Living Dead Dolls series 35 - 20th anniversary

It's been 20 years since two guys started showing off their creepy horror themed dollies at art shows and such. 20 years since the concept of Living Dead Dolls was first dreamed up.
So here we are, at series 35, the 20th anniversary edition.

Now to be clear, this isn't 20 years of Mezco producing these commercially. Living Dead Dolls only became commercially available in 2000, but for a few years prior they had been a thing at horror conventions and art shows, hand painted and as a result, one of a kind. 

Even so, series 35 is celebrating "20 years of horror" and is rather a special little set.




Firstly, most of the dolls featured in this set were original handmade dolls from art shows and conventions that for whatever reason were never previously made commercially.
Seondly, each case contains one of 5 "mystery dolls", a blind boxed coffin with 1 or 5 different extra special dollies inside.

Prior to these cases shipping we weren't shown what those 5 dolls would be, only given hints over social media but most people assumed it'd be new versions of the original 5 because that would make the most sense.

But their hints were pretty obtuse.

Anyway,

we HAD seen the 4 main dolls and I was kinda keen on one of them at least.

But once the sets actually hit and we got to look at them in detail as well as the mystery dolls? I had much NEED. So I did something i've never done before, I ordered a whole full case.

Lookat all those coffins eheheheh.

Each case contains 5 and is quite long and narrow.

I couldn't wait to get a opening so excuse my messy floor photos hahaha.

Mezco have introduced new packaging for this line, which has pros and cons. This style of packaging was first seen on their ressurection Frozen Charlotte and looks to have been rolled out across the whole franchise.

Instead of the twistie ties and very easily torn tissue paper everyone's gotten used to, we now have coloured card inside the coffin which looks neater and will tear less, and instead of twistie ties the doll is held in place with a plastic molded uh.. sheath (lol) which holds her into the box and has a lid that's shaped as well to hold her down and supposedly keep the hair out of their faces and such.

The problem with this is that it makes the doll look like they're encased in a giant block of ice. Fine for Frozen Charlotte, but a bit weird for the others. For those who like to display IN coffin or never debox, these plastic covers create another barrier, another bit of plastic obscuring the doll's features.

The inserts come in two parts. A low part that the doll sits in, which seems to work fine, and then... these lid pieces which are molded to each individual doll (meaning they're ALL different). Wierdly because of this, it means they all have a face molded into them. It's kinda.. creepy but also because the lid isn't always lined up with the doll's own features due to movement in transit or lazy factory workers or whatever, it means the faces look well.. blurred in person and it's quite difficult to actually make out their features until you debox them.
Photographs really don't do justice to how much these things obscure the faces. I think they'd work a lot better if they didn't have a molded on face and were just blank, clear, featureless plastic.

I will give them this though, they DO make opening the dolls a lot faster and there's none of the agonising hat removal that series 33 had.

 It genuinely takes like 2 seconds to pop the lid off, pop the second inner lid off and out comes the dolly.

This set proudly displays their "20 years of terror" badges with Sadie clutching a knife (sometimes when I look at it I think it's a banana and it cracks me up ahahahahah.)

Beyond the new inner packaging, the outer boxes look pretty much identical to the older ones. Same silver writing, same blurb on the back.

They all have chipboards as well, just like all LDD standard edition dolls. These ones are huge though, rather than the standard narrow rectangle these are BIG and shaped. Fancy.

They also don't have unique art for each, they all feature the same image of all four dolls with the cemetary gates behind them and a looming moon with 20 and the sulphur symbol LDD likes to use.

First we're gonna look at Candy Rotten, the one I least liked from the set. I'll explain why in a bit.

First some history!

Candy is one of the oldest LDD characters, I believe she was made around the same time as Posey and Sin and Sadie and all that lot as a handmade doll. However for whatever reason she never got a commercial release, Ed and Damien said she just never "fit" any set they were doing at the time and sort of just.. fell to the wayside.

But fans apparently LOVED Candy and her candy coloured hair and punky tats.

I dunno man, this is waaaay before my time in the fandom.

Anyway, she has a poem as usual that reads:

Candy was so rotten she didn't belong
Choosing those who screamed rather than sing a song
she awoke one day in her land
now she wants you with her "down in candy's land"

hmm, rhyming land with land? uh huh.

these poems often aren't very good to be honest.

So here she is, the bright pink haired Candy!

She's a pretty simple doll. Her hair is soft and wavy and very very pink. I kinda dig the colour of it to be honest.

She has the X on her forehead that a few LDDs have, it was a bit of a signature in the early days it seems.

Her eyes are very very very pale blue, almost grey and extremely simple being just a flat colour with a black pupil in the middle.
She has black lips that are sort of spikey in how they're painted.

She's very "first wave" in the way her face is painted which I believe is what they were going for here.

Her dress is a pretty simple slightly 50s style thing made of some sort of stretch knit at the top and a thicker cotten-like fabric at the bottom.

Of course, because LDDs are totally flat chested I often find these sweetheart bodices look somewhat strange on them, there's no boob to fill out the shape you know?

It's a well made little dress though.

It velcros up the back.

She wears little Mary Jane shoes with short white socks.
A very common LDD look.

Underneath her dress you can see she has some staining from the black fabric. 20 years and they STILL haven't figured out a way to avoid this *sigh*

her panties are painted black to match her dress. Cute.

She also has black nail polish.

And she has a bunch of tattoos. The sacred heart on her chest which is wrapped in thorns, a bloodied dagger on each wrist.

Blue cotton candy on one shoulder

Pink cotton candy on the other.

All these are done with decal paper, so there's a slight shine underneath them in certain lights and you can see where they've been cut out and applied.

She also comes with a death certificate like most ldds, and yeah, the factory really couldn't be arsed with rolling these. I noticed this with my last few, instead of rolling the scroll what they're doing is folding it and then rolling it so it's quite difficult to get to roll back up AND it's really damaging the certificate by putting a huge crease in it.

An awful lot of people aren't gonna be happy about this slapdash approach to the death certificates.

Candy's reads:

Candy was executed for being insane
now her gain is pain
a playful sort of game

whatever that means.

Her date of death is the 18th of March 1969. I don't know what relivance that has. Usually there's some hidden reference in the death dates but I dunno what it is.

Now onto why she's my least favourite.

See, with Living Dead Dolls I like my dolls HORROR themed and for me, Candy isn't a horror doll. She's a punky alternative doll for sure, but she's not scary or spooky, she's some edgy punk girl. Now I know some people will love that, but for me, that's not what I collect LDDs for.
She doesn't "fit" my collection.

I also feel like her design is incomplete. I understand why she has her arms uncovered to show off her tattoos but I can't help but feel like a little jacket or bolero or something that covered her shoulders would pull the whole look together and make her feel "finished". As it is, to my eye she just always looks... half dressed. A work in progress, and it bugs me.

Next we have Galeras.

Galeras was actually the first character that was shown off for this series, which is interesting.

Sadly mine's coffin is... dented. Can you see the line across the plastic lid? She came out of a mint case like that, so this happened either at the factory or in transit. No others in the case were damaged so I have to suspect this is factory damage and they rammed her into the case anyway. Boo.

The plastic lid has been bent before being put onto the coffin, resulting in it buckling but also cracking along the edge.

These dolls are shrink wrapped in celophane as a last step and there's NO damage to the celophane, suggesting they shrink wrapped her knowing full well her plastic coffin cover was damaged and twisted. Hmmm.

thank goodness i'm a deboxer huh?

Galeras is also a good example of why this new packaging doesn't quite work. While it keeps her hair and hat in place wonderfully, the face molded onto the plastic doesn't line up with her own face so she has this weird blurred face thing going on. It's really hard to see what she actually LOOKS LIKE under that.

Galeras' chipboard reads:

Galeras is made of pure unholy fire
her only purpose is the raise the flames higher
not happy with simply watching all of you burn
but rather feeling your bones to ashes they turn

awkward sentence there huh?

at least it rhymes.

Galeras is named after a volcano and seems to be the one new and completely unrelated to any LDD history character to the set.

Galeras has no date of death, presumably because she's not dead but rather some sort of malevolant spirit. They do this sometimes with their dolls.

Her certificate reads:

"no death date
as she only lies dormant
a changing of the seasons?
or everlasting torment."

Galeras, the volcano, is the most active volcano in Columbia and by the sounds of it, extremely unpredictable, volitile and just generally a massive asshole of a mountain.

Galeras the doll is a pale skinned blonde girl clad in white with a big floppy black hat.

I have no idea why.

Her eyes are burning with flame that licks out the sides and there's fire dribbling out of her mouth as well.

She has no eyebrows and very very long wavy blonde hair.

Her hair comes down to her feet! It's quite soft but can be very easily tangled. It came out the box looking a bit frazzled and all over the place but running my fingers through helped. She sheds like crazy though, I ended up with a small blonde tribble just handling her for a few minutes. Eeep.

Her hat is beautifullly made. It's made from a thick cottony fabric that's a little stiff and there's no card or plastic or anything holding it together, it's entirely fabric. So it's squishy.
It's an astoundingly well made hat and a real departure from the usual plastic with a bit of fabric over the top or totally plastic molded hats you usually see on dolls.

Her outfit is cream and a thin sort of linen-like fabric (muslim maybe even?). It has a very faint floral pattern on it.

Her outfit is actually a crop top and a pleated long skirt.

The skirt does up with velcro but the top has no fastenings at all, meaning you can't get it off without removing the doll's head. Wierd.

She has no shoes at all.

And underneath her skirt her panties are cream! to match her skirt. hahaha.

I'm pleased to report no stains on this girl. I was concerned she'd have black on her head from her hat but it seems to be okay, for now.

I admit, I wasn't sure about this girl when I first saw her and i'm still not sure if I like her or not. She's certainly a very unique doll though.

And look, if you put them back into their boxes without their inner lid thing they look fine!

Next up is Eve, another art show doll. She is I believe more recent than Candy though.

This image of her at a Japanese horror show seems to suggest she was made in 2016.

Her chipboard reads:

She gives freely forbidden apples
Injected with blood of the undead.
To create a race of starving zombies 
With an undying desire to be fed.

I was concerned about Eve before I even opened her because even beneath the obscured plastic case I could see she had some eye issues.

I do NOT believe the crazy eyes were intentional.

Her death certificate is, like all the others, creased the shit.

"She made being "Living Dead"
One of the biggest trends
Then she ate her own apples
Joining her new and truest friends"


So... she's a zombie?

Her date of death is the 29th of january 1966

I'm not sure why the 60s date is so common with this line. Or what relivance this date has either. Oh well.

Series 1 was mostly 60s and 70s dates too actually. Huh.
Go figure.

Eve has beautifully soft hair, it's SOOO Soft omg I can't stop touching it.

She's got the CRAZY eyes lol. Poor girl, factory gave no shits huh?


What's sad is that her lips are so nicely painted, as is the rest of her face, just whoever got the "stamp the irises on" fucked up something chronic.


LDDs often do have wonky eyes but this is the worst unintentional wonk i've seen on one.

CRAZY!


Her dress has stained her neck too. *sigh*

Her dress is gorgeous. It's a very old fashioned style dress (which I like on ldds) with white buttons down the front (it velcros up the back) and lace trim at the neck, bodice and sleeves.


It also has this intentional staining on it which makes it look like it's wet. An interesting effect.

She has the same Mary Jane style shoes as Candy and longer white socks.

Her hair is super shiny, wavy and a bit choppy.

Interestingly, the grey fabric hasn't stained her, just the black ribbon at her collar.


She has dark grey panties painted on.

Poor Eve's eyes were just so terrible I couldn't stand them. The giant slapdash veining looked bad to me even on dolls who's eyes weren't wonked to shit, but her craaaazy eyes meant I couldn't really keep her like that. She NEEDED to be fixed. So I painted over her eyes and used her art show doll as a reference instead.


Thinner veining, straight staring eyes... okay her eyes are now kinda staaaaring into your soooooul but for a ldd that kinda works right?


I'd like to have made them a bit neater but eh.. it's better than crazy eye and crayola scribble fucking veins.

She should display fine.


There's just so much to like about this doll. Her hair is wonderful, her dress is gorgeous and I absolutely adore her sulky black lips.


But her eyes bug the heck outta me. Hmmm.


It's a dilemma.

And finally we have Legion.


Legion isn't an old doll reimagined, but she IS linked to LDD history. "the legion" is what Ed and Damien call LDD fans, so she's supposedly the embodyment of us, the fans, the customers, the crazies lol.

This is reflected in her chipboard poem which reads:


My Name is Legion, for we are many.
We have been around for the last twenty
we are everywhere, we encompass all
we will forever be with you, we are living dead dolls.

Awwww, thanks guys.

Her death date is the 24th of April 1998, which i'm assuming is the date of the first horror con where LDDs were shown off.
or the date the first one was made. Either way... 98 is the "birth year" of the franchise.

"We have been here before the first was born
and we shall remain after the last is mourned
no grave can hold us, we can not be confined by any walls
you may gro up, but you can never outlive Living Dead Dolls"

Ahh such confidence hahah.

Now Legion was the doll I wanted most from the start. I just really liked her white skin and dark coat and that blue bun she's got going on.

She's like a spooky school mistress lol.

Like Eve she has slight eye wonk, but in Legion's case it's more like a lazy eye and it's tolerable to me.

Her eyes are very simple, grey sclera, grey iris, just very very basic. She doesn't even have any lashes.

She has a few grey branching cracks on her face, one on her forhead and a couple running up from her neck.

Her hair is in a messy sort of bun thing with tendrils at the front that frame her face.

It's blue and black streaked and super shimmery and shiny.

Her coat also glitters. It's made of a somewhat scratchy dark blue fabric shot through with metallic thread.

It's ankle length with puffed shoulders and it's frankly AMAZING.

This garment is astounding, it's panelled and lined at the very top with a sort of shiny blue satin-like fabric. It opens at the front as a coat should, but with a strip of velcro instead of buttons and it's just so well made that I am in awe of it.

I love this freaking coat man!

Underneath the coat Legion is wearing a black velvet catsuit with feet. It has a ribbon up the front with teeny little black buttons and a very high collar.

Her shoes are witchy boots with a heel, which make her a wee bit unstable as LDDs have flat feet.

As expected, under that catsuit she is BADLY stained. Poor girl is turning BLUE!

there's no more branching details painted onto her body and eeee, she has no panties! Naughty girl!

But fully dressed you can't see her stains, or any of their stains thankfully, and she looks so damn good in her coat that I can forgive her blue body... mostly.

I do wish Mezco would at least try to fix the problem though. They've known this is an issue for so many years, would a white bodysuit under the dark clothing be too much work? or maybe, oh I dunno, finding colourfast fabrics? 

The whole set are a varied bunch, which I kinda like. I like when LDDs have a theme across a wave but I also like when they have no coherent theme because it makes it easier to just pick and chose one or two rather than having to "have them all" because they go together.

Legion and Eve stand out to me as the most traditionally Living Dead Doll looking. Their dark colours and more horror-like outfits appeal to me a great deal.

Galeras is something very very different and i'm still not sure if I love that she's such a fresh take on the concept or not. I really love her hat and her super long hair and i'm even starting to warm to her slightly goofy flame face, but I dunno... time will i suppose tell with her.

Candy, I think she'll look amazing with a jacket on. but I don't think she fits in with my small collector of creepy dolls. She's too "punk" and as a result, she's gonna find a new home with someone who'll love her as she is.

I just wish Eve had better eyes, or that I could paint her better less wonky wobbly shitty eyes. *sigh* I tried and it's better than she was, but i'm still not loving her as much as i'd like. Maybe another attempt at her eyes might help, but i'm rather exhausted by trying to fix her.

Of course, there was a fifth doll in this case wasn't there?

Yessss... the mystery doll!

They come in totally opaque black coffins with a big ol' silver question mark on them.

Who could it be?

Well, as it turns out you don't even have to open them to find out as they all have a different barcode number. Lol!

buuuut i'm not gonna spoil the surprise for you just yet...

The rear side of the coffin is the standard LDD lid.
Under that is the standard LDD back with blurb.

So the only thing unique about this coffin is the black lid instead of a clear one.

So who is it?

The box rattled a lot. 

Inside I found out why.

ACCESSORIES! EEEEE

There was a little plastic baggie that contained the death certificate and the accessories but it had been taped on shittily and come open, spilling the contents everywhere.

Slow clap for the factory, they did a stellar job on this case huh?

so what have we got? A couple of books... and a slingshot.

Do ya know what it is yet?

Iiiit's DAMIEN!

He even gets his own chipboard, which has no poem, just a photo of him and his name.

The silly plastic ice cube thing in all its silly glory.

I didn't mention before but all these new dolls have a silica gel pack stuck to the plastic behind their butt. ahahaha it's like a silica diaper or something.

nice.

You can see here the third of Damien's books dangling for dear life from the useless baggie that once held it.

   
The original w1 LDDs all came with accessories, something they sort of stopped doing at some point and I always felt was a huge shame.

Damien came with three books and a slingshot, and so does his 20th anniversary doll.

One book is a sulphur book, one has a sort of pentagrammy symbol on and the other says "twenty years of terror"

I can't remember what original Damien's books look like. I know he has a sulphur one but the others? can't remember. Mine I think only has 2 of them anyway, as he was secondhand and old.

Damien's pale face makes him hard to photograph, though there's something marvelously creepy about how my camera blanked out his lower face lol.

He is a ressurection style doll, which means he has inset eyes rather than painted. Not that you can tell in photos but his eyes are actually inset black and shiny like marbles.

He's got a very simple faceup, with some black around his eyes and angry tapered eyebrows.

Under his hat his has slick, soft, jet black hair that's cut to about chin length.

His outfit is incredible. Every piece is an individual piece. His tie is on a clear elastic band separate from his shirt which is separate from his shorts and his jacket.

This is a real change from original Damien who's wearing a one piece designed to LOOK like a shirt and shorts.

His jacket even has real working pockets!

his death certificate is identical to his original one, only more creased up. *sigh*

Damien was my first ever LDD, he along with Angus were the first two dolls I bought and Damien was one i'd had my eye on for years prior to that.

So getting his 20th anniversary doll felt very RIGHT to me. I love boy dolls after all.

one of the things I always found irksome about original Damien, and something that was fixed in their rerelease, was that he didn't have a gripping hand so couldn't hold his slingshot.
20th Damien has a gripping hand, so he CAN hold his slingshot, but you have to kind of force it in there because the slingshot is a bit wider than the gap in  his hand is. LDDs are kinda squishy in the arms though so it results in a very tight grip once you DO get it in.

Their slingshots are slightly different. New Damien has a black fuzzy ball on his and his is a brighter shade of brown.

Also while original Damien wears boots, new Damien wears far more school boy appropriate leather shoes with laces.

And because my original Damien is a first wave doll, he's waaaaay shorter than the more recent LDDs. They changed the bodies fairly early on actually, to slightly taller bodies with ball socketed arms that allowed them to pose better. But I kinda like the difference in height, it's like he grew up a bit.

New Damien has substantially better hair as well, it's smoother, it's softer and it lays down nicely while original Damien's likes to poof out and is cut really strangely(see how it's longer on one side?)

I'm so pleased with my demonic little school boy!

So much so I.. might.. have... preordered... another full case... to try to get another mystery doll... ahem.

I'm WEAK! and they're pretty!

and yeah, selling for stupid money on ebay atm. eek.

I'm hoping for Sin or Posey. We'll see...

Of course this does mean i'll end up with duplicates of the other 4.... so.. who wants to buy a mint in box LDD for £25? lol.