Living Dead Dolloween 2026, or "Is the Joke On Me?": Living Dead Dolls Series 18 Variant Jingles by Mezco Toyz

I couldn't get this doll last year. I made sure to get him the moment he showed up again so I could share him now! 

I was interested in LDD's Jingles because I like classic jesters, especially in a Halloween context, but I wasn't sure which variant I liked more. His red and black main design looks good...but it's also very similar stylistically to Chloe in ways that were disappointing. The veined face paint, white skin, and red/black colors hit a lot of similar design markers which the variant escapes due to his orange swapping in for red. On the other hand, the variant makes the bizarre choice of replacing the grey "shading" layer of his face paint with yellow, which turns a shadow into a glow in a manner that can look misplaced. The variant still feels more unique within jester characters as a whole and the LDD brand, so that was the one I wanted. 

In 2025, my heart was set upon a post of Halloween-series revisits with an orange and black color theme, and variant Jingles was my number-one pick from Series 18. I wanted fewer from 18 than the other two Halloween series, and variant Jingles was the last S18 doll I was certain I wanted. I was unable to find, let alone obtain, the doll for my revisit roundup of the LDD Halloween series, and I selected variant Ingrid in his stead. She was a pleasant surprise. Still, I hoped Jingles would be available again sometime before the next Halloween. He finally showed up again in early March 2026, and I took my chance to have certainty of his review the coming October. I wasn't making the mistake of waiting until the time I actually needed to have him prepared, and like some Living Dead Dolloween items from 2024, got him months in advance. He made a nice birthday prize since my plans and Jingles' emergence priced me out of another prize LDD I wanted for the occasion. I ultimately didn't get any other LDDs for the Living Dead Dolloween feature this year, making this the slimmest celebration since its 2024 mega-marathon inception. 

Here's Jingles repacked with his mask on. He can only fit into his coffin with the mask if his head is turned to the side, since the nose is so long. He, like the other Halloween dolls, was factory-packed with his face uncovered.

Jingles' chipboard is unchanged for the variant. 

The poem reads:

A sacrifice on Hallow's Eve

Now forever a jester

Jingles likes to cause a wound

Then watch it pus and fester

Credit to LDD for spelling "pus" correctly this time (they didn't with Maggot), but this poem doesn't make much sense to me or feel very interesting. It doesn't feel like Jingles' costume has a lick to do with his poems. And what sacrifice? What kind of rituals were happening in 1971?

How about:

Jingles wears the garb of jokers

In mockery of death

He felt the Devil's burning pokers

When last he took a breath.

Jingles died on Halloween (October 31) 1971. 

His poem says:

A willing sacrifice on Halloween night

On the altar the blade pierced his heart

The next moon he arose and gave quite a fright

An undead servant of the black arts.

Again, this story feels very random, but I can work with it. Try:

A jester's dance on Hallows' Eve

Was halted by a cult

Still worshipping the Devil from Octobers long before

He laid upon the altar stone

And gave a cheerful nod

As his blood ran red and orange all across the chapel floor

His final joke was played at last

When moons ago he rose

And tapped and skipped undead and free throughout the sleepy night

His bells were jingling so clear

As he walked to the dark

His bucket full of body parts he'd stolen from the light

Here he is unboxed in fresh state. I heard something fall into the coffin, which turned out to be a jingle bell from his collar.

Variant Jingles' palette not only swaps dark red for bright orange, but also swaps the colored and black elements of most of the costume, save the mask. As such, parts which were red on main Jingles are black here, and the black aspects of main Jingles' outfit (sans mask) are orange here.

Jingles starts with a nice three-pointed jester's cap with actual jingle bells on the points. All were attached! Unlike the suit, all of the hat is felty fleece, while the fleece is only used for the collar and trim below the doll's head. Two points are black while one, here, is orange. 

The points are sewn down into shape, but I might cut the threads because the hat looks capable of holding its pose without being sewn into it and I'd get much more dynamism from the hat in pictures if it could be staged in different floppy shapes. Wire to pose the hat would be even better. I'm sure a Return Jingles would do that if one were ever made. I can also thread some twisted pipe cleaners up there.

The only other LDD character with jingle bells on her costume was Christmas-themed Nohell (see my reviews of her variant and main edition).

Jingles' hair is black and short, and has a vaguely seventies boy's cut with the way it can comb to cover his ears. The hairline is high and the hair is not rooted with a part, but sits out of his face. There are some erratic strands and it's hard to sweep the hair back before putting the hat on so the hair doesn't have loose strands in front.

Jingles' mask is a very traditional jester's mask of a style associated with Italian theater or Venice Carnival, being a domino mask around the eyes with a long straight pointy nose, perhaps here connoting a spooky Halloween crow? 

Italian theater and commedia dell'arte contributed to the modern version of the "jester" look and even turned the name of one of its stock characters, Harlequin, into a synonym for a jester and a vertical diamond print pattern. I like this mask design for Jingles, though my copy came with it a little too slack so it easily fell down his face with the band dropping around his neck, rather than remaining in tension around his head. Putting the hat on over the top of the mask pushed it down very easily, so I shortened the band by cutting off the knot on one end and re-tying the knot at the end of the new length. That fixed the mask and kept it tight. When I finished this review months after starting it (unboxing Jingles in March and shooting most of his art photos within days of publishing), I noticed the mask tending to slip down loose again.

The beak is fully hollow underneath.

Because the mask is the same very thin crack-prone plastic as the other LDD Halloween masks, I'm pretty scared of what would happen if Jingles ever fell forward in the mask and landed right on the tip of that beak. I'll do my best to make sure that never occurs. Without the nose, the mask would actually be one of the least fragile or concerning with its close fit and comparative lack of a hollow between mask and face.

Either the mask was molded or else cut incorrectly, because the edges are not perfectly symmetrical. Under the eye, even when the mask is perfectly aligned over the head, the lower edge is lower under Jingles' right eye than on his left. While his eyes have their own alignment issues in the paint, the wonky look of the mask was exacerbated by this lower edge.

LDD Pestilence (Horseman of the Apocalypse) reused Jingles' mask piece in white to imitate a plague doctor's beaked mask. It's not fully successful because this mask doesn't offer full coverage, but the plague doctor look being a bit of a farce on literal Pestilence is appropriate.

Jingles' face, as mentioned, has some similarities to Chloe's, with stark white skin, no brows, and black branching effects on the mouth and eyes. 

The face is more similar to the Resurrection main-edition Chloe due to the intense mouth branching, while S12 Chloe only has withered lip lines that don't break past the lips.

The Jingles face recalls some of the sketchy creepy indie art of the time from creators like David Firth or Gus Fink. The mouth paint isn't as opaque as I thought it would be, and the orange shading is intense, and way more prominent than the main doll's grey shading. It could make the mouth and eyes look like they're glowing from within, which is a different effect to the sunken look the grey shading creates on the main doll. 

Jingles' eyes have black sclerae and two-colored ringed irises of orange and white, with orange pinwheels inside the iris, and tiny black pupils. These eyes are wonky, but not the worst. I think the coloring helps justify the glowy orange shading, though I think I may not have given main Jingles' face enough credit for its creepy coldness and more elegant shading.

I like Jingles' pinwheel eye effect, but a black paint mark smudged by his eye, and his forehead has stains from his hat. Variant Jingles got off light; one of the major major deterrents to getting the main edition, which I'm suspecting I might actually like more, is the fact that his hat's headband part is black and stains his doll quite a bit worse. Unlike Ember in the same series, who Mezco were wise enough to package bareheaded, Jingles was packed with his hat on. The chances of finding a main-edition one without really bad forehead stains are slim to nil, and realizing that was actually enough to stop me from getting a main-edition copy alongside the variant...for now, at least. 

Jingles' jester collar is thin unfinished felt, which makes me nervous, and is a separate piece which velcros in back, with the hook piece applying directly to the felt. As mentioned, one of Jingles' bells fell off the collar before I even got him, and was loose in the box. 

The bells on this doll have oxidation issues, and seem to have coloring consistency problems too. The one that fell off the collar is loudly more golden than the ones which stayed attached, and it doesn't promise to look good reattached. I think all of the bells being very gold would be perfect for this warm orange version of Jingles, while silver could suit the more haunted antique look of the main doll. 

The bodysuit is deliberately oriented to open down the front with velcro, but could easily be flipped backward if one preferred. Nothing about its sew makes the piece only work this way. My copy has some stains on the back side which make flipping the suit unfavorable, but that's better than them being on the intended front.

I wonder if the color flip of the variant palette is successful. The bright empty orange makes the suit look sparer and less polished in comparison to the black the main doll used. It feels more like the orange suit should be patterned while the black suit looked great blank. The four cuffs are cut in spikes and are the same thin unfinished fleece as the collar. 

Jingles wears black boy LDD shoes and black ankle socks.

Jingles' arms have the issue of the elbows dislocating very easily when trying to move them up a lot, but they pop back on the ball joints easily.

To fix the fallen bell, I first sanded the surface to remove the distractingly mismatched gold color so it would match the other bells better at a glance, and then sewed it back on. I also clipped the threads forcing the hat shape, wiped the black paint mark off the face, and trimmed the mask.

This costume is ideal for dramatic side silhouette.

Jingles got packed up for a while before I brought him back for Halloween, perhaps less enthusiastic about him than I used to be. I still sought to get some good work. I took him outside at night to play on the autumn colors, and added Ole Crow from Isaac to make the comparison to his mask.

I tried it out in daylight afterward too. When walking to the post office to mail the LDD Banshee I had sold, I walked past a group of yellow leaves on the grass, and the shape gave me an idea. I could play on the spade form of the leaves and the spades suit of playing cards, making Jingles hold the ace--a card symbolic of death! I did also have to pop a joker in, of course, and I tried out wire inside the hat.

This method of fusing the autumn and jester and morbid aesthetics all in one was a pleasant surprise.

Here's a staging of beak vs. beak.

Here's some indoor photos.

I capped off my session by leaning into the aesthetic I saw in Jingles' face and drawing him like a Gus Fink character.

Jingles' variant is really fun and I don't ultimately feel regret I got him, but I began to see more merits to the original, too. Maybe it's similar to Chloe, but the red and black colors are pretty classic, and there's a haunting charm to the original faceup that the variant kind of took away. The only ideal time to have gotten main Jingles would have been when he was freshly shipped for the first time, at least risk of dreadful staining. I feel a little at a loss, then. I had so much put behind this doll, but ultimately, I might be more interested in the original, who's almost certainly badly stained and must keep his hat on. I'm not dissatisfied with the Jingles I got. This was a special acquisition of a doll, but he didn't retain that feeling for me after getting him.

He still rocks the holiday.