I'm not doing a Queen of Hearts doll series. But I keep finding Queens of Hearts I love and want to review! I've added a new blog tag for dolls based on this character now, since this is now my third being reviewed here! So who is this one?
While cooking up Hatter Madness, I began to cook up my Witchy Wonders series too. But during that other series, I found another brand, a weird doll within it, and it all looped back to something else that ties into Hatter Madness. Basically...you know how the Barbie Silver Label Hatter doll struck me as the one of the most in-spirit with the original book's John Tenniel illustrations among the canon of Hatter dolls? Well, I found that doll niche for the Queen of Hearts; the most interesting doll edition that captures the vibe of the original book character in my mind.
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| Profile-view Tenniel illustration of the Queen of Hearts. |
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| Front-view Tenniel illustration. |
The doll that landed this spirit above any other is the Queen of Hearts as depicted by the Effanbee company.
Effanbee was actually one of the brands I passed over when finding my candidates for Hatter Madness. They have a doll of the Hatter which is a fairly direct visual adaptation of the book artwork, but his simple youthful face sculpt and colors don't lend him any particular interest. He's not inventive enough to be intriguing, nor "ripped from the page" enough to be the ultimate doll adaptation. Had his face been caricatured like Tenniel's art, he'd be a shoe-in for this series, but he ends up a little bland, and I much prefer the more interpretive Madame Alexander model I selected for this niche of Hatter dolls.
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| Effanbee's Hatter. |
There is a possible head swap I'm considering for this Hatter, involving an Effanbee head from a different doll style, but I don't know if it would actually be mechanically possible to put the head I'm thinking of on this body, nor if the hat would fit. It might be worth the try, but there's no guarantee the dolls ordered would fulfill my vision. Possibly the worst-case scenario would just be swapping clothes rather than heads and see if that works? Stay tuned.
Since the Hatter didn't interest me for what he was, I entered Effanbee for witches, and I found one more classic retro doll...and then one bizarre and even fugly witch.
She was too fascinating to ignore, but potentially too weird to like. I wondered if the witch was the character the sculpt was designed for because it was so bizarre, but if not her, who?
I think I found who. Because suddenly, the grotesque face sculpt made absolute sense existing. Effanbee used it on their interpretation of the Queen of Hearts, and she is brilliant.
As with the Silver Label Hatter, learning of this doll's existence struck me immediately because it captured the spirit of the Tenniel art in a way I'd never seen elsewhere in dolls. I thought Tim Burton's character design for the Red Queen was novel with the big head, but that Queen is more pretty. This one is fully caricatured in a manner evocative of Tenniel's art, portraying the Queen as brutal, unglamorous, and exaggerated in a manner none of her other dolls do. "The Queen of Hearts" can technically refer to one of three major entities: the playing card/the woman in the card art, the nursery rhyme character, and the character portrayed by Alice, which merges both of the former (and adpatations of the Alice version are being lumped into #3 here). Effanbee has a Queen of Hearts who looks nothing like the card and might just be the nursery rhyme figure:
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| Madame Alexander has their own Queen of Hearts who looks just like this one. |
But this version, with her grotesque head sculpt, is indisputably the Alice Queen.
Like the Silver Label Hatter, this is interpretive rather than being the most literal possible translation of the art, but she hits the Tenniel Queen's spirit in a way unique to this doll. You ask me which Queen of Hearts doll captures the original illustrations best? It's this one. I absolutely had to have her, and decided to chain her off the Hatter Madness 2 post in the spirit of reviewing dolls that best interpret the soul of Tenniel's artwork. This Queen is not proportionally scaled to the Hatter and custom Alice of that post, but she's necessary.
While I want to make it clear that I got and experienced the Effanbee Queen before the witch with the same sculpt, I published the witch first and thus transferred some of my first-time observations of this doll style and sculpt into her review instead.
My doll had to be re-ordered after the first listing I chose was unavailable to provide, and I ended up with this copy, which had her crown fallen off and her box with a badly yellowed, detaching window.
This Effanbee box style isn't a bad match for this character, though the pattern is not character-specific.
The box pattern is not specific to this character, but it's not a bad match!
The box has a price sticker from a previous retailer, selling her for $25 while saying the comparable price for the item was $60. I'm not sure if that means the seller had previously attempted to sell her for $60 and discounted her, or if they were saying "elsewhere, this is how expensive she is, but we'll cut you a deal!" I think the discount price is pretty much correct, but I ended up basically paying the original sticker price for the eBay listing. In no world do I believe the MSRP for this doll was closer to $60 than $25.
Nothing seems to have been securing her crown in the box. I popped it back on, messily, here. The doll is packaged with a white hairnet that covers her face too.
Stand base is in place.
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| There was also some detritus. |
Here's the Queen unboxed.
This doll's card tag was wrapped around the opposite wrist to the fugly witch, and here, taking the tag off left some sticky residue around the wrist, produced from the aged elastic cord the tag was on.
I'm happy to say this washed off, but it needed a good scrub.
Both the Queen and the witch have the date of 1993 on their tags, while their head sculpt is stamped 1992. I have no way of knowing which doll debuted the head, though I still think it would make sense if it was designed for the Queen first and foremost.
The first thing about this doll that rings true to the book is her crown, which captures the artwork of classic playing cards, and which Tenniel in turn imitated. The black drapery framing the face and the shape of the crown portion are pretty spot-on and I think the famous card artwork being used for the Alice character designs is always a good move. Alice had elements of being a fanfic crossover of childhood iconography, with game pieces and established nursery-rhyme characters entering Alice's dreams, so it makes sense for the cards to look just like the ubiquitous art she'd have seen in the waking world.
While the crown is one of the biggest assets to the Tenniel homage, it's also the weakest element of the doll. The band with the peak and black drapery is only attached to the crown section with two tabs, and there's a gap at the hairline.
The drape panels are also hanging a little too loosely. Look at the way Tenniel's Queen's drapes are hanging. They should be tacked down more along the edge of the circular band around the head.
I'm really glad I noticed this, because it told me how to improve the doll. I was wondering if maybe I could straighten the flipped-out drapes with weights at the ends, because I was loath to use hot water...because it's pleather. My favorite. And it's a bit scuffed as it is. Paying close attention to the art told me this piece can be glued into a better, tidier shape, and that would mean I didn't have to destroy the pleather finish.
The actual crown section is pretty, being a black, red, and gold paisley fabric with lots of fancy gold embroidery trim. The crown is red felt-lined on the inside and hollow around the doll's hairstyle. Red plastic gems are glued to dot the points of the crown. There's evidence of hot glue use for the gems, which is always disappointing and messy with mass-produced doll clothes.
This Queen happens to be all red, black, and gold with no playing-card blue, which I really prefer for the Queen of Hearts. I liked this aspect of Ever After High's daughter of the Queen, Lizzis Hearts, too. This doll might be usable as Lizzie's mom, though the Queen's canon Ever After High design is nothing like the Effanbee doll, and frankly looks a lot, perhaps too much, like the Tim Burton version.
The Effanbee Queen's hair is dark brown with no bangs, parting, or loose locks, and is tied into a curled short ponytail that takes the shape of a bun.
The rubber band is about ready to give up.
A more accurate hairstyle would involve a center part and some hair gelled down into flat curls on the edge of her face, but that could be more delicate and fiddly than it's worth, and I'm fine with the hairstyle the doll has.
On this doll, the face is fantastic. It's large, it's exaggerated, it's ugly. It's caricatured in a way that wonderfully suits the Tenniel design while doing its own thing in a more cartoony style, and on the Queen of Hearts, with this faceup, I think it's a perfect face. It makes me smile.
The nostrils are wide and shaded in with solid red.
On the one hand, I can see the pattern of female villains being older and ugly, or "failing at glamor" as being blatantly misogynistic. On the other hand, I can see it as a total "hell yeah". There's such a pressure for female characters and female villains to be attractive and letting female villains be just as ugly and nasty as anybody else is just fair...and fun! I don't think this doll being ugly is at all a bad thing. It's her source of personality and appeal. I wanted her for being a hideous caricature because that's the Alice Queen of Hearts!
The Queen's dress is one piece and all fairly stiff fabric. I wish the skirt had more volume or tulle inside, but it looks pretty rich and detailed.
The torso has a tight collar and is mostly red with gold trim. Two gold straps embroidered with red hearts cross over the front , with a heart jewel in the middle. The straps are not tacked down, and really should be, as the ends do not lay flat.
The skirt has a red panel in the middle with more heart trim and gold detail. Not every embroidered heart is clean, but I much prefer this to a printed satin ribbon. Flawed visible effort means more to me than perfect cheapness. The rest of the skirt is the paisley on the crown, and it's pretty great, and the hem is the lacy gold trim seen on the cuffs. The dress snaps in back in three places down to the waist. The seam and snaps are wonky but functional.
Under the skirt, the Queen has simple pleather fabric slip-on shoes with solid soles, but one of the soles fell off when taking the dress off.
Effanbee fabric shoes don't seem as stiff and structured as Madame A. ones, but do the job the same and make the dolls easy to stand unaided. I just need to repair this doll's shoes.
The Queen's other clothing is knee-high white socks with a netted knit, under long white pantaloons with lace cuffs.
To fix up the Queen, I tacked down the tails on her dress's torso straps, replaced the hair elastic with a cord tie, and did a lot of careful gluing to bring the edges of the crown and the drapery piece together nicely, which also tidied the ends of the drape by forbidding them from flipping out to the side so much. I painted over the pleather elements with glossy black fabric paint to hopefully reinforce the finish and restore the look from some scuffing. I also made her a simple heart-scepter accessory.
The hand is not well suited to stably grip the scepter, and this was my first Effanbee with this body, so I wanted to see if I could bend the hand into more of a grip so the piece might be held more securely. To do this, I popped out the arm, took a spare piece of the scepter dowel left over from sawing it down to size, put it in the hand as guidance for the grip shape, then used hot water to soften the hand, duct tape to pull the fingers more closed and hold them in position, and an overnight stay in the freezer to hopefully reset the vinyl into my new chosen shape. I've had this work sometimes, and fail sometimes.
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| Tape holding the hand around the dowel, left in the freezer in this pose after hot water bath. |
I did a few more rounds with this, but it ultimately didn't solve the problem. The hand didn't tighten enough to make a difference, and I might have actually made the grip looser by doing this. The longer the reshaped hand held the rod, the weaker the grip became, and the top-heavy piece was swinging and falling out constantly. I had to resign myself to the wire-handle solution after taking several photos with just the bent hand. This was ultimately correct, since the result doesn't even look clunky, and despite the handle not looking like it interacts much with her fingers, the scepter is completely stable. This is also ideal in terms of adding a handle to the piece, because with a wire wrap, the stick can turn within it. That's important because it means the heart topper, which is glued in place, can face the right direction for both head-on or profile shots.
I also added a belt trim to the dress, threaded under the tacked-down cross straps. I had hoped to section off the embroidery on the skirt better so it didn't look like those strips and the cross straps were meant to have connected, and I'm not sure I achieved that, but the ribbon adds some more welcome pattern and texture reminiscent of playing-card line art. The belt velcros in the back.
I've had these craft flamingo decorations on hand for the Queens of Hearts I've reviewed previously, but if any of the Queens deserves to hold onto one as a full-time accessory, it's this one.
The Queen is very large next to the mini Alice I cobbled together for the Silver Label Hatter, but I think, given the Wonderland relativity and the Queen's status as a symbolically imposing adult figure, they look perfectly suited to share scenes.
The Silver Label Hatter is not in-scale with this Queen despite Alice playing fairly well against both dolls. One Hatter in the Hatter Madness project will be in-scale with this Queen, but not in-tone, while another could work fairly well with her, but would be less aligned with the style of the Effanbee build.
Here she is with Lizzie.
I could buy the Effanbee Queen as Lizzie's mom, if Mattel were daring enough to make an ugly character! Their palettes, skintones, and blue eyes align pretty well.
Here's all of my Queens of Hearts as of this doll (my custom Lizzie restyle excluded, as she's my own interpretation).
The Effanbee doll is by far the most accurate to Tenniel's artwork of these three, and, I believe, of any mass-produced Queen of Hearts doll. She does have some superficial similarities to the LDD Inferno-as-the-Queen doll, though.
Both Queens make an effort to depict the angry tyranny of the character's personality with their face designs, though I'm surprised LDD's is the tamer option. I still think she ought to have used the brand's screaming face mold, like she did on the cover of the LDD Wonderland picture book. Both dolls also had pleather elements that drove me to intervene for the sake of preservation, and both dolls inspired me to craft accessories for them--a heart-shaped executioner's axe for the LDD take, and the classic scepter for the Effanbee doll.
I just love the Effanbee Queen's presence. She looks like a blustering terror you'd hate to see bursting into an area, just as she should. The personality is impeccable, and the costume design being so rich and book-themed is also delicious. Altogether, she's a remarkable adaptation of the character.
As I did with the LDD Queen, I made a playing-card portrait of the doll. I took some liberties with the color and patterning for the right visual pop and simplicity, but I'm proud of the way I finagled the split/fusion of the mirrored figures by connecting across the tails of the drapery.
Here she is against a flamingo pattern.
And as ever, I used the same patch of front lawn for the Queen's croquet grounds, bringing Alice in as well. I have my recurring tea-party table shot for my Hatter dolls, and my recurring shot for Queens of Hearts is the croquet grounds. Here they are in sequence:
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| This shoot was actually for Alistair's review--my Lizzies were reviewed in winter when this was not viable! |
And a couple of portrait variations outside.
I'm not sure if other Alice characters' dolls take on Tenniel as well as the Effanbee Queen and Barbie Silver Label Hatter. As far as Alices go, in my search for options before making my own off-book take, I saw several Alice dolls with the basic iconic details down, but none who felt tapped into the illustrations in a manner unique from other Alice dolls--nothing especially more like Tenniel than the others. Young Alice is not really caricatured, to be sure, but I think the doll that feels uniquely like the illustrations doesn't exist. Even I had to compromise some features making my Alice because the doll head of my vision didn't exist--at least, not at the scale I needed. The Cheshire Cat kind of fails this search in any regard by virtue of a doll being more humanoid than in the book, where the Cat isn't anthropomorphic. I do still want the Madame Alexander and LDD editions, though. Similar goes for the White Rabbit, who would need to be an animal-headed doll to qualify, while existing dolls are humanoid in bunny suits.
Some of the most accurate toy adaptations of Tenniel's art are actually from "Alice's Adventures in Figureland", a Japanese series of gacha figurines by Kaiyodo. These pieces are often dead-on to Tenniel's illustrations, poses and composition included, and several adapt less popular pieces of the books' art:
It's hard to pick a favorite, but I adore how Kaiyodo did the chess pieces' monotone shaded paint jobs, and the "Looking-Glass House" illustration of Alice through the mirror is brilliant. In the illustrations, Tenniel drew a diptych of Alice on one side, then the other, with the clock changing between images to look quite wacky in the Looking-Glass side. Here, I believe the mirror is used to show the back of the clock with its normal sculpt, which abridges the gag of the two clocks into a single frame! I also love the Jabberwocky piece showing a tove, borogove, and rath gyreing and gimbling in the wabe (translation: the corkscrew badger, bird, and pig frolicking under the sundial; Humpy Dumpty can explain it to you).
I'd happily fill a figurine shelf with these gems. And might just do sometime. It'd be fun to do a side-by-side breakdown framing each figurine with the original art!
Heading back to the Effanbee Queen, I think she's a really fun doll. Her caricature is striking and has a great sense of humor, and this unusual head sculpt by Pat Kolesar gives the Effanbee Queen a unique sense of textual understanding in a pretty large pool of doll designs adapting the Carroll Character. Effanbee's queen blusters and roars while most Queens of Hearts in the doll world are pretty and composed. I think Effanbee wins the personality contest by a mile. The visual design paying homage to the classic card art in the same style as Tenniel did is also wonderful, though the make of the doll is less than the design. The crown headdress needed a lot of work to tidy it up, and the choice of pleather for this doll is not wonderful and didn't feel called-for. I also think an accessory would have done wonders, but making one was a bit of a journey in trying to best rig it to stay in her hand. I also found the belt added to her dress quite a bit. The doll could feel a bit underbaked or lacking in the right finish or polish--not something I really felt with the witch who shares this head sculpt and felt like a complete presence.
This is still a fun doll who does the character like nobody else has done her. If you're a collector of Carroll memorabilia, I think this is a must-have novelty.
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