It's been a while since I talked about Living Dead Dolls.
Other things have preoccupied me, and I thought I was safe to set the LDD hobby aside for a bit, since the backlog was closed. And now it's not. LDD has strongly hinted that a Series 36 of new characters is finally happening after nearly a decade of IP stagnation. The first teaser could also be referring to a Resurrection set or Return set, but the use of the phrases "Three" and "Two Zero Two" above 666 symbols suggest the meaning "3(666) 202(666)"--and that's "Series 36 in 2026". I have no idea what to do with this news. I was content collecting LDD as a bygone brand mostly in the past. It was comforting knowing the collection could have progress made by shrinking the pool of dolls I wanted but didn't have, without any more being added. And now?
Well...we need to find out what Series 36 actually is. Is it a full set of five classic dolls at comparable new price to the last set of five classic dolls (Series 35?) If so, I'm in on that, whatever it is. I've never been in the position to collect a new full series of LDD direct from Mezco, and I'd love the opportunity to do that at least once. But...well, I was sure that LDD wasn't making original classic dolls in the classic style anymore and was drifting so far into new art styles because the creative personnel splintering of the brand had taken the old doll style off the table. Why else would they do the Return line (now seemingly dead at six dolls)? Why reinvent the originals in a high-end edition with a new art style if the old one wasn't taken off limits? So...is Series 36 going to be built like Return dolls? Very few fans would be able to buy a full set if it dropped at once, then. I'm open to new characters in Return style, but that would be more expensive, and it's been my quiet wish (and fear too) that we'd get a classic series in the old doll style again. I want to be on the collector side of things for that kind of event, for the dolls I love to get some new blood. This complicates things, for sure. Setting aside a LEGO Minifigures series and a LDD series per year could be a hassle. But I could love the dolls...and recoup or profit from the ones I don't like in a set. I'm not throwing away all of my year's plans for a step back into LDD immersion, but the brand waking up again with the good stuff is a prospect that excites me and also makes things tricky! For sure, it's hampered a potential look at Series 35 where I would analyze it as a covert swan song for the brand--I guess I could say it still was, for the time, but the ending of the review would be far less meaningful with the fact that LDD did actually get a Series 36 after all.
Alternatively, the new dolls will be classic but with a new head sculpting style, akin to the modern LDD Presents dolls which I find hideous. Hm. I'd be fine with classic-bodied dolls and Return-style head sculpts, but we'll have to see. One girl with a classic curly hair, hair bow, and puffy short dress has been teased in silhouette for an October release.
I don't know. I'm all abuzz. The indication of fully new LDD content, and potentially new classic dolls, has totally turned my world upside-down. This is like how Star Wars fans felt when The Force Awakens was announced. I just hope LDD doesn't end up in their own The Rise of Skywalker.
So with that necessarily discussed, let's take things back to a more comfortable world where LDD was dead and I had all the time in the world to pick up the dolls from the backlog I desired, unafraid of anything new being added to expand my abomination of a wishlist--the world of January 2026.
My first big project of the year was reviewing the LDD Fashion Victims. Fashion Victims Sadie, repping the FV line's Series 1, gave me a poor impression with her undeniably lascivious body sculpt and awkward art style which portrayed sexuality in a grotesque cartoon that didn't convey real fun or respect to the aesthetic she was attempting.
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| Peek-a-boob. It's not better with her hands moved away. |
I found Series 2's Fashion Victims to achieve an enjoyably campy pinup style that did justice to a cartoon sexy aesthetic, and the Series 1 doll wasn't hugely improved by reducing her bust. Peeling her pleather outfit was a mistake, and the collar replacement I needed to do was a downgrade.
Series 2 Hollywood and Sybil are proud members of my collection, while I sold my Lulu. Inferno is damaged/botched as to be unfair to resell, or at least, not hugely worth reselling for the price she deserves, so she's still hanging around for now. Sadie's been in a bin for a long time.
I have recently learned of a purported male Fashion Victim blank prototype doll. The veracity isn't certain, but it's believable.
This doll's hands and face detail (and the torso being less than ridiculously objectified, perhaps) feel reminiscent of Series 2's doll design, suggesting this would have been considered for Series 2 or a Series 3 that never was. The doll's eyes are sculpted, the hands don't look like separate pieces, and the head joint is more covered than on the existing dolls when seen from behind, but this could all be prototype/maquette stuff. What does confuse me and make me potentially question the truth of these images is that the face sculpt doesn't seem suited to any preexisting LDD male characters from the period. The square jaw and brutish look age the face a lot and it has pointy ears and almost looks to have upward-pointing fangs. Is this a gargoyle or vampire? Honestly, the only character that might fit would be Lou Sapphire, and the head has no horns. Again, could just be prototype stuff, but we have to take Internet images with a grain of salt.
One idea I floated to reinvigorate the FV Sadie doll and put her in better standing was rebodying the head onto a BJD body at a large enough scale to give her a more proportional and classy body design that I could source more tasteful clothing for as a genuine fashion doll. That would also have the fun possibility of offering a grown Sadie basically in-scale with her Series 1 counterpart. My first body attempt, labeled 1/5 scale, was still too small, but even trying that out with the head...part of me has to acknowledge that Sadie's head is pretty perfectly matched to her body design, for better and worse. Her edgy aughties-cartoon facial aesthetic might not suit a BJD frame or fancier clothing (at least, not nearly as well as the wave 2 Fashion Victim faces would). I might still pursue a BJD body swap on Sadie at some point given that her rubber body coating is able to tear, has a small hole, and might worsen to a point where the original doll is wrecked, but right now, that's not strictly necessary and far from a priority. Color-matching would also be an issue. One idea that had been living in my mind, though, as far as a fashion Sadie I fully loved, was to envision Sadie in the style of a (reproduction) 1960s Barbie instead. That'd be out of scale with a regular LDD, but in-scale with Sadie's LDD Mini rendition (herself the size of, and highly similar in shaping to, an early Barbie Kelly doll). A Barbie would be an easier way to represent a fashion LDD while being a body type with her own premade (and external brands' Barbie-compatible) outfits that can be easily curated and sourced. A '60s Barbie design would also be true to the faux-sixties visual style of the Series 1 Sadie doll, and far more resonant than the '90s-'00s kink goth design of the actual Fashion Victims design. I like the wave 1 Fashion Victims head, and it deserves better than the body it was given, but it's still quite far from how I'd handle a LDD fashion reimagining of Sadie myself. Besides, I'm an absolute sucker for midcentury retro. Imitating LDD with Barbie after LDD imitated a Barbie style with the Minis seemed fair, and I've been wanting a vintage Barbie model anyhow.
This is a 1995 reproduction of Barbie's classic sixties "Solo in the Spotlight" look, chosen for double duty of the doll base being good and the costume pieces suiting a Sadie well.
This period of my doll ordering had a lot of cancelled orders when items turned up unavailable on the seller's end, and this was one of them. The early months appear mildly cursed for me, and I run into lots of frustrations with my projects at the start of a year! My first order of the Spotlight doll was refunded for the item being sold offsite before I purchased the listing, so I had to find another offering. Sellers, stay on top of your listings to prevent any false starts! If you sell it elsewhere, take that thing down stat!
The box is pretty, citing the original doll's 1960 date (which was year two of Barbie as a brand) and the shape is a tall squished hexagonal prism.
The back of the box has copy about the fashion and its legacy and has an oddly airbrushed photo of the doll which erases her doll joints to look more human and seamless. It's a little strange. The box advertises a contemporaneous Hallmark ornament of the doll being offered that year.
Solo in the Spotlight was not originally a full fashion doll release; it was an early fashion set that was sold as a costume for the original Barbie "swimsuit"/"ponytail" doll. That's why the base doll of this reproduction essentially recreates the blonde/brunette variants of the OG ponytail doll base to be the model wearing this fashion set. A 50th-anniversary reproduction of swimsuit Barbie contains the Solo in the Spotlight pack as a second outfit, since the same doll laid claim to both costumes. That reproduction's doll base is more faithful to the original swimsuit Barbie than this solo Solo release.
Inside the box was some dated print paraphernalia, including a mail-in to subscribe to the Barbie Bazaar magazine, instructions for the stand, and a mail-in survey with some scary doll-collecting consumerism questions I'd be loath to answer honestly...except for the fact that it's about Barbie, by far the minority in my collection! Mattel doesn't need to know about Monster High or LDD.
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| If a collection survey starts to feel like an attack, you're in deep. (Hi.) |
I wonder if there was any follow-up for people who sent in a survey. Was anybody diagnosed as a "Top 10 Barbie Addict" and advised to seek psychiatric help by a Mattel rep? "Thank you for your outstanding dedication to the Barbie brand. However, we are worried." Did anybody win anything? Did anybody actually send these in? Did people confessing the depths of their Barbie collecting encourage Mattel to wring more money out of their audience with more disproportionate prices and more frequent releases? Wouldn't surprise me.
The paper goods looked a little icky by this point, so I was not inclined to keep them. The doll had no concerning grime.
The doll comes with a stand and a brush, and the microphone accessory. I didn't find the base for the mic at this time, so I had assumed she was complete without one. The next day, I found the mic stand base had fallen under my chair, so it's pictured later.
The doll stand is not period-accurate, and is a contemporary 1990s design with a pole that slides into the back of the base with a dovetail-style cut, but the clip is a bit ungenerous, threatening to open the dress and not letting it sit very sleek.
The costume gets bunched up, if not undone, by this stand clip, and the second costume I ordered for this doll would not fit at all in the clip when worn. I later switched to a stand which was actually designed for a much wider-waisted Barbie Looks Ken doll. I like that stand well enough, but it annoys me that the clip has zero friction on the pole and far too easily slides off, and it wasn't tight around the waist at all. I later got the repro Miss Astronaut Barbie doll from last year, and her stand had a better clip for this doll and her costumes, so this Spotlight stand left the doll's kit in favor of the Astronaut stand. I then broke the Spotlight clip by trying it on another doll whose waist/costume were too thick.
My Barbie's hair is brown, and was at one point tied with elastic in imitation of Barbie's iconic original ponytail. That elastic is long since disintegrated, and handling the doll relaxed the hair from its held position soon enough.
The fluffy bangs are not accurate to the tight poodle curls of the original Barbie doll, but they still look nice. I didn't investigate the hair much because I knew it was all coming out for my custom job.
Barbie's head is evidently cast with the very same mold the brand started with, going by the 1959 mold stamp! It's so incredibly cool to me that this historic toy mold has been retained and used like the icon it is for so many decades. And I love the face style.
It must be acknowledged that the classic Barbie doll design is very heavily derived from the German Bild Lilli doll, to the point of infringement and shady dealings in the toy scene. Mattel got the rights to Lilli after lifting the design, and Mattel does not seem to ever acknowledge Barbie's design "mother" when touting the Barbie doll's history. Lilli herself, who was pinup at the worst, has also been unfairly characterized by time as an "adult gag gift" or "sexy doll" which lends an unfairly scandalous lens to her which she never earned. A lot of discussion about dolls is more misogynistic and harmful to women than the dolls themselves! Lilli's legacy and simultaneous lack thereof all sucks, but the 1959 Barbie look is still iconic, with the narrow face, very dimensional molded heavy eyelids, pouted lips, and a wicked side-eye like you could only find in this time period.
Barbie and Sindy are the standard-bearers of the doll side glance. They made the gaze so iconic to dolls of the sixties in my mind.
I love the diva energy of old Barbie. Every time Mattel releases a new collector Barbie with this head sculpt, I'm tempted, purely because I love this face so much...but then the prices turn me away, as well as the lower aesthetic utility Barbies offer me as a collector. It's nice to have aftermarket reproductions offering this sculpt for much cheaper! I also respect Barbie as the bubbly queen of the most absurd pink you've ever seen, but the killer couture persona in the original dolls is incredible, and a sharp midcentury design is always going to be more to my taste than a silly eighties one. I have no personal connection to the eighties era, but my parents were sixties kids. There have been fusions of the two iconic styles--Barbiecore pink and sometimes blonde with the original head mold and retro fashion sense.
I feel like midcentury Barbie could come across Sadie hacking dolls to pieces in a dark alley...and then take the knife and show Sadie how to make cleaner, more efficient cuts. I'm just saying: a "Barbie" type with the Addams mentality was completely viable. Debbie Jellinsky had the aesthetic and attitude, but she just didn't have the grace.
This reproduction doesn't have the stroke-shaped pupils of the swimsuit-Barbie reproduction of the year before, having round pupils and circular light reflections that look less like an authentic older hand-painted style. Her eyebrows are also more relaxed than the fairly vicious quirk of the swimsuit doll's.
Barbie's eyes are blue while her eyeshadow is a lighter shade. Her nostrils are picked out with dots of red paint, and her lips are red while she has blush on her cheeks. The blue of the eyeshadow also subtly lines the undereye in this faceup.
Barbie has pearl earrings which are beads impaled with little bent nails that harpoon into her head at some wacky angles to keep them in. They are not intended to come out. I was able to extract both later with her head as-is because it's a very flexible squishy vinyl, but I intended to make these easier to remove for future use.
Around her neck, Barbie has a greyish clear-beaded necklace twist-looped around her neck enough times to make it tight. The beads seem to be colorless while the core strand is black, lending them the grey effect. The necklace is not intended to be removed since taking the doll's head off is the only way to get it unwound.
The necklace was held in place for packaging with a strip of tape on Barbie's back, which hardly seems necessary.
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| Where did Mattel think it was going to run off to? |
The dress is a body-hugging number of a scratchy, sparkly, slightly translucent material with a big tulle frill at the shins--I kind of wish the dress hung longer and frilled at the ankle, mermaid-style, so an older Sadie in this dress would resemble Morticia while young Sadie looks like Wednesday. A red fabric rose is sewn to the left corner of the frill, while the clear elastic straps that kept the dress pulled up have long since crumbled and failed. I might need to add a halter neck so the dress stays up and tighter. I wonder if the 1960 dress was held up the same way or if the straps were a 1995 addition that ultimately failed at improving the costume.
When the dress pulls down her body, the top peels away a bit from a netted layer inside the dress, but it's not falling apart or anything.
Barbie has simple but lovely black evening gloves that extend past her elbow. They're very easy to pull on and off and fit her hands well with their separate thumbs. The right glove has a sheer pink scarf sewn to it, but a thread can be cut to remove it, and the sewn-in gathering in the scarf can still be held by the gloved hand, if less securely.
Under the gloves, Barbie's fingernails are painted red, same as her toes. Her shoes are simple black heels.
Barbie has a microphone to sing with, which comes in two parts--thus why I assumed it had no stand when that piece was briefly lost.
The assembled stand has a base with weighted metal inside to keep it upright. The pole isn't rigid, so it looks more fake than it wants to.
The doll's hands can actually clip a bit onto the pole, but not while the base is on the ground. The mic isn't tall enough to touch the ground and clip into the hands simultaneously.
I thought of giving this mic to LDD Siren, but it's at eye-level for a classic LDD. Too tall. I suppose I could cut a couple of centimeters from the end of the pole to shorten it and plug it back into the base at LDD height.
The doll has the classic five swivel joints of this era of Barbie, and of countless low-cost Barbies in decades up to this date. The most popular Barbie knockoff design, which many doll brands have used, has a diagonal swivel-cut waist and rubber click knees, but those are features Barbie herself used at a later period than that which this doll reproduces.
The hips do very clean front-to-back splits, and can bend far back enough to do ballet...or to take a rather Exorcist turn. I photographed these all after I took the doll to base in preparation for her makeover since I hadn't bothered to explore the articulation much before, not thinking there would be much to say.
I find the backward-hip-swivel weird poses very entertaining. We don't know that Sadie is possessed, but who's to say she can't do a demonic back bend?
The original Barbie body is by no means realistic, and has been the touchpoint for endless criticisms about the portrayal of women in pop culture and children's media.
The wasp waist, broad bust, and minuscule feet at the end of long legs all come together to create a figure which is far more of a 3D fashion sketch or paper doll than a typical human woman's frame. This may be the body clothes are designed for in the world of a designer, but that's quite different from the real-world bodies clothes are most worn on. Such a discrepancy was known and commented on even in the sixties--there's a whole Bewitched episode where a fashion designer gets taught how to design for the average American woman rather than the models he's used to. With Barbie, I get the concerns with setting an unrealistic and very narrow standard for beauty. I know this is absurd in its way and that lots of people resent this kind of image or expectation...but at the same time, can't we just enjoy things sometimes?
I think Barbie is great fun when she's a total fantasy, a stylized, whimsical exaggeration of beauty and fashion that you can dream toward. To me, the fantasy doesn't feel centered on her body per se, but on the art style and aesthetic of the whole thing. In the early brand, Barbie embodied chic and prim and elegant--the style of an artist's fashion drawing. She then moved on to poppy mod, then to big, bright, fun, and ridiculous. (And then to everyday fashion that's mostly shapeless and printed rather than 3D. Sigh.) Barbie's at her most enjoyable when she's super heightened and wearing things and sculpted like something outside of reality. We love it when she's that girl, doing beauty and fashion in a confident way that we all wish we could emulate. Also, dolls tend to be sculpted to look better while dressed with the bulk an outfit will add, inevitably leaving compromises with the nude form, which is more rigid and simplistic than a human body.
The Lammily doll was an independent project which tried to provide a fashion doll with "human average" proportions and even flaws, such as optional skin marking packs that could be applied to the doll.
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| The three dolls offered by the brand. |
Lammily, named for the line's designer Nickolay Lamm, was designed in vocal contrast to the perceived perfection and narrow standard of Barbie, but Lammily ultimately fizzled and was nothing more than a newsworthy fad because Lammily was no fun. I can see the appeal to Lammily. The dolls are going for a polished everyday kind of wholesome vibe, like classic American Girl in terms of the lush watercolor artwork on the boxes and such, and the dolls have some loving touches. I'm particularly impressed by the second of the three dolls, the Photographer, being a Black doll with lighter paint on her palms and soles to accurately reflect the lower melanin there as a trait real dark-skinned people exhibit. That kind of detail is almost never seen in animation or toys. I think there is a care and an an enjoyable aesthetic to the dolls, but there's a nostalgic mundanity to it that was probably never going to find its audience among children.
Also, the ethos of the project at large felt surprisingly rotten for the aesthetic the dolls were trying to embody. Lammily came across as a snide experiment, a product of disdain rather than joy, while bringing nothing particularly delightful as her own character. She was the anti-Barbie, and thus she refused to be skinny, but also to be glamorous. The whole thing was incited by Lamm making this viral photo edit to push Barbie into more "average" proportions, inherently condemning the Barbie doll. This was buzzy enough to fund the doll and make a wave, but not for long.
The Lammily dolls we got? Well, the clothes lacked range for more pretty or exciting options and didn't seem to always flatter her shape or age. A fashion doll's glamor can be an unfair standard, but Lammily went more naturalistic for everything, including clothing, which, while she had a nice enough look, ended up making her feel boring for the field she was trying to enter. Who wants a doll that stands against whimsy? Imaginations are wonderful to foster in children, while the doll seemed to discourage fanciful thinking. Her mathematical body sculpt was awkward in some ways and her fashions didn't make her seem full of possibility. Barbie offered ideas to aspire to, and even if you couldn't become her, she could at least inspire you. The worst reactions to Lammily were that she seemed to say, unintentionally, "This is you, and you're nothing more than average". Anecdotal evidence suggests some children reacted to her as the "boring", "ugly", "old", or "fat" doll when placed alongside mainstream dolls, which indicates a failure to make her appealing in the way kids wanted. All three dolls can easily look like they're past their early twenties, perhaps most unflatteringly on the boy doll, and their humble clothing doesn't help the impression of them being settled-down suburbanites of parenting age. Barbie says you can be as exciting as she is because you can be anything you set your mind to, and Barbie avoids the appearance of a relaxed or dull parent.
Lammily was also more of a PR stunt, marketed solely on her body and appearance and ability to portray aspects Mattel dolls wouldn't touch. Rather than letting Lammily be a developed or engaging character base who was incidentally more realistically-proportioned, the promotion was all about dunking on Barbie, and turned the doll into something judgmentally wholesome. At that time, body positivity messaging was often predicated on body negativity toward the preceding standard. Barbie's body isn't realistic, but Mattel doesn't shout about it from the rooftops as an ideal. Maybe they don't have to in order to have that effect, but at the time Lammily dropped, Barbie wasn't telling you to be skinny. Lammily does make a proclamation of standards, replacing one form with another. She can be accused of being more prescriptive than Barbie ever was (while her math-derived proportions are arguably not more realistic). There's also the skin-crawling quotes from the doll's creator about how Barbie was "cold and intimidating" to him, and implying that Lammily is warmer and more approachable in a condescending way that can be read as an ideal for women to be meek or docile, or that the doll was designed to his ideals of what makes a woman appealing (a sentiment which one would not expect to be admitted so candidly). Body positivity then was also often mixed in with ideas of pushing bigger bodies as more enticing to men...
...Lammily really was the "All About That Bass" of fashion dolls. I'm shocked Meghan Trainor never crossed over with the brand during that cultural moment.
Most fatally, Lammily was a doll designed for adults to impose values on children and then pat themselves on the backs for it. Her wholesome cozy look and watercolor art screams "adult-appeal" with its nostalgic and mundane vibe, reaching for the old-timey or "educational" or "moral" presentation of other toys parents might encourage. She wasn't definitively unappealing to kids, going by different anecdotal evidence regarding kids enjoying her, but she was designed for adults. And "parents' choice", "you can have this instead of that" toys have a hill to climb, especially when a child is aware the toy they're getting is the substitute for what they actually requested. This has always been true--my mom growing up in the sixties and seventies had her own "this is better for you than Barbie" experience, and she felt cheated then! For Lammily to have been enduringly successful, she should have been character-focused and tapped into what kids really enjoyed. She should have had more range in aesthetics while keeping the novelty of the body sculpt as an untouted core of the doll's identity (let others generate the PR for you; don't force it!), or should have provided multiple distinctive but realistic body types of the kind not typically glamorized by mass media. Fashion-wise, give us glamor editions and casual ones, different hair colors, etc. And for god's sake, pick a different brand/doll name that's less egocentric and clumsy, Mr. Lamm. I know we wouldn't be where we are today if that 1959 doll had been named "Handlerie".
What's done is done. The Lammily doll in a vacuum is fine and a fair plaything, but she's mired in questionable intentions and marketing. Barbie ultimately took Lammily out by dropping the new spectrum of body types after Lammily's debut, handily winning the battle by debuting multiple body shapes to go alongside the current standard Barbie, thus providing the range and product volume Lammily never did or could, while having much more fashion variety and diversity and maintaining through their designs that their doll shapes were all capable of being stunningly beautiful. Maybe Mattel wouldn't have done this without the PR pressure from the Lammily fad, but they easily outdid Lammily in ethos and variety once they responded, and left the Lammily brand without an average-size leg to stand on.
Modern Barbie is focused on being relatable, which might be a bad idea in some ways. For better or worse, I feel like the unattainable and outrageous in Barbie was her biggest allure and most memorable quality. I have endless respect for Mattel working to make Barbie a brand of dolls for people to see themselves as beautiful in. Their commitment to diverse visibility, new body types, and mirroring the many types of beauty in the world is very admirable. I don't want to sacrifice that and impose narrower aesthetics and reduced representation on the brand. Mattel's right: they shouldn't throw their brand behind the overrepresented face of a blonde white woman anymore. But Barbie doesn't feel as much like a celebrity as she used to. Her style isn't as elevated, her budgets are lower, and she feels less aspirational. Barbie and Miss Piggy shared an honor once of being fictional characters with a genuine star impact on pop culture, but now I think Piggy reigns unopposed (which she prefers, I know). Barbie in previous eras had command when she was a diva or a camp icon, and arguably, most of her modern-faced collector dolls today don't recapture that feeling. Even the Barbie movie feels like a total flash in the pan in retrospect. It reigned 2023 and then seems to have had minimal cultural impact afterward. It certainly didn't cause any meaningful changes in Mattel. Boy dolls are even less present than they were before the movie, which could be interpreted as a critique of gender inequality in doll lines!
Barbie still has it, sometimes. They have high-end fashion aesthetic lines, and Deluxe Style #2's outfit has been lambasted, but I liked her for mixing disability representation with a more glamor-themed statement look.
The doll, who I call Flora, is built on the current equivalent to the original Barbie sculpt, being on the median frame from which the curvy, short, and petite frames deviate.
Efforts have been made to make Barbie dolls less exaggerated over time, though the feet are still ridiculously tiny. Both eras' body designs feel cohesive, though. The style of a modern Barbie head would feel out of place on a caricatured retro body, and vice-versa. These days, when almost all dolls have oversized heads and eyes or more cartoony body shapes, Barbie winds up being the realistic option among the fray!
It's been said before, but the Barbie (2023) movie's suggestion of an unglamorized "Normal Barbie" doll edition is not the revolutionary concept it wants to be, and might be the most out-of-touch/millennial-coded perspective of the movie. We already have mostly-relatable Barbies in spades with the current Barbie playline being largely unexciting and un-iconic, and Lammily, who came even closer to Gloria's "Normal Barbie" idea, including optional cellulite and scars, was ultimately a blip with a poor reputation and insufficient audience. People generally like fashion dolls because they're elevated, not because they're super relatable or down-to-earth. "Normal Barbie" would be a hit with moms like Gloria and no one else.
So with all that exhausting rumination said...the classic Barbie body is fine for its purpose. It's a cultural artifact of the period and it's an appealing stylized glamor fantasy. Having seen a blatantly sexualized doll body now through Wave 1 Fashion Victims, I don't think sexual criticisms of this design hold much water. I do think the hand shape is slightly awkward, and it looks better gloved to me. Many Barbies throughout the decades to today have been molded with posed static arms, and while the stiff extended arm isn't the most versatile, it's vastly preferable to any arm with a permanently belt elbow. Those are harder to use clothes with and they feel even more limited when they're articulated because they only look good in one rotation. If you're molding static bent elbows, you might as well be molding a statue instead of a doll.
The five points of classic Barbie swivel articulation keep with the classic LDD style, and are only slightly less than a LDD Mini who could share space with this doll style. Minis have rotating shoulder hinges. Both Minis and Barbie sit neatly with legs together, while classic LDD sits with the legs splayed wide. I love the sculpting of the classic Barbie, but I wish a highly-articulated version of the 1959 design was easily available to increase this design's display options. Poseable Silkstone bodies based on the 1959 design exist, but a collector release is your only way to get one. Perhaps I'd be less enamored by the look with joints disrupting the sculpting, but I can hardly think more body language would be harmful. I can definitely appreciate the charm of the doll as it is, though, and my articulation bias is firmly sat in the corner here. Old Barbie kills even without that many joints.
Barbie's skintone is warmer and perhaps more lively than any Sadie's, but it'll have to do. I might be able to make it look cooler or paler in the repainting stage, but I could leave it as is. Maybe we can say it's gotten waxy-colored from death.
I also ordered Barbie's sixties "After Five" outfit, which was the perfect analogue to FV Sadie and Series 1 Sadie's costumes, with an apropos name to boot (after five comes sinister six!) This is an original 1962 Barbie fashion set which consists of a dress, identical heels to Solo in the Spotlight, and an open-topped circular sun hat. The fashion set, just like Solo in the Spotlight, has been rereleased while worn by a doll just a few years ago, with the model assigned to the costume being a ginger retro ponytail Barbie.
I got an original lot of the fashion set, just missing the white wrist gloves. The dress opens down the front with a flap on the left breast which closes with two snaps, and opens only down to the waist.
Here's the doll dressed in the After Five pieces, with the Spotlight gloves still on because I think they go well here. I couldn't keep the sun hat on her head without pulling the ponytail through the top. I'm not sure that was the intention, but the gathering around the opening is not elasticated to stretch around the doll's crown, so the hat would not be secure otherwise. Some sun hats do seem designed to let an updo through the open top, so maybe this is correct.
The stock photos for After Five's "reproduction" collector release show the doll wearing the hat without the ponytail going through the top. With the copies of doll and hat I have, I'm not sure how that's possible without sewing, a chinstrap, or plastic tags.
Okay, you see what I mean, right? This is absolutely ideal for a fashion Sadie!!! It's basically the same costume as Fashion Victims, but retro and refined!
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| Taken before my FV experiments and modifications. |
None of the viable large-BJD clothes I perused in the "rebody FV" exploratory phase happened to be fashion matches on this level. None of them said "Sadie" as much as this dress, and certainly, none were such strong specific stylistic parallels to the canonical adult Sadie dress. Barbie was the correct choice for this project. The dress couldn't be more perfect, and if After Five didn't exist, this project may not have found itself. It looks right while having the genuine 1960s provenance that makes it entirely authentic for the concept and Sadie's original aesthetic. (If we're splitting hairs, it's definitely a transitional late-fifties early-sixties look, rather than a dress exclusively characteristic of sixties style, but it's lovely.) It's also a really nice piece in general. The fabric has beautiful weight and the skirt hangs in a lovely way and the piece is super chic on the doll. It feels like a life-size version of the outfit would have the same feel and hang the same way, if that makes any sense. It doesn't strike me as being stiffer or lighter or clunkier at this scale than a full-size copy would be. Inside, the fibers are messier, and the right shoulder trim (our right, not the doll's right) doesn't love to lay flat, and the buttons aren't aligned, but this is still a wonderful doll outfit. I miss the standards of older doll clothes, at least for Mattel. This would be a low-grade lightweight cheap stiff satin with a satin collar made of one layer of unfinished material today.
This outfit on the doll fully sells the appeal of the original Barbies. She was fated to be the fashion doll from day one; the doll in this dress feels like a precious, artful little mannequin demonstrating just how chic chic can be. I knew my project was a go.
However, because this prelude was already so long and the custom process was even longer, I've decided to split this project into two posts! I'll be back shortly with the rest.
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