Hatter Madness 5, or "A Clinical Tea Party": "LDD in Wonderland" Sybil!

Hatter Madness returns after a bit of a break, with its penultimate main review! I was fine not worrying about this series for August and September, but I knew from the start that I needed to make an October feature out of this doll. This is the spookiest Hatter of the bunch-- Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland's Sybil.

I've had a dubious fondness for Sybil since exploring the fraught depiction of her Series 4 debut and finding her to be an excellent doll and character design despite her obvious conceptual faults. I reviewed Sybil's debut and Mini counterpart then, and earlier this year, made the landmark acquisition of Sybil's hard-to-find, coveted, and awesome Fashion Victims doll. I was really hoping I'd come across an opportunity to get her Resurrection doll earlier this year too. On the LDD subreddit, a user emerged with the incredible opportunity to get what might have been any LDD produced for a decent price; the user's mom had been a Mezco employee who got a sample of all of the LDD items produced. While there was evidence of users on the sub successfully locking down and receiving their grails, I completely failed to make an arrangement. I first said a kind comment about how nice it was the user was offering this, and got a friendly response...which was later deleted. I was primarily asking about the prospect of my grail, Resurrection-variant Bride of Valentine, and I got a photo back of the wrong edition. I clarified my request and tacked on an inquiry about Res Sybil too, but never heard a response. The user moved to eBay selling with no update posts or announcements they were closing the Reddit negotiations. Dang. As ever, something seeming nearly within reach and proving unavailable has a damaging effect and I'm setting aside a wish, if not an actionable goal, to get Res Sybil in 2027. I'd love to be patient and find an easier opportunity than the ones that exist, but if I end up in a position where I have the means to get her as she is being offered now...I might not stop myself. That would have to be the absolute price-to-quantity proportional limit that I can never exceed again for collecting. I might also justify by reselling items to get her in such a case, like I did with my Haunted Mansion Sally Slater doll (review upcoming soonish). 

I knew I would keep the Sybil train rolling in 2026 with this doll, though. Because Sybil is LDD's premiere "insane" character, she was a natural casting for the role of the "Mad" Hatter. It's a shallow association...but since this doll line was released before the five inherently tea-themed LDDs, casting Sybil as the Hatter is probably what I'd have done at the time too. (Now, as to which Series 23 doll would make the best Hatter, if this Wonderland doll line released later? I'm going to say it's probably Betsy. She's wearing a fancy hat already, and she's styled as the bossy mistress of the tea party, even being assigned the teapot while the others have cups. The idea of a second Betsy doll as the Hatter is really interesting to me!) Further to Sybil's credit, the "madhouse" or stereotypical "insane asylum" was very much a present fixture of Victorian society, so it makes sense for this character embodying this stereotype to tie into a mad Alice character.

The two LDD in Wonderland variants, as a pair, represent Sybil's last doll release to date--the same goes for Jinx, and maybe Inferno, if Resurrection V didn't come after LDD in Wonderland. Not sure about that last one. Jinx (playing the Cheshire Cat) is the LDD in Wonderland participant with the fewest editions total, only being preceded by her lone Series 6 doll. Sybil has a healthy assortment of LDD releases, but fewer than Eggzorcist (White Rabbit) and Sadie (Alice).

My initial vision was to review any or all of the LDD in Wonderland characters in individual posts in a self-contained series, as I did with the Queen of Hearts and Alice. But once Hatter Madness was formed, it meant the Wonderland Sybil review simply had to be part of it. And it's a solo post for her anyway, so it can be grouped into both series--LDD in Wonderland as well as Hatter Madness.

I got my Sybil complete in box. The boxes of non-coffin LDDs are not requirements for me, but the next cheapest Hatter, sans box, had grime on her that I just didn't want to deal with. I also realized she was missing her feathers too. I was rendered unable to open Sybil up for a good few days later than I'd have liked, on account of one prop for the review-staging tableau not arriving to me yet!

Sybil's box has the typical problem of half of the velcro flap closure coming unglued from the box and being stuck to the other half of the velcro. Nothing else to note about the packaging that hasn't been shared here before. It's all the same except the name on the front flap and the shaping of the plastic tray Sybil is wired to.

Unsurprisingly, as with most adaptations, Sybil is credited as the Mad Hatter, despite Carroll never using those two words consecutively in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I don't think LDD's take on Wonderland is the shallowest around, but there's a special kind of Carrollian cred you'd get with me if your Alice merch simply called him "the Hatter". 

Here's the doll out of the box. Having her for over a week and not being able to open and inspect her before I could shoot the review set was painful!

Like many of the Oz/Wonderland LDD entries, Sybil is a female LDD-original character cast as a male character from the adapted literary source work, though whether that makes this Hatter a female portrayal is ambiguous. Sybil's dolls (except Fashion Victims) tend to be visually gendered only by their lipstick, and I can easily view Sybil's Hatter as a man with a gender-defiant goth/punk/David Bowie edge to him. Under the hypothetical fantasy-psych interpretation that each Sybil doll could represent an alternate personality of one woman's system, then the Hatter could very well be seen as a male alter of Sybil's. There's no greater canon in LDD to validate this, and the LDD Wonderland dolls are meant to be viewed only within their own world, but I think this Hatter could reasonably be viewed as any gender, regardless of the "actor" being a woman. I'm not sure I read a definitive gender in the doll myself. Knowing it's Sybil skews me in some ways to use she/her pronouns, but there's an appeal in using he/him or they/them too. I'm thoroughly undecided, but given the context of this doll's LDD character origin, and the fact that I kind of selected my Hatter Madness picks to fall into an even gender split, I'll default to referring to this doll as she/her Sybil and grouping her in with the female half of my Hatter Madness contenders.

If any of my selected Hatters in this series can be described as "serving tea", this might be the one, despite her aesthetic target sphere not being queer fashion or drag. She's heightened enough to get away with the pun, despite clearly being an alt doll. The doll also firmly maintains Sybil's claim to be one of the gothest characters in all of LDD. Between this and Fashion Victims, it's hard to say which is more goth! It's certainly a departure from the ethos underpinning Caroll's writing, where the characters Alice meets in Wonderland can be read as reflections of the injustice and ineffectual nature of the contemporary adult status quo in the eyes of a child. Hatter Sybil doesn't read as a portrait of the harms that convention can bring. She's not the nonsense of mundanity.

I'm not sure how much this Sybil deliberately reflects the "asylum" theme of her previous concept. I think there are echoes, but overall, this character is more like an alt/punk/goth take on actual Victorian fashion than I first assumed her to be. She still fits into alternative music connotations, and maybe there's a whisper of Alice Cooper (in Wonderland) about her look too.

I've been evaluating my Hatter dolls' headwear, of course, and Sybil has a very competitive entry. 

It's a pinstriped felt piece that fits nicely, is exaggeratedly tall, and it's the first in my collection with the famous price label on the side! 

It's glossy card, but a bit worn by creasing. The text is subtly spooky-effect.

The "lid" of the hat is not a radial design of stripes, so the top stripes don't align all the way with the stripes on the vertical portion, nor does the brim align with the vertical, but it's not distracting and this is a character who gets away with some disjointed effect. The stripes could be read as an echo of prison/institutional uniform striping, which Fashion Victims directly invoked with her super long-armed straitjacket.

This is the wrong side, yes. I might have to flip the whole "Tenniel illustration" photo composition in this review for Sybil's benefit. 

I could make this work. If it needs a mirrored composition, why not?

While I expected the hat to not effectively rotate to place the label where it needed to go, because I expected an ugly vertical seam would be facing straight forward if I did so, this isn't actually the case. There is a vertical seam, but it's not glaring and it's not actually oriented to be right in the front of the hat if you have it rotated per Tenniel. So essentially...she can wear the hat her own way, or she can wear it accurately to the book. That's great. 

The hat has a roll of card inside to keep it structured. I was also very pleasantly surprised to find the edge of the brim has wire sewn inside so the shaping can be adjusted!

We might have peaked here. Sybil has a perfect Hatter hat, and it completely suits her specific design. 

This is perhaps the wildest case of hat hair I've encountered in a doll. Not that it doesn't suit her...

Sybil's hair is the most divergent out of any of her dolls thanks to its light pinkish purple tone. The nongendered cut suits her typical vibe, but all other Sybils have black hair. I've seen some Hatter Sybils whose hair looks shorter and more close-cut, but I really like this messy shaggy long shape on her and I'm glad that's how the doll turned out, at least on my copy. One of the Hatter's rude comments to Alice is "Your hair wants cutting", so I find it amusing that this Hatter could receive the very same critique.

I noticed some of the hair on Sybil's left side was nearly white, and I wasn't initially sure if it was sun-bleached somehow or it if was a separate rooted color adding a highlight. Turning the doll around more and taking the hat off made it very clear she has two rooted hair colors, which is honestly rarer for LDD than one might expect. 

It's a really interesting color combination, and I can see a version which went starker with black streaks in the violet shade instead, and I don't think that would have been as strong somehow. 

This is also LDD's only Sybil design with bangs. She has a clear rooted line for bangs to fall over her forehead, but she needs to meet some boiling water before that can happen.

Hatter Sybil's skintone is a cold greyish dead cast of a pale flesh color, less lively than Series 4 and not the yellowish shade of Fashion Victims.

Sybil's face has a delicious amount of graphic stylized detail. It's the wildest face in the Wonderland line, and it's 100% my kind of goth whimsical aesthetic. There's shades of carnival or cabaret in the theatrical makeup look. I love it.

Sybil has always had spiral imagery, but this doll goes the furthest with it. While Fashion Victims Sybil is arguably the closest the character has come to resembling a Tim Burton character, the emphasis this Sybil puts on spirals makes her a close second. First up is her unusual eye accessory. While in context of a gentleman's tea, such a piece might be a monocle, the way it's built and worn, it's much more like an eyepatch, being a black felt disc with a white spiral design attached to a black elastic band which encircles Sybil's head. It's not impossible for a Victorian gentleman to wear an eyepatch, especially if he's a veteran, but there's nothing else definitively military about this Hatter design, so it might just be quirky alt fashion. 

The eyepatch is positioned precisely on Sybil's face, with the strap at two different angles, by some glue sticking it to her face. The back of the strap is loose. I'd really rather this not have been the way this was done. 

Sybil's exposed eye has a huge exaggerated eyebrow above it, which ends on a spiral on the inner edge and caricatured hair strokes on the outer edge. The eye's lower edge has giant amplified eyelash forms with a dot below the end of each of the three spikes. This may be evoking the similar, comparatively quieter makeup of the FV doll, who wore hers in tribute to A Clockwork Orange

The same eye on the Hatter has a wing on the inner edge and normal LDD thick lashes on the outer upper edge. The eye has airbrushed grey shading to sink it in, and the sclera is white. Like some previous Sybils' eyes, there is no defined iris or pupil, but a black "madness" spiral takes their place. This Hatter design is unique among Sybils for the spiral being a square shape. The eye also has a red waterline detail on the lower edge.

In keeping with Series 4 and Resurrection, this Sybil has a splash of green coloring on her mouth. Series 4's was lime vomit dribble, while Res had dark green full-lip paint with one dribbling streak of the same shade. Hatter Sybil splits the difference with a bright lime full lip, outlined in black. The lip line breaks between the upper and lower lips. 

While Sybil's eyepatch is meant to stay exactly where it is, her face is fully finished, and like Resurrection Sybil, her eyes are asymmetrical, with only one spiraling. The eye under the patch is not obviously missing or blinded, either, suggesting this is a fashion statement and not covering a damaged or disabled eye/socket. When I lifted the eyepatch disc, it started to separate from the strap, but it became clear the eye had a black sclera and a pretty mundane concentric ringed iris design to create a pale grey effect around a black pupil. Sybil has an eyebrow here too, which is fully hidden by the patch.

Some of Sybil's black paint isn't as opaque as I'd like, and there are marks or smudges in the airbrushing on her covered eye, suggesting maybe the patch was put on too soon in manufacturing, before the paint dried fully? I peeled the eyepatch off.

The elastic is loose, probably with age. I'd love to get this tightened and functional as a removable piece.

The glue residue is a problem, but here's the full uncovered face.

And here are the previous different classic Sybils to compare.

Series 4; debut.

Resurrection (main edition). 
Photo credit to Valley of the Living Dead Dolls on Facebook. The variant changed the shape of her brain-surgery scar and added eyebrows, with the main edition and baby Dollies Sybil being the only browless designs for the character.

One day, Res. Sybil. You will be on my table.

It is very funny that, thanks to the felt hat and spiral theme, the most similar other Hatter in my selection pool ended up being the Storyland doll, who couldn't be more tonally different otherwise.

Sybil's Hatter costume is very punk-goth and at least as far as my Hatters with masculine-skewed fashion, is the furthest off-book if we're referencing the iconic depiction cemented by John Tenniel's original artwork. As mentioned, though, it's more Victorian than I first gave it credit for.

It's debatable whether Sybil or the two Maddies is closer or more distant from Tenniel. Sybil might have more of the details and less of the spirit, while the Maddies would be the opposite.

Around her neck, Sybil has a thin black feather boa which comes tied in a single knot. 

This makes her the second of three classic LDDs with a boa piece, coming between Hollywood and Betsy. (She's the third of four if you count FV Hollywood too). The core of the boa is not very flexible, so it's not slinky and doesn't really hang straight down when retied.

Sybil is also wearing black satiny waistcoat over a piece made to look like an untucked Victorian dress shirt with the right sleeve torn off, over leggings which match her hat stripes. She also has a fingerless glove on her left.

My favorite detail has to be the fact that Sybil has four tiny fake pin badges on her vest, each a different color with a different decoration. It feels very DIY alternative, and as someone who puts a lot of pins on my backpack (including the Series 11 LDD pin), I feel some connection to this doll.

There's a red pin with the sulfur symbol, a black pin with a skull, a purple pin that says "Curiouser and Curiouser", and a yellow pin with a bird silhouette which might be a raven as per the Hatter's unsolved riddle--"why is a raven like a writing desk?" 

Oh my god, wait--is that why she's wearing black feathers??? I think it must be!

I'd have preferred a Hatter quote instead of an Alice quote on the purple button. 

The badges are just discs of cardboard, but they're well printed. I wonder how these could be safely reinforced to make them resistant to water. I have no intention of watering this doll, but the card elements make me nervous.

The waistcoat has an attached metal chain sewn to the inner left breast, and the chain connects the vest to the right hip of the leggings while the shirt can be removed as a fully separate piece.

While the chain's placement reflects a gentleman's accessory, most likely the chain for a pocket watch that the doll doesn't depict, and also feels very alternative, it holds true with prior Sybils wearing institutional prison chains attached to their collars as well. Even the way the chain physically, inseparably connects the vest and leggings, kind of subtly makes Hatter Sybil feel constrained by her costume without any actual bindings this time. Not sure if that's intended, but I see it semantically. 

Resurrection presents the only Sybil(s) with no chaining element. Resurrection trades a chain for a Hannibal Lecter-esque bite mask. Series 4 has a chain on a separate dog collar, Living Dead Dollies and Minis adapt the S4 costume one-to-one on the alternate doll builds, and Fashion Victims fuses the chain neck collar and the crotch strap of the straitjacket into one loop strap separate from the jacket. The FV straitjacket has no functional binding beyond being able to wrap the sleeves around the doll and tie them in a knot. Hatter Sybil's is the only chain without a loose end, and it arguably hangs the shortest as such. Series 4's chain doesn't reach the floor; the other loose Sybil chains do.

Here's a look at the shirt. It's nicely sewn and the asymmetrical "ripped off" sleeve makes it a pretty unusual piece of doll clothing. The shirt has a high ruffled neck, which is a fun alternate style to the Hatter's famous starched collar. The fabric can get pinched in the doll's neck joint. The piece velcros in the back, not the front, and there are no simulated buttons.

On her right arm, Sybil has a mesh fingerless glove with a separate thumb hole.

Sybil wears the round-toed LDD boots in plain black. They're the high-platform taller type, nicely exaggerating her height alongside her hat. Under the boots, the leggings are footies. The waist elastic feels loosened by time, but the leggings aren't falling down.

Variant Hatter Sybil heavily plays up the pink/purple tone of her hair and loses some of the messy punk vibe, to the detriment of the outfit. I think the stark white skin of the the variant set dolls really suits this faceup, but I overall prefer the main edition.

To fix up my doll, I boiled her hair and sanded off the eyepatch-strap glue residue to reduce the facial marks and texture as much as I could. I reworked the band by cutting it, then sewing the ends to a newer piece of elastic to put some stretch in the back. Trying to knot the band tight around Sybil's head made it extremely difficult to pull up and down the head into position, so I knew it needed some stretchiness for ease of use. I eventually figured out the strap of the eyepatch could lay like it initially did without any glue if I just cut the band again and glued the two ends to the disc at different angles, almost like clock hands. Without this step, there was no way to keep the band in the shape it was glued down before.

Here she is with boiled hair and wearing her eyepatch just like before, only now as a totally detached removable piece.

The tidied hair has a bit of a medieval silhouette, akin to the "little lad" from the Starburst "Berries and Cream" ads, or Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. 

One of the aspects my Hatter Madness choices are being assessed and compared by is whether they're paired with tea accessories. And Sybil is a really weird case because the answer to that, for her, and in order, is..."no and yes." The surface fact is that the LDD in Wonderland dolls don't have handheld accessories, save the Drink Me bottle in the size-shifting Alice set which the dolls can't hold. So definitionally, Sybil does not come with teaware, and none was sold for her use outside the doll package. But she does have a matched set. See, two years later, LDD Series 23, which I've fully reviewed, included four skull teacups and one skull teapot across its five dolls...and those teaware pieces were designed for Hatter Sybil. At the very least, those pieces debuted to buyers' eyes as concepts within the LDD in Wonderland exclusive picture book, illustrated in Hatter Sybil's hands. The models aren't exact, but that can all be explained by the needs of physical molding to turn them into actual props. The picture book inarguably has the same tea pieces we later got in the toys.

Series 23 teapot, exclusive to the character Betsy.

Series 23 teacup, included with Agatha (pictured), Teddy, Jennocide, and Quack.

The first appearance of these pieces, as an illustration in LDD's Wonderland picture book.

I find it frustrating that these pieces were fully visually conceived for a pairing with Hatter Sybil, but only released as toys later. However, I have the pieces for her to borrow (including an extra cup which she can keep!) All I needed was a gripping arm, since the default flat hands cannot hold the teapot. I ordered the 13th-anniversary remake of Series 1 Damien to harvest the arm from, since I knew the main-set anniversary remakes added gripping arms to the cast and they're all pale. I hoped the skintone was close enough. LDD gripping arms are less common in truth than they feel in my memory, and I've yet to get a doll with one in a lifelike pale flesh color with no painted gore detailing. If I need a second Betsy someday, I'd relish the chance to give Sybil a teapot all her own, but she can just borrow for now.

Here's the Damien coffin. It's the anniversary print, of course, and the tissue color matches Series 1 while the chipboard imitates the old style but replaces the fully freehand portrait of Damien from Series 1 with a drawn-style photo tracing of the actual S1 doll.

Series 1 original chipboard.

13th-anniversary chipboard.

The death certificate is a reprint of Series 1's with some minor reformatting.

The 13th-anniversary Series 1 remakes are very subtle updates, basically just tweaking the paint and implementing the contemporary standard ball-jointed bodies, while adding gripping hands for the dolls, I think, all sans Posey? The series had a variant set that was a more scrupulously faithful recreation of the Series 1 dolls, matching the paint work in places where the main set clearly departed...while also getting rid of the gripping-hand upgrade. Infuriating. I really don't like the "so faithful we recapture the grating flaws" approach to reproductions. Posey and Eggzorcist are the two anniversary dolls whose alternate variants look virtually indistinguishable to me, and from their Series 1 originals as well. I can't tell how their main-set dolls changed the faces, if at all. Sadie's eye colors swapped sides and Damien and Sin had visibly different paint rendering. I think anniversary main Posey has fainter eye shading than Series 1, but that's it.

I was curious about anniversary Damien. I have minimal attachment to the character, but I did find more charm in the Series 1 doll than the Return remake due to the Series 1 edition's elements of retro aesthetic and charming clumsiness in his production. 

Here's the two Damiens side-by-side, with anniversary on the right.

The baseball caps are nearly identical, though S1's has a redder hue to the grey fleece material while 13th has a colder, paler grey tone.

One of the oddest, and I felt, sloppiest aspects of original Damien was his hair, which was rooted over a painted black hair pattern but did not nearly hide or cover that hair map underneath, and I doubted the intention was for a shaved undercut effect. 

I was pretty sure the anniversary doll would fully root it...but no, this feature is fully retained.

Is this intentional, or was this an outdated feature LDD just declined to upgrade? I'd believe it if it made the production of the two variant sets easier. Not having to change the rooting pattern between the two productions would be an efficiency bonus, allowing the more faithful 13th-variant doll to be produced with the original style more easily because 13th-main has the same pattern.

If the rooting pattern wasn't changed between the two 13th-edition versions of Damien, then my doll does have a center part like Series 1, but it lies more like a side-part. I trimmed my S1 doll's hair a bit to lie shorter, but the length of the 13th-anniversary hair doesn't seem too different from factory S1.

The face on the two Damiens is the biggest difference. 13th-anniversary has darker, less flat eye shading that makes his face look a lot spookier and more like a modern LDD. 

I'm partial to the flat sixties-retro look of the S1 doll's face paint, though. He feels more like a cohesive "genre" of spooky toy. Anniversary Damien looks more like the horror-movie version of a haunted doll, like production designers didn't put much thought into when he'd have been made and what the toys of the era really looked like. Series 1 Damien feels authentic and specific. That's an evil doll from the sixties. Anniversary is vague and lacks verisimilitude.

I didn't see any meaningful differences in sew or material with anniversary Damien's costume. His coat has the same plastic snaps as S1, and I had to replace my S1 snaps with metal ones sewn in because the clear plastic broke apart. The anniversary snaps are really tight and hard to separate, so I'd worry about them breaking too.

Series 1 coat with my replacement metal snaps.

Anniversary costume.

Of course, the anniversary doll is a ball-joint LDD with the articulation and slight height boost that entails. He also has a gripping hand to let him hold his slingshot.

I'll admit, I was nervous because Damien arrived to me with his slingshot (which has a very wide handle) shoved into his hand, and I didn't know if it had widened his grip too much. Right after taking the slingshot out, the curve was too loose to stably hold the teapot, but LDD vinyl tends to relax back into cast shape if left alone for a while...sometimes? My LDD Famine had a looser grip and I struggled with that and couldn't successfully tighten her hand, but then, right before I sold her, I found her holding her hobby horse tighter than she ever did when I reviewed her. I just hoped Damien's hand wouldn't be a bust and that it would give Sybil the ability to hold Betsy's teapot properly. I did have to try re-setting the shape with hot water to soften the vinyl and tape holding it tighter as it cooled.

Anniversary Damien was the first edition to reproduce his Series 1 accessories, and the first to alter the look of the three books. The two with carved covers have different colors, while the flat book has a different print with the 13th-anniversary sulfur logo.

Anniversary set of accessories on the right.

The 20th-anniversary Series 35 Resurrection-esque Damien mystery doll had a third variation on the book set, using the flat cover for an anniversary logo again:

Photo from Flying Purple Monkfish.

My favorite of the nine books is still the Series 1 flat cover with the modernist 666 design. I just wish the print was rotated 90 degrees to be upright.

I definitely don't prefer anniversary Damien to Series 1. What charm I can find in the character is nearly exclusively in the way Series 1 rendered him. The only other Damien I'd be actively interested in is his impossible-to-get Resurrection variant, which has a unique head mold with the 666 mark stamped into his forehead.

Damien's arm isn't the same skintone as Sybil's, with him being more orange and saturated, but the difference is subtle enough, and Sybil's costume scatters her exposed skin portions enough, that she can get away with wearing Damien's arm. The net glove works on the gripping hand without any issues.

Here she is put together with the tea things and gripping arm.

For the shooting scenery, I was searching for a skull teacup that would go with Sybil, and I got burned. There aren't any real ceramic skull cups that match the LDD design of an upper skull piece turned upside-down, but there were a couple with the skull facing rightside-up in similar coloring...but they were really expensive. Then I saw a listing purporting to be a ceramic ornate skull mug that looked very pretty...and in person, I realized it was a resin sculpture that didn't look nearly as good.

I was absolutely able to use it as a prop in my still-life, but I was really annoyed to have waited so long and held off my review for a fake cup that looked messy. Customer service got back to my negative review and promised a majority refund and to forward concerns about misleading promotion to the manager or whoever listed it. Okay.

I was set on making Sybil's Dormouse a spooky black upright rat plush to put in my little black teapot, but I had no idea how difficult that would be to come by. Most black rat plushies are more realistic and on all fours, while I really wanted a pronounced cartoony rat nose and an upright position. Bereft of options, I decided to get a Beanie Babies Ratzo who had about the model I needed, and dye him black.

I unstitched his sewn face and tried to dye him, but the dye didn't take nearly as well as I wanted, and I ended up finishing the job by squeezing black paint water into him and vigorously hairdrying him out. He's not as plushy now, but he works. I put in red pins for eyes and reglued his purple nose which fell off in the dyeing pot.

For Sybil's human tea serving, I brewed no tea within the photo because the cup wasn't ceramic and the pot was occupied by a rat, and my food offerings were a bit meager, but I did buy a cinnamon roll in advance because Sybil absolutely needed a spiral food. I finished the serving with some buttered toast because buttered bread is part of the Alice tea party and this was as good a place as any to feature it. The scenery ended up sharing several elements with my first tea-themed LDD review, but perhaps that's only proper. I added the spiral plaque and a spiral candlestick and a red curtain and some clocks, plus a sugar bowl in chains and the Series 23 tea things. Here's another look at the tableau.

And my staging for the cover photo where I gave the Hatter the full accessory setup and propped up the food pieces for best visibility.

Here's my trio of full-size Sybil dolls together (the LDD Mini of Series 4 excluded).

Sybil doesn't have a bad doll...though her variant editions aren't as good as the mains.

I like the teapot and cup so much with the Hatter that I might just get a second Betsy when I can expend on that so my Hatter can be complete and have full ownership of the pot. I did take the time to dab some superglue into the lip on the LDD teapot lid I have because the fit has been overly loose for ages and prone to falling right off. I let the glue cure and painted over it so the fit would be tighter.

Over a short time, it felt like the grip of the hand was loosening back up and making it hard for Sybil to stably hold the pot. I tried to boil and re-bend it tighter again, this time with stovetop boiled water and letting the hand cool naturally before freezing it, and left in tape in that pose for some time after anyway. I'm not sure if re-bending hands never works and a gripped item will always force the hand to relax back to how it started, but if that's true, then I can return Sybil's hand to her and just give her the spare teacup to which she's fully entitled, while Betsy can get back the teapot. If I get a viable re-set shape on the hand that doesn't revert over time, then Sybil will be back in the market for a teapot of her own. I can report back on that later once I know for sure.

Then I had to shoot her tea scene at scale in her own world.

I've had the doll-scale tea table prepped for Sybil since June, where I first showed it as the table Valentine and Spelldon were working on. The table was built for LDD scale and painted for Sybil well in advance, though I added some varnish to the top before Sybil's shoot.

None of the build ended up visible, though. I sought to imitate the tea table from the picture book, which has a bone-themed tablecloth and red placemats, and the most similar dish towel I had to the book's tablecloth covered the whole table.

I got as close as I could with what I had. The rat Dormouse I made returned to fill the scene here. While LDD has a doll-scale rat (released twice, with Series 6 Hush and Nosferatu and his Victim, with the latter being the spooky black color I liked, I...simply didn't think of those. Oops. 

Even if I had these in mind at the proper time, I wouldn't want to use Hush's rat Shriek in the shoot because he's the wrong colors. The Nosferatu two-pack wasn't worth getting just for the black recast to pop into this review shoot, though if I had it on hand, I probably would have passed on Ratzo.

There's no official LDD March Hare design, though the art in the book intriguingly looks like an actual hare but with LDD Jeepers' enclosed arm sleeves, so maybe LDD had ideas of Jeepers playing the role in some way...for some reason. (If S23 preceded the Wonderland set, Teddy might not be a bad pick for the Hare, given he's another animal-suit character and has a tea association. Teddy ultimately ended up in the even more thematically-aligned role of the Lion in the Oz collection.) My Beanie Dormouse rat did well despite being nowhere near teapot-sized in this rendition. He filled the table better, even if the LDD black rat would be more in-tone. I added some ravens as well, and if any Hatter was going to get a night shoot for their tea party, it had to be this one. There wasn't a question of this taking place in daylight.

I struggled a little because with Sadie and the Hatter being the same size and me not having any chairs on hand that fit the illustrated style of Tenniel or the LDD book, Alice looked a little large while the Hatter didn't feel quite as dominant. I got it to work...but I did also have to try shrinking Alice down. Thanks to this being the LDD version, and my prior collecting, that was easily done.

Here's the final shot, though. Despite the tonal and stylistic changes, I think Sybil gave me the second-most accurate recreation of Tenniel's original drawing in this series, and that won't be changed by Hatter Madness 6. This shot wasn't perfect in terms of visual clarity for everything on the table, but the composition and lighting in the editing process turned out better than any retakes, so I gave it a few tweaks and made this the one. 

Basically since I scheduled this post for Hatter Madness, I had the idea, that, because Sybil is mad, this Wonderland doll could be the avatar of a fantasy she's living while she's in the institution cafeteria. I had to shoot a parallel shot to the Tenniel to show the unpeeled outside view.

In this reality, Sybil has less than a tea party, and she's imagining an actual mouse and a dirty old doll as her Hatter companions. The clock is in the "real world" setting, but I edited the London text out for this photo. She wears a simple paper hat instead of a top hat, made from newspapers she had access to. It makes her resemble the man in the paper suit in Through the Looking-Glass, which is a bonus. 

Wonderland is canonically a dream with legible influence from the real life Alice evidently lives, so the interpretation of Wonderland as a delusion or projection has some functional bearing despite its issues. For someone like Sybil, who doctors sought to strip of mind and autonomy, escape into Wonderland is entirely understandable and sympathetic. Alice is not treated well at the tea party, but with Sybil as Hatter, you could imagine the unfair Hatter persona being something of a power fantasy for someone who is given none in reality. Being in charge of a group and making the rules and directing the social script could be a cherished experience for Sybil...and perhaps her forays into the world of the Hatter could be framed as a satire upon the institution that so thoroughly mistreated her. In the book, the Hatter is a rude grown-up who can be read as a facet of the unfair adult expectations for children that Alice seems to critique. Maybe in LDD, he's the icon of Sybil's institutional abusers. Maybe Sybil sees herself as Alice in some way as well, while playing the role of somebody unfair in power. If you're the confused, belittled Alice, I can imagine wanting to be the Hatter instead. (This is all thematic territory explored by the American McGee's Alice games, too.)

LDD were almost certainly thinking none of these things. That's just me sinking into analysis. An-Alice-ys?

The dirty doll that "real Sybil" is envisioning as Alice is actually a quick and temporary makeover on the customized and modified LDD Mini I made as an alternate "upgraded" dummy for GreGORY back in April.

To turn it into a creepy broken doll, I put poster putty on its head and stuck yarn strands to it, and painted black over its eyes and lips. Since I'd gloss-varnished the head, the paint would be easy to scrape back off. The dress is just a rag doll sleeve with armholes and simple sewing to tighten the top around the neck. The bowtie on the dummy was glued on, so I had to make it work with the "dress".

Here are a couple more shots in the asylum setup, including one "CCTV" shot from above, taken with my abysmal 3DS camera, with the photo on the 3DS screen photographed and color-edited by my phone.

I wasn't done, of course. 

The Hatter is actually quite a fair choice for a goth character interpretation and a Halloween  review, because he mentions not one, but two iconic spooky animals during the tea party Alice attends. On the one hand, he quizzes with the unsolved riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?", and on the other, he begins to recall a time where he sung a distorted nursery tune for the Queen of Hearts, thusly: "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat/How I wonder what you're at/Up above the world you fly/Like a tea tray in the sky"... (The bat rhyme would be a great pull quote for a badge instead of "Curiouser and Curiouser".)

So I knew I could freely invoke both ravens and bats with this particular Hatter for maximum spooky atmosphere. I'd done the ravens, but I had the opportunity to frame one with a writing desk, and to spotlight bats, too.

To get Sybil to hold the raven in any conceivable way. it needed a large surface to stand on, so I grabbed the plate from Peggy Goo which I had added an elastic strap to the bottom of for more secure holding.

The writing desk riddle has two popular answers which the book doesn't provide. Lewis Carroll's own take on the riddle he wrote was to answer "Because it is 'nevar' put back to front [backwards]", a pun on the spelling of "raven" and how a desk is only meant to face one way against a wall. You'd never put the writing surface facing the wall! Unfortunately for Carroll, who could fairly be called a genius in wordplay and mathematics, I think the better answer to his riddle was externally devised: "[Edgar Allan] Poe wrote on both". This answer uses the dual meaning of "wrote on" to indicate "wrote about" as well as "physically wrote atop of" to very clever effect. Poe's The Raven precedes the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by exactly twenty years, so the Poe answer is not anachronistic, and Carroll simply hadn't thought of it.

For the bat rhyme, I grabbed the spooky bat moon sky backdrop I put Tina Black against (from the same post linked to Peggy Goo above). 

Then I brought out a paper pattern I bought in June at the latest, expressly for the benefit of this particular doll. The overlapping concentric rectangle pattern reminded me of her square spiral eye, and the way the pattern blurs into resembling a maze could have rich symbolism of being compared to the folds of a brain, being trapped in the corridors of your mind and/or an asylum...it just works.

I tried a few pictures without the eyepatch too, including one setup with the vest trailing behind her like a ball and chain.

For my Series 23 doll reviews, I staged each of the human-scale tea tableaux with a "tea master" serving figure seen only as a gloved hand, presenting the tea servings for the dolls and interacting with them in ways that progressively harmed his white glove in ways distinct to each doll:

Agatha didn't disrupt the Tea Master at all, actually--she has too much respect for tea and tradition, so the pinky of the glove remained untouched to represent her and the proper pinky-out mannerism.

Betsy's red tea stained the Tea Master's glove on the index finger.

Teddy clawed the glove and tore off the thumb.

Jennocide's high-acid lemon tea burned holes in the glove and took off the middle fingertip.

Quack painted all over the ring finger.

At the end of the Series 23 photo story I concocted, the Tea Master swept up the bodies and bagged them.

Well, I was reminded of the Tea Master in the context of Hatter Madness by the very reader who coined the character's title, and I knew Sybil was the place to bring him back, since the Tea Master is from the LDD sphere of reviews. And then I completely forgot when I shot the review tableau. After eating the cinnamon roll, I didn't have everything needed to restage that scene and fake like it was the same shoot, so I decided to just stage a smaller tea for Sybil and the Tea Master to meet--that was necessary, anyhow, once I realized just how she would be leaving her mark on the glove. (Of course I kept the glove; what do you take me for?) For my idea, a larger pot was required, so the table setting was going to be different regardless. Instead of getting a second cinnamon roll, I gave her a large black-and-white cookie this time, which was the other baked good she made me think of.

Sybil took the Tea Master's hand, and as if it were the Dormouse, stuffed it into the teapot. The pinky valiantly remained out.

Hatter Sybil's mark was also left on the palm.

The glove was pre-stained, of course, held to the rim of the bowl with a bag clip keeping the pinky out of the water as Thetis to  Achilles.

Unless the new crop of LDDs has anybody with tea theming or accessories, this ought to be the final indignity the Tea Master suffers. Good for him; bad for me! I'd happily take more tea dolls from this brand even if I have a devil of a time figuring out what else to do to this poor glove!

Here's every LDD character thus far to canonically cross paths with tea, sitting around the Series 23 table build. Mini Alice is standing in here for all three Alices, and the pie I made for Butcher Boop is the food.

Sybil and darling Quack synergize well, with both being tea dolls with swirling eyes.

Maybe Quack would have been a good casting for the March Hare in a hypothetical later-designed Wonderland set as well, given that she's loonier than Teddy, but her name is quite at odds.

This is my trio of big Sybils now (Mini edition of S4 omitted).

Until I get Resurrection, Fashion Victims is the uncontested biggest get of the group, but they're all great.

Here's all of my LDD in Wonderland dolls now!

I was surprised to take out the Queen of Hearts and find my appreciation for her reignited (pun not intended). I decided to try one more pass at sealing/reinforcing her pleather after finding her last coating to be sticking to her hair and the plastic tray of her box, and tried brushing on polyurethane to see what happened. That finish doesn't get sticky when it's dry, and it seemed to work pretty well. The yellowish tint also doesn't affect a black base. Polycrylic water-based sealant does seem to have issues of sticking to things and peeling after extended contact, and if it gets too thick, it gets milky and blue, so I don't like to use it as much even though it does have the advantage of a neutral clear effect when applied properly.

While I thoroughly decorated for Halloween, I declined to take down the Hatter Madness display in the middle--I only moved a few items from the interlude posts (published and upcoming) into the closet. Sybil nearly completes the table, with one Hatter left to sit in the chair...if he fits. I honestly don't know the scale for sure! 

I only added mini Sadie Alice to the periphery display rather than all three or the standard size. One of Sybil's Alices is enough.

I don't want to play into recency bias, but it's not difficult to say that Sybil is my favorite of the LDD in Wonderland set so far. She's the least disappointing in terms of quality. I don't like the choice to glue her eyepatch strap in position rather than shaping it more purposefully, and the eyepiece isn't well adhered to the band, but Sybil didn't have wonky legs or pleather or frustrating hair. Her design is also wonderful. It's extremely goth, with lots of alt/punk flavor while retaining surreal whimsy and Victorian fashion elements that all work together. I love the details and polish with the hat's construction, the badges on the vest, the chain, the crow-like feather boa, and the glove. Her casting as the Hatter might be shallow, but I was able to find some poignancy and depth in it too, and she has some detail or tonal choices in her costume which are more accurate than some of the ostensibly more spiritually-similar Hatter adaptations which I've reviewed so far. She's my first with the proper hat label, and her costume has some touches which might be more period-accurate than Storyland, Madeline, and Maddie! She also works surprisingly well for Halloween outside the context of Hatter Madness or her series. This is a really cool doll. Her biggest problem is not debuting the Series 23 tea pieces on her physical toy as well as the book illustrations, but at least the teaware eventually existed to be paired with her.

Sybil really never seems to miss, and she's proving to be one of the recurring LDD characters with the highest proportion of releases I love. I'm definitely mad for this Hatter.