that very realistically and endearingly portrays an older man.

His face has wrinkles which are washed in, as well as some which are merely painted on, and the paint work here feels very antique and delicate--again, far more like a porcelain doll than a Barbie product! His face looks kindly and maybe sad, but also maybe sparkling with a great deal of contentment and warmth. I see a bit of Gene Wilder in his later years. Maybe that fits. Wilder was excellent at portraying madness! The doll feels like a sweet old granddad...which is probably wrong, all things considering. Nobody in the first Alice book is particularly nice to her, and the Hatter is pretty rude! The face is also more realistic and relaxed than the book's art, which gives the Hatter a larger nose and a cheesy grin. I could see this dol sculpt and paint being a bit polarizing, and maybe some would find this doll to look uncanny or creepy, but I think he's just lovely, and beautifully done. He is very realistic, especially when on a shelf among other Mattel dolls, where he looks like a lifelike little man among Barbies and monsters, but I think that fully suits the art style of the book and Victorian fantasy overall, so I'm more awed by how real he looks, not disturbed.

I think the profile of this sculpt is also fantastic. Maybe this Hatter is mellowed out, but it's a beautiful design job.

Disregarding the rest, this doll would be a novelty just for the artful depiction of an old man!

There's a very amusing comparison between the two Hatters I have so far. Both are more elderly-styled than in the book, but one looks unusually realistic and one is blatantly using toylike child sculpts! 

The Silver Label Hatter has less hair overall, being bald on top and having no facial hair painted on.

Of course, the Silver Label head is proportionally exaggerated, sitting large upon this doll's body. It's perhaps a bit restrained and I could have welcomed an even more exaggerated size, but the effect is visible and wonderful. There's a good chance I would have hesitated on this Hatter if his doll build was humanly proportioned, but his oversize head was the very first thing I noticed with him, selling me on the doll instantly.

The Hatter's outfit is layered, depicting a jacket over a waistcoat with a high Victorian collar from an implied dress shirt. The jacket is all satin, with three fabrics--pink for the body, white with pink polka dots on the cuffs (unclear if these are to be read as the jacket cuffs or a shirt layer), and lavender and purple checks lining the whole piece, most visible with the amplified, exaggerated tails.

The jacket is made to look double-breasted with four buttons, and closes with one metal snap underneath the buttons.

A Barbie collector tag is sewn into the jacket, as seen here. 

With the jacket off, it can be seen that the doll's lower arms are cast in white plastic to give him his gloved look-the perfect touch. The waistcoat/shirt piece is separate from the trousers--a rarity for male dolls.

Attached to the front is the giant bowtie, which is pale green satin with dots and two tails which came closed under the jacket. I think they deserve to be untucked! The waistcoat fabric is pink and green plaid satin on the front, and blank pink satin on the back, while the attached shirt/collar section around the neck is white cotton.

This piece opens with a snap on the waistcoat section and velcro on the shirt section, in front.

The pants are a bell-bottom cut and welcomely matte, and have vertical stripes of blue, pink, and purple. One snap closes them in the back.

The Hatter's shoes look suitably Victorian in their sculpt and the coloring continues from the pants.

I think the costume is basically impeccable. I love the layering, I love the use of snaps, and the proportions, patterns, and colors are so fun, and ideal for springtime.

The Hatter's body achieves his surreal proportions by using the high-articulation preteen body type featured on older Stacie dolls like the Gymnast or Skateboard editions. The body isn't so overtly feminine or mature that he can't get away with using it, especially clothed, but I don't think any Todds shared this body sculpt. I think other Stacie and Todd dolls have shared molds, but I think this athletic one was Stacie's body only.

This body is in the range of half the height of an adult Barbie, though the head is comparable size. I think a Ken head might be a bit larger than the Hatter's, and pushing the Hatter head up a bit to Ken size might be nice.

This Hatter is about the same height as my first specimen from Madame Alexander, though all of the Silver Label doll's pieces are more petite.

Mattel's later male Alice figure from Ever After High, Alistair Wonderland, is notably taller than the native Wonderlandian girls of his own franchise, who are shorter than the other girls of Ever After...but Al absolutely towers over this Hatter.

My Al is restyled significantly.

I've said this again and again, but I love the novelty inherent to Alice toys where they can always be viewed as "life-size" regardless of scale, and the Silver Label Hatter with his size and proportions really feels especially tuned into that appeal. I feel like I could walk through a meadow and see his tea party set up at his scale and it'd be totally believable. He has that gnomish/faerie quality of some small dolls where they could easily be played as life-size otherworldly small people living adjacent to humans.

Silver Label is the first of two selected Hatters in this review project to affect a diminutive, distorted look in contrast to the dolls in their native brand/collection, and in homage to Tenniel. The Madame Alexander Hatter is of standard size and proportions within his doll line.

While this athletic Stacie body has its restrictions, it's overall a really neat articulation system, especially for a pre-Monster High Mattel.

The head is a ball joint with great backward and side-to-side tip. The Hatter doesn't look downward, but the range is otherwise remarkable.

The shoulders and elbows are standard rotating hinges, but the wrists are static. That's the only problem I really have with this system. Articulated wrists would do so much here! The elbow hinges have metal pins, and they bend 90 degrees inward but also bend a bit outward "the wrong way" for more versatility. The elbows rotating is much appreciated.

The mid-torso has a ball joint with some pretty good range. It's more expressive than Monster High bust joints, though maybe less expressive than the low-waist ball joint in the second Bleeding Edge Goth body design.

The hips have excellent range of motion both forward/back and side-to-side. They seem anchored by some rubber hub inside--it doesn't feel like a typical plastic hinge, but it's not rubber bands or fiber elastic either? Maybe I'm misinterpreting and it is hard plastic, but I'm not taking this doll apart to find out! Whatever it is works really well. The knees hinge to 90 degrees with no rotation joint, and the ankles are rotating hinges.

In no way did this very mobile Stacie body need to be chosen for this Hatter, but oh, I'm so delighted it was. This is a really nice body design for the time, and this Hatter being the most articulated in his collection is totally fine by me! He really feels separate from Silver Label Alice and the Queen in all regards, but those regards happen to completely benefit his appeal.

I'm not sure if the Hatter was Zuckerman's passion doll and her "baby" in the collection while the other Alice dolls were just her doing what was ordered up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Hatter's divergent, more book-inspired, lavish elements are all signs that this was the doll of the trio she cared about most and pushed to get out to a less Barbie-styled artistic vision. He's bizarrely exceptional if Zuckerman didn't really campaign for this design to be as different as it is. Doll collectors seem to put him lowest in the trio, and they're just wrong; I'm sorry. I'm here for you, Silver Label Hatter. I know you're phenomenal.

The Hatter comes with a teapot and a stack of teacups on a tray as accessories. Each is a single molded piece.

It's a bit clunky, but he can hold them. His fingers slide between the teapot handle and body, and his thumbs can go through the loop of the middle or top teacup, but his articulation and hand poses aren't the best suited to the pieces, and the mold of the cups and tray asks for them to be left on a table so gravity is observed. Despite everything, Carroll never wrote bizarre gravity into Alice's dreams, save, perhaps, for her falling slowly enough down the rabbit hole that she could take objects from the shelves and put them back on shelves that passed by.

I'd love articulated hands in pinching poses to clip onto the handles of the accessories, but that would require a new body design, and Mattel rarely molds hands which are optimized for accessory display realism--though alternate hands have been brought onto the table since last year, which I love.

In setting the tea table cover shoot for this Hatter, I tried to both play into his aesthetic while negotiating the challenge of creating a distinct tea table aesthetic from the next Hatter in line, who will share some sensibilities. I tried to not go too hard on the patterns and colors since the doll's costume is so vocal and there's a marked realism within his design, so I did what I could to balance the whimsy with the grounded. I knew for sure I wanted pictures of him reclining in a teacup atop a tiered stand. It just needed to happen, and I hope you agree! It was a balancing act, but I got it! My review photos were done with a "curtain" of dark patterned paper, but I switched to a green sheet to brighten things a bit, and used that for my cover shot.

For the Madame Alexander Hatter, the teapot on the table was full of a brew, but I faintly regretted making so much, so this time, I only brewed a cup and just used the pot in question here as decoration. The lid was broken and glued together, anyhow, so I didn't want to use it for tea. The treats on the table this time are shortbread biscuits, jam cookies, and raisin/nut soda bread to strike a more traditional Victorian tone.

Here's a portrait shot of the doll.

Thus ends the portion I finished in April! Then I had to build the illustration scene. 

While the Hatter's chair isn't visible in the drawing, I did find a trinket box shaped and sized like the absolute perfect chair for him!

As if things couldn't get better! The seat cushion is the box lid.

Isn't it odd that one of the best sources of fancy 1/6 doll chairs, including upholstered ones, is through novelty jewelry boxes? You want a doll chair or sofa? Search for a chair or sofa jewelry box. 

I found a good table, too. This is actually an American Girl cushioned bench piece minus the fabric cushion, meaning the top needed to be filled in to use as a table.

I built a three-plate tall assembly of LEGO plates and tiles to fill the space in. It's not a snug fit, but it will let a tablecloth lay flat across the surface without being dented in by the objects on top. The cloth will also hide the patchwork of LEGO! I then layered some scrap fabric and a cut and folded/glued handkerchief for tablecloths.

The Hatter is technically a bit too tall for the "table"--he can't stand upright on his feet and must bend his knees back if he is to affect the post from the illustration where the Hatter is leaning on his hands on the tabletop. The tablecloth will hide that, too.

Now, the reason this post is coming out mid-May rather than April as intended? Well...let's just say...Alice. Because this Hatter was so close to Tenniel, I felt this was a reason to go all-in and make the perfect Alice to stage with him for the best possible likeness to the book illustration...and she took ages to complete to my satisfaction. 

This is a hybrid custom doll, and the journey she took me on will be getting a separate post after this is published. I'm making "Hatter Madness interlude" entries for tie-in posts which are not about the main goal of reviewing and comparing official original Hatter doll designs. I might not have more than two. In the first interlude, I'll explain how I came to the Alice I did, and what other inspirations branched off the false starts her process took me through.

With Alice's knees at the tabletop and the Hatter too short for the table, I added some removable LEGO legs to heighten the table, which work because the molded legs are hidden under the cloth.

LEGO tiles are glued in the four corners, allowing the brick legs to attach or come off.

The bow on the tablecloth is covering a glue blemish.

The March Hare this time is a static velvet-covered Easter bunny rigged messily into some clothes. Here, I interpreted the straw on his head as a broken straw hat his ears are bursting through. I used another one of the fur-covered plastic mice from my mom's old toys as the Dormouse this time, kept out of the pot because he's not illustrated there in the main Tenniel piece...and because he wouldn't fit. For tea things, I used the Hatter's cups, some mini dollhouse china, and the tea pieces from the Barbie Kelly Alice in Wonderland Disney set. I tested out a Kelly-sized Alice at one point, but wasn't happy with her, had no success with the head options for that scale, and ultimately found her too small, but the tea things, especially the pot, aided the resemblance to the artwork. Here's the final staged photo I took outside. I had to put the table in front of a tree like in the art, and even added the ivy wrapped around to match the illustration, while my sky board and a patterned brick paper serve as the backdrop to be edited in post.

Here's the final result.

I tried filling in a sky portion behind the Hatter, but nothing looked better than leaving the background white in that area. Blurring the edges in white to match the illustrated composition was also the perfect move here. I'm so glad this picture feels so worth it, because this is over a month in the making!

With this one, I did care to digitally edit a "drawn" version. It's not as good as a real drawing would be, of course.

I took a couple other pictures of the Hatter in the garden.

Then I set him up in a mostly doll-scale tearoom diorama. He needed to prove that he can do the teapot dance!

So that's the Silver Label Hatter! I might need to chat with this man about sporting conduct, because it's pretty unfair for such an early entrant in Hatter Madness to be this good.

If the summative word I approached this doll with was "whimsy", then the takeaway word as I wrap this up is "delight". There's nothing else to it. This doll was just an absolute delight to discover and work with. Finding surprises like his hair rooting and articulation, while being awed by his sculpting, paint, and cohesive vintage caricature design left me utterly delighted. I'm calling it early that he's going to be one of my year's highlights. He's definitely earned himself a spot in the year-end reflection photo. He'd have earned it even if he wasn't part of a whole series that needed to be reflected in the collage! He's pure antiquey charm and imaginative surrealism. He's also one heck of a collector doll. On display, he truly looks like a keepsake art piece for a fancy cabinet, capturing a sense of wonder that the finest display pieces do. He doesn't feel right on my shelf with fashion dolls; he begs to be enshrined in a curio cabinet or lacy tearoom. I just marvel at this little doll and what he's achieved. Everything lines up to impress, and I'm taken aback a bit each time I look at him. He's so artful. The only changes I'd make are the inclusion of a hat label, perhaps a less friendly expression, and wrist joints. Quality-wise, he's strong, though I object to the disfiguring plastic ties in his coattails and hat/forehead. I'm otherwise blown away. If you want any Hatter doll to capture the spirit of the original book, this has to be my recommendation. The design is Sharon Zuckerman's own, of course, but she brought the magic of Alice to life within it.