I wanted to have a classic vintage-style sweet entry in this look at witch dolls, but Madame Alexander didn't have any I found interesting or appealing enough. I want a witch to be spooky or caricatured enough, and Mme. A's witches all look like sweet human little girls in costume. Fortunately, the Effanbee company provided in this niche!
Effanbee was a long-lived doll company independent for decades, then it became a subsidiary of the Tonner company. Neither exist today. Effanbee is named for the "F" and "B" initials of its founders, and is most famous for its "Patsy" and "Patsyette" dolls, though Effanbee has had several doll styles, and ran competitively to the models that were the bread and butter of Madame Alexander for a couple of decades as well, which is what makes Effanbee useful here. With classic sweet dolls in the Madame-esque genre, and more interesting witches, Effanbee delivered where Madame disappointed. (Effanbee, despite seeming to imitate Madame in the late 20th century, preceded Madame Alexander by just over a decade.)
Effanbee's best witches are based on the Oz Wicked Witch of the West character. While clearly influenced by the film, they aren't licensed or heavily based on one pop-culture portrayal, and picking these dolls leaves room open in the future for a different series based more specifically on the Oz character if I want to do that. I'm not sure any of Effanbee's witches are licensed Margaret Hamilton MGM editions. They've done an licensed Judy Garland Dorothy doll, but otherwise, I think Effanbee's Oz is all (for legal purposes) based on the book. The first Effanbee witch I picked is not particularly close to the book, either (and I'd love a witch doll based on the original Denslow illustrations!), but she works.
This post features both my first and third Effanbee doll, and I flip-flopped on whether to publish this post or the second doll first, since the two topics are intertwined. I ultimately decided to do it this way, because my second Effanbee doll is heavily informed by my reaction to my third. I knew about the third doll first, so she'll be published on the blog first too. It's also a better introduction to this era/style of Effanbee on the blog if I can show a "control" model before a more unusual one. If I shared my second Effanbee doll before my first and third, I'd be giving a very atypical introduction to the brand!
The first witch I picked seems to be Effanbee's oldest Wicked Witch full-size doll, and is from the storybook collection, depicting the Wicked Witch of the West in a cute vintage style with white hair, green skin, haughty makeup, and red costume accents. I just really enjoyed her retro look and colors, and I thought she'd work easily for Halloween. This doll is very cheap online and not hard to find. My copy is loose, sans original packaging.
I was understanding immediately why she wasn't very pricey.
L. Frank Baum's Witch of the West appeared only in the first Oz book, wherein she died, and she never had a name; Wicked gave her the name Elphaba as a phonetic take on the book author's initials, "LFB". While the musical witch is not this doll character, it would be very easy to mix the doll brand and Elphaba's name to call this or the brand's other Witch of the West dolls "Effaba"! Oz: The Great and Powerful called her Theodora, possibly because it's an anagram of "Dorothea", a name very similar to that of her eventual killer.
There was another edition of this witch with a seemingly nicer, taller hat, a sharp scarf, and a broom, with a bit more of an elderly look in her styling. Not sure if her hair was tied back for packaging or if it is tied as the intended design.
These two versions of the witch seem to be attributed to the years between 1984-1993. Not sure when exactly either came from, but mine definitely feels like the oldest possible edition, and the weaker execution, of the doll. Like, she feels and smells exactly like the musty dolls of my mother's from the sixties and seventies. I'd expect her to be pre-eighties from the condition of my copy!
The hat on the edition I got is black felt with a pretty short cone, and had a red ribbon band that has glue discoloring the fabric behind it.
I don't think half of the brim is supposed to be turned up (it's not held in shape), but it looks quite stylish that way! I won't iron it down.
The hair is white and center-parted with a frustrating criss-cross part rooting that makes it hard to tidy the hair in front. I don't know what the type is, but it has that messy feeling of old doll hair with lots of erratic fibers.
Dry-combing worked okay to make it feel nicer, but there's still a lot of mess. My Bikin Hag makes me afraid that boiling will destroy this hair. I'll definitely try fabric softener, though. Some of the hair has discolored in spots, if the whole fiber hasn't also yellowed from its original tone.
The green skin of this doll was the major draw. In a pre-Monster High world, molding dolls in fantasy colors was a novelty worth writing home about, and a classic retro-style doll such as this being cast in green is practically jaw-dropping, though being a witch got you an "in" for a fantasy skintone. The green makes her special to me, though this isn't the only green Effanbee witch. I also just think this shade looks fantastic with the doll's red tones, almost like two different apple shades. Maybe I still have Snow White on the brain! I really like the face sculpt.
It's not babyish like Madame Alexander sculpts tend to be, and I wouldn't even call this definitively a child face sculpt. She has a narrower, sharper look than Madame A. or LDD, including a long nose, inward-sloped cheeks, and a slightly slightly pointed chin.
This seems to be a relatively common Effanbee face, but it deftly bridges the classic dolly look with a witch. The paint does well at giving her a haughty look with the blushed cheeks and quirked brows. The head looks great at multiple angles, too. She's quite icy from a three-quarter turn!
It's a shame the pupils in her orange inset eyes have faded and are hard to see from certain angles. These are classic "sleepy eyes" that close when the doll tips backward.
I wish it was like the Madame Alexander "Wendy" doll style where the lids are tight hinges that stay where you angle them, because this doll looks her...let's euphemize and say witchiest...when her eyes are half-closed.
I wish I could stand her upright with this wicked gaze!
The eyelids are a human flesh tone that doesn't quite suit this doll, and red could be stunning. The flesh color is peeking out of the black eyelash paint a bit too where it's worn or not fully covering. The sleepy eyes are independently hinged and not perfectly synchronized or even, and the sockets and eyes look a bit wonky, though when one eye doesn't open fully, it can be nudged into place. The doll still looks quite piercing with her eyes alert.
My doll's head was mildly horrific and required some good scrubbing with a Q-tip dipped in hand sanitizer to remove some icky-looking spots all over her face and clean her up. There are almost certainly better copies of this doll I might have been able to get.
The head mold is stamped with a 1975 date on the back, meaning it wouldn't have been designed for this witch. It looks like this might be a fairly common Effanbee head for the time, but it certainly suits a glamor witch very nicely. I get the idea this doll isn't supposed to be quite as chic as I see her, but her face is so pretty and her makeup is so powerful that she has to be a youthful, elegant witch in my mind-not a frumpy older woman.
The dress is a high tight-necked piece with a red belt trim and long flowy sleeves with red lining.
The rest is plain black, and the fabric is comparable to ribbon or party tablecloth. Not super deluxe, but effective. The belt ties in a knot on the back and is removable, while the dress snaps in two place on the back of the collar, and the waist.
The belt actually isn't one, and the previous owner just decided it was. This is actually supposed to be a kerchief or shawl, as indicated by the alternate release of this doll with the broom and photos of other copies of this doll.
I think the previous owner had the right idea, though. Using the tie as a waist cinch makes the dress look less baggy and more flattering, in line with the doll's otherwise glamorous air. The alternate edition with the hair tied back and the hat shape and broom sells the scarf and the more grannyish look, but this doll has to be a diva in my mind.
The witch is holding a...thing, which is tied around her wrist with red cord.
I'm not sure what this is. Is it just a magic orb? It has a thin point that reminds me of a radish, but another bump on it as well, and I don't know if either are deliberate contours or just a result of sloppy manufacturing.
I really don't understand this accessory. It might make more sense as a hair tie than anything, though it evidently was never used as one officially.
The red pigment of the whatsit stained the hand.
Undoing the dress revealed a big surprise--this doll's torso is not cast in green--and the red tights I saw are actually long johns!
I think this proves my point about fantasy skintones being radical for old dolls- apparently, you couldn't always get the whole doll in a weird color!
I'm perplexed by this choice. The underwear bodysuit does nothing to hide the color discrepancy, and kids who like playing dress-up with their dolls would probably be disappointed or confused that the body colors didn't match here. The underwear is not really meant to be uncovered, though, and the garment's purpose seems to be purely to give the witch red tights. The red legs look great but they hardly required this level of coverage. To its credit, the suit has finished edges and works well, snapping in one place in back.
The boots are velvet fabric with stiff soles, but seem a bit poorer than Madame Alexander pieces. The top edges are not finished.
The doll free-stands easily with no issues.
The body undressed reveals the only green parts are indeed the head and arms.
The head and arms are vinyl, not the highest quality (particularly not on the arms), while the torso and legs are more solid plastic. I'm genuinely not sure what age the torso is attempting to portray, and it creeps me out a little. It's not adult, but the contour seems improper for a child.
The hips are oddly wide and almost look like they're popped out of the torso because they don't flow into the contour. The head also looks too mature for this body. I think dolls ought to look cohesive without any costuming, and this certainly doesn't, not in any way.
The joints are the classic dolly minimum of five swivels at the head and limbs. None of these swivels feel loose. The leg joints don't allow the legs to sit tidily straight forward.
The feet had some rougher seams that I sanded down so her underwear footies would pull on smoothly.
The doll's size and proportions aren't massively distant from a Living Dead Doll, but they're closer to a Fibre Craft "Porcelain Look" model (the plastic-body variety, which was the craft doll base that inspired LDDs.) LDD proper is shorter than this scale, while the Madame Alexander 13-inch doll style is much taller, larger, and more toddlerish.
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| Left to right: Living Dead Dolls ball-joint body (custom character), Madame Alexander 13-inch child doll, Effanbee witch, Fibre Craft Porcelain Look doll with inset sleepy eyes (I'd meant to get one with painted eyes--still on my list!) |
I think Madame Alexander's closest body style would be Cissette dolls, but looking those up, those are shorter (9 inches), more certifiably adult in the torso sculpt (but definitely not the face), and seem to have strung elastic-band articulation that matches the 8-inch toddler-shaped Wendy model of Madame Alexander dolls.
When I took the witch doll's hair to boil, I was nervous and only got the ends first to make sure I wouldn't wreck the whole thing, but after fabric softener, shampoo, and hot water, the hair turned out surprisingly silky and nice. It gets erratic and messy very easily when touched, but it combs cleanly now and has no nasty old-hair feeling. Not sure if it'll fry in due time, but it's much improved right now. Still discolored. I also washed the costume and ironed it afterward.
When combing the hair, a minuscule black pin thing fell out somewhere. I don't know if this was part of her, plugged into her scalp, or if it was random debris.
This doll is very clearly cheap and has some bizarre points and aging deficits. But she is retro and charming with a lot of personality in her cold face and contrasting "apple tones". It can be hard to rock a red/green pairing as something spooky, but this doll does it without any unwanted Christmas connotations. For such a cheap accessible doll in today's era, she's absolutely fine as a piece of witchy vintage.
For another witch from Effanbee...well...this one hits you like a truck and cannot be ignored.
Woof.
Clearly, the distinguishing factor between Madame Alexander and Effanbee is the willingness to break the mold, because this is honestly one of the most grotesque doll faces I've ever seen. I don't know if she's ugly and I hate her, or if she's ugly and I love her!
This is my third Effanbee doll, and I wasn't sure I was going to get her until I saw the doll which I made into my second. Turns out, another doll uses this mold and it's the Queen of Hearts and she's absolutely brilliant and makes this sculpt make so much more sense. I hesitated on the witch, but not the Queen.
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| Review upcoming! |
I ultimately decided to get the witch afterward because why wouldn't I want both dolls? My other two Effanbee dolls also spawned two questions this one could likely answer--did they ever fully cast a doll body in a fantasy color, and which doll between the witch and Queen of Hearts used the outrageous face sculpt first? While I experienced this doll style and sculpt first with the Queen, and she's ready to post whenever as a Hatter Madness interlude, I'm publishing the witch first because she was the first of the two I was aware of and my Effanbee attention began here. It's all a bit tied up in knots.
This witch is part of a full Oz set, which is all really good. The series also contains a beautiful Tin Man with illusionistic face paint. He's probably Effanbee's best version of the character.
This Tin Man doesn't seem to be well documented or sold solo, and the day I discovered him, I couldn't find him alone. Fortunately, that changed very quickly and I was able to get one (complete doll, not complete stand) a few days later!
The simplicity and patterning of this era of Effanbee boxes is comparable to the design of contemporary Madame Alexander packaging, just with a window.
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| The logo. |
I have to use a picture of the Queen of Hearts' box in a side-by-side with a Madame box, since I wrote her review as if it would come first, and then got rid of the Madame box after this photo was taken.
Like Madame's boxes, the other sides of the Effanbee box are basic.
At some point, this witch was sold at T.J. Maxx, boasting a $20 price in opposition to a normal $40 rate elsewhere. I'd love to know when exactly this doll passed through T.J.'s. I'd expect at the tail end of her shelf life as she was passed into the discount chain, but it would still be nice to have a year.
Pricing can sometimes be cyclical, and to get this witch in complete condition today, I paid close to her original rate as suggested by this sticker. In today's money, $40 seems a little greedy for this doll, let alone 1993 money. I'd probably put her at $30.
The box opens on top and bottom and the insert tray slides out as expected. The doll is tied to the tray with two flat wires.
The hat remained in the box when the doll was removed, being tagged in. The stand base is attached to the back wall in a plastic packet.
The doll stands for this style of Effanbee release are short poles with clips that grab the shins and ankles from behind. The dolls are packaged with these pieces already clipped onto the legs the way they're meant to be used.
The grip pole can be put into the stand backward, but the open side is meant to face forward. This witch's stand has some discolored spots.
Effanbee dolls are not among the first I think require doll stands, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Here she is unboxed. She's packaged with a white hairnet.
Here she is more put-together.
The doll has a card tag around her wrist much like a Madame Alexander offering. This seems to be a relatively boilerplate print that served the whole storybook collection, as the actual name of the doll release in question is applied to the tag with a clear-backed sticker, allowing the tag itself to be printed unchanged for each doll under the label. The tag copyright appears to date this doll to 1993. I'd hoped the dates on the doll tags would tell me which of the two with this outlandish face mold was first, but mystery un-solved. Both dolls' tags are marked 1993. Maybe they were just about simultaneous, and so I can only speculate that the sculpt was intended foremost for the Queen.
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| I know older dolls had much lower articulation standards, but don't use the phrase "fully poseable" if you have no mid-limb joints. |
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| The Queen's tag. |
The writing on the tag is stilted. When looking at the tag of the Madame Alexander Hatter I selected, I noticed some gendered assumption about the doll and owner, with writing referring to both as female. The Effanbee tag also refers to the doll as female even if it may not be, but the rest of the writing doesn't have the heart and sentiment that the Madame tag did.
The doll starts with her hat.
This doll has a nostalgic classic-Halloween star motif on her clothing, achieved by sewing silver star sequins down her costume. They appear on one side of the hat here. The hat is black satin and the cone stands up alright without stuffing or wire. The cone is trimmed with intertwined sheer and velvet ribbons and they form a bow flourish on what I presume is the back side.
This hat has a similar issue to my Madame Hatter did, where the inner edge of the cone shows a bit too much when looking at the hat's underside while it's worn. The Hatter was much worse before I fixed him, but this hat needs attention too.
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| I don't want to see that white ring around the doll's crown! |
The witch's hair is a pretty elderly silver color, and is center-parted with no bangs. Being in a hairnet for so long gave it a bit of a swoosh, but the hair needs some combing and taming, and might have aged badly. It doesn't feel as bad as the first witch's hair, but it might not improve as much as hers did, either.
This doll's head sculpt is intentionally hideous, and succeeds. It's genuinely one of the most unusual doll faces I've ever seen, though. It's not the typical sharp wrinkly witch.
The face looks inflated in places, and that's kind of why I wondered if this was the doll it was designed for, because it made more immediate sense to me on the Queen of Hearts. I think it'd also make a killer North Wind or Jack Frost face, for some wicked classic elemental being blowing out a chill. This doesn't have to be a female face sculpt!
The cranium and forehead of this mold are small and pushed back, while the brows are thick and furrowed, the nose is wide with a long tip, the cheeks are puffy, the eyes are squeezed between cheek and brow, the mouth is stretched open, and the chin is thin and has a pronounced cleft.
It's a very unrealistic grotesque face. The cheek contours are not as symmetrical as they intend to be, with the left being notably more bulged out than the right, but this is a hard face style to perfect.
The doll's eyes are inset and static, unlike most Effanbee dolls in this range, which have the classic tilt-back sleepy eye mechanism. The witch's eyes are brown and misaligned. I need to fix that.
The mouth is sculpted toothless and I think the paint might be too monochromatic here, but there is violet inside the mouth. The witch's brows, ears, and chin are shaded with an illustrative vintage art effect, like an old Halloween illustration. I like it more than I thought I would.
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| "Give Granny a kiss..." |
This highly unusual head sculpt is dated 1992...and also, seemingly, signed by the artist!
The signature has some ambiguous letters, but I was able to find out that the name signed is designer Pat Kolesar's. I love to see this personal touch. More toy sculpts should be artist-signed.
The stamp that vanishes under the hair rooting is just the "Effanbee Doll co." logo.
The next piece of the witch's costume is her cape, which matches the satin of the hat but has no stars. The cape is as long as the witch's body while also having a separate shoulder cape panel over the top.
All of the edges of the cape have wire inside, but it's less effective than it should be and the weight of the fabric keeps the wire from really letting the costume be as dynamically shaped as I'd like. It's not like the fun I got with Return LDD Sin's cape. If the wire worked better, maybe the shoulder cape could flip forward and form a hood, but that's not possible.
The cape closes with very large, long extremely easy-to-tie strips of satin that you form in a bow.
Under the cape, the witch's dress is a cotton two-piece. Both pieces have star sequins sewn on, with the blouse having a tight collar and very puffed vintage sleeves which are tight around the wrist. The skirt isn't very structured but it has good swish and volume. This feels like a very classic witch costume. I wish the collar was tidier and didn't expose the white stitching, but the cape fully covers it.
The witch's broom is sewn to her sleeve. It's a proper realistic broom, but I can't accept it attaching to her costume.
The broom can pinch into her hand, but it's not the most trustworthy grip. I learned from making an accessory for the Queen of Hearts that reshaping the hand into a grip doesn't really last or make it work better, so I knew I had to create a wire-wrap bracket handle so the broom wound be more secure as a handheld accessory.
Looped around the same wrist as the card tag was another...thingy. At least, this time, it's more obviously some sort of magic talisman, but it still looks strange. The crystal-style bead has thread through it and sits on a convex dish with more thread and sparkle stars hanging from it. Is this a crystal ball? It's oddly ritzy for this witch.
The bead was held to the dish with hot glue, and broke off when it fell on the floor. I reglued it with superglue.
The first Effanbee doll being two colors, plus these dolls being the Witch of the West, have all made me feel like the meme of Glinda whispering a lewd question. In this case, is your body green?
Yes, quite clearly. That top looks quite stretched (again, the cape saves the day!), but turning the witch around immediately showed this doll is one color.
Even after years of collecting modern dolls in a full range of fantasy colors, there's still something wonderful about a green witch doll.
The top closes with two snaps; the skirt with one.
Under the dress, the witch has black elasticated pantaloons, no socks, and pleather slip-ons. Her clothing has stained her.
The doll's body seems about the same as the earlier Effanbee witch, with no meaningful difference in size, and similar shaping down to the hip sculpt which almost looks popped out of the sockets.
It's possible none of the molds are the same, though (the torso is definitely different), and the later witch is entirely made of the same high-quality vinyl with assembly and manufacturing very similar to a Living Dead Doll. It's an aesthetic and functional improvement over the hard-plastic torso and limbs of the first witch, plus the worse vinyl of her head and arms.
The first witch's head and neck piece plugs into a hole on top of the torso in the manner of many dolls in this style, including LDD, while the fugly head, despite including the neck in the sculpt, actually pops onto an upward peg molded as part of the torso, rather than popping down into a torso socket.
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| These were hard to pop back together. I needed to put the torso in the freezer to firm the vinyl and keep the neck knob from flexing while I pushed the head down it. |
The newer body has some different contours. The torso sculpt looks more awkwardly indecisive about the desired age portrait on the first witch, while the torso on the newer body looks a bit more neutral. The arms are also spread further on the newer body. Both dolls have the basic five swivel points of articulation.
Effanbee heads can look overlarge in a way I'm not sure is intentional, but for the witch, it seems more deliberate, and this aspect definitely suits the Queen of Hearts doll who uses the mold.
Both doll bodies have the same distinctive sculpting on their palms, with the left hand having significantly more defined creases.
This makes me think maybe the arms at least are inherited directly, but the other molds have clearer differences.
I took the witch for some hair care, trimming some fried bits off the ends, and I did what I could to reposition her right eye. It's still not perfect, but it's better. I also wrapped her broom to make a handle. All put back together, I really enjoy her, more than I thought I would. I wasn't sold on her face in this context at all, but having the witch with her full look in person, she's a really good spooky ugly witch. I wasn't sure if it was "omg she's so ugly I love her" or "she's so ugly I actually don't like her", but I think she's the former for me.
I said this witch series would focus on only two dolls a post, but I'm realizing enough of these topics will satisfy me more with trios, and a trio of witches is a very classic dynamic, so what the heck. Here's the third Effanbee witch I liked.
This witch doll was in a strange position, as I found the cheapest way to get a complete copy was actually through a lot of three dolls from this series. There were cheaper incomplete solo copies of the witch (like, sans hat, and not acceptable as such) and any complete solo copies of the doll were far more expensive. As such, I ended up with the Scarecrow and Lion from this line too, all complete with boxes. There was another lot for not too much more which had the same three dolls but also included the matching Dorothy, Glinda, and Tin Man, but several of the dolls, including the witch, were missing pieces. Seeing as I got the extra Innocents and then found the Tin Man from the fugly witch's set, the circus has a few more monkeys this time around (though not winged ones!) While I thought about throwing them all in here, I realized my recent series-interlude idea exists for a reason, and so Witchy Wonders will get its first interlude to discuss Effanbee's other Ozians I ended up with in the process of this post!
This witch is in Effanbee's "Li'l Innocents" style, which felt like a possible mirror to Madame Alexander's small "Wendy" dolls, though this model had some significant overlap with the Patsyette subset of Effanbee at this time, down to this doll's stock being used unaltered for a Patsyette edition!
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| The Patsyette witch. |
As I understand it, the Patsyettes and Li'l Innocents may be given shared costumes, but I don't know if they have the same bodies in such cases. Patsyette generally has a signature sculpt which I've learned is not the Li'l Innocents style, so do the mirrored Effanbee Oz dolls share bodies or can the clothes just fit both doll types?) What sets Patsyettes apart from Li'l Innocents is that Patsyette dolls have sculpted hair (if they have hair at all) and painted eyes, while Li'l Innocents have rooted hair (if present) and inset sleepy eyes. Here's another comparison:
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| The Effanbee Li'l Innocents Scarecrow I got (his blue fabric is badly faded, but it totally suits him.) |
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| The Patsyette version (with intact blue coloring creating a misleading visual difference). |
The Li'l Innocents box is of the same era as the prior witch, and is in effect just a shorter version of the package. The doll was previously unboxed but had all of her pieces. Maybe one more than usual, as her broomstick had broken at the head into two parts. Her hat's elastic cord chinstrap had also broken off at one end.
Despite Li'l Innocents being smaller dolls, witch number three's stand is exactly the same as witch number two's. One size fits all!
The tag is marked 1994, the year after the fugly witch.
The text inside the tag is formatted as one page rather than two, despite the tag being folded, and has some different text.
The bit about the sleepy eyes wouldn't have made sense for the fugly witch, whose eyes are static, but it also wouldn't work for the Patsyette who shares this doll's design. The doll's gender is still assumed female by the text, and the presumed boy dolls of the Lion and Scarecrow have the exact same text in their tags.
The Li'l Innocents witch has the same basic coloring as the fugly witch, but the aesthetic contrast couldn't be stronger. The Innocents doll is elegant and sweet in every way the previous doll isn't. While the first witch is fairly glam, this witch is opulent, and I'm a total sucker for regal aristocratic clothing. This witch really looks like the ruler of a country in Oz.
The hat here is black soft velvet with a tissue-stuffed cone (not sure if original or added by last owner.) The cone is trimmed with a sparkly sheer white bow and the underside of the brim has a black lace trim.
The silver elastic chinstrap cord came detached from one side.
The witch's hair is wavy with curved bangs, but came in the same dry snarled texture as the first witch's.
Dry-combing didn't seem to be doing the same magic as it did for witch number one, and I later confirmed some fried ends.
The witch's face was what drew me to her. It's a sweet child sculpt, here painted with a wonderful grumpy expression and some slick witchy glam makeup. It's very simple, but looks great.
The red lips seem to be bleeding into the vinyl a bit, or maybe the head is a bit translucent. Shining a light right onto the face seems to reduce the red ghosting effect.
The eyes are green, and they're normal sleepy eyes that can't be manually adjusted. Gravity does the work. Her right eye is turned a bit askew.
The dress is fabulous. The first thing that stands out to me is the base fabric. It's a wonderful material that works like velvet in the sense that it definitely has a rough side that's scratchy when stroked in the wrong direction, but it's smooth when stroked the opposite way, and it's very shiny, creating an oily or scaly effect.
The fabric texture and the volume of the skirt make this the ideal dress to stage the puddle-melting with!
The neckline of the dress has no collar embellishment, though it fits close. A beaded element is sewn across the front, though whether it's meant to be a necklace or the chain of her cape is unclear.
The beads stop at her shoulders and are sewn onto the dress.
What was that about a cape? Well, the witch has a very long trailing velvet panel on her back, with lace around the edges!
The cape lines up with the beads in a way that might mean they depict a chain holding it on, but what actually attaches the cape is a pair of snaps, one on each shoulder, right where the beads end.
The cape has a silver cord belt with tassels and beads on the end. Like the first witch's dress, this can cinch the baggy costume.
The sleeves of the dress make the biggest statement. They're an unusual take on a long flowy sleeve, as they don't actually enclose the arm. Each sleeve is basically two flaps draped over the arm, but they're open at the back and the arms can easily slide out of the sleeve drapery while the dress is on. The sleeves are lined with silver-white and silver embroidered trim, while they're sewn together halfway down before splitting again into two tails with beads at the ends.
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| One arm slid out of the drapery through the open back. |
The dress is ended with black fringe trim.
I love the ornate visuals of this dress, but its construction has some flaws and there were several loose or snagged fibers to trim away.
Under the dress, the doll has mesh tights which are not tight around the waist, and black pleather slip-ons without hard soles.
Here's the body design. The left hand is more gesturally sculpted than her right.
The Li'l Innocents body is seven pieces with six points of articulation, adding a waist joint to the typical minimum five joints. That makes her more poseable than the larger dolls! Each of her joints is just one-point swivel rotation.
You could get her even lower to the ground for the melting pose by taking apart her torso!
Here's the comparison with the larger body design.
I think the Innocents body looks less awkward, and the waist swivel is a nice feature.
Compared to a Madame Alexander "Wendy" model, the Innocents body is a bit larger and less infantile.
I like sturdy swivel joints more than finicky elastic stringing that weakens over time, though the Wendy heads having ball-joint articulation as a result of their stringing is really nice. An Innocents body with a head ball joint would be just about perfect. The Innocents head cut is angled so the head looks tilted when it rotates, but it's not as good as tilting at any point in its rotation.
I did get inspired to re-string the Hatter's completely loose arms by harvesting an elastic from a disused modern Mego figure.
To fix up this doll, I gave her some fabric softener and a light trim off the ends, and repaired her broom while adding a wire handle. The stick is so thin it's fragile, and wrapping the wire probably broke it in two new places, but it works okay to put in her left hand.
Here's the dolls tidied up.
After washing and trimming, the hair turned out completely straight. No boil wash.
And the broom handle. The witch can use the broom bristles-up too.
The Innocents witch lost a lot of hair volume, and possibly a lot of hair itself in the combing. She's not really densely rooted and while she's fine now, the look has been quieted a bit and she had the worst hair of the three.
I decided to volumize both witches a bit with some curling.
Then, I set to photos. I kept things fairly simple.
For Witch #1, I wanted to chase that toy-ad soundstage photo look, where the toy is photographed in an environment with a cutoff or matte backdrop. I put the witch near a tree and used some chopped branches and leaves to fill in the scene in front of my "sky wall" piece, which I color-edited for some pieces.
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| This is my favorite piece. |
All you really need is a good photo setup to shine!
Here's a couple more against the mossy ground so I could tilt her back and work her gaze a bit.
And one last portrait.
Here's pictures with the second witch.
And with the third.
For the cover, I did some shots around the cauldron.
I thought the last photo was a good teaser that hid the second witch's startling face, but the first one was the one I picked for the best atmosphere.
This is an interesting batch.
Witch #1 comes from a batch of Oz dolls that's very kitschy, and that's just the polite way to say it. Realistically, that series of Oz is crappy. The witch easily shows the series for the cheap quality it had. Her dress isn't made of anything very fancy or even especially context-appropriate, her hat is fairly abysmal, if stylishly shaped...and only by accident. The doll isn't molded in one color, and her vinyl parts are low-quality, while she has a frankly incomprehensible accessory. My doll has also aged beyond her original state, and gotten worse. However, she's still quite pretty when dressed and tidied, and she's actually got really nice hair hiding under the dry rat's nest she arrived in. It's easy to get out of order, but it's genuinely silky and needed no trimming away of any fried ends. I'm impressed with the texture after all is said and done. Cleaned up a bit, the witch gives me what I wanted with some classic retro aesthetics.
Witch #2 is strikingly ugly and a novelty for her face sculpt alone, but I like her quite a bit. Her style feels almost like a piece of childhood Halloween nostalgia for me; she feels like a familiar classic Halloween decoration from my own memories despite never having been there in my possession at the time. I can very easily imagine her as part of the paraphernalia in my Halloween childhood, though, granted, I'm sure my mother never would have allowed for that to be a possibility! She wouldn't let this witch in! The fugly witch had some quality issues with her hair aging, but it tidied nicely. Having to realign her eye was much less welcome, and not without some minor damage in the doing. Her broom accessory ought to have been designed to really be held, and the clothes staining is a bit discouraging, but I like the vinyl bodies of her era much more than the hybrid predecessor of witch #1's time. I also like the presence of witch 2's costume and her materials feel proper. The face also works much better in person with the doll complete. Seeing her flat on her back without her hat in the listing that introduced me to this sculpt...didn't do her favors. And a face like hers needs all the help it can get! Witch 2 also has a baffling talisman accessory, but it's at least more legible.
Witch #3 is sweet but flawed. Her hair was the worst of the three, and her costume had more flaws than it deserved to. Mine also had a broken broom. When put together, though, she's a stunning little display trinket fit for a fancy cabinet, and her fabrics and ornate aesthetic are pretty glorious to behold. I like the Li'l Innocents sculpting style and body articulation, too.
Here's all four of my Wicked Witch dolls in my current collection. The LDD emerald variant is competitive with these, and I can't be sure she's still not my favorite in this category.
I had fun looking at these witches, and I look forward to placing them as Halloween decorations. I'm also glad to have them reviewed so the Queen of Hearts doesn't have to stay on deck forever...before her, though, I need to put out my first Hatter Madness Interlude, and probably my third main post in that series as well. I have some untangling to do in my pipeline!
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