Poppy Playtime

The doll

Poppy is a small porcelain doll with white skin, freckles, red cheeks and blue eyes. Her red hair is curled and tied in two pigtails with blue bows, and she wears a blue dress with white frills, white stockings and black Mary Jane shoes.

The Vintage Poppy Commercial sells her as the first doll that can hold a conversation with a child. In it she asks to have her shoes polished and says she is a real girl. The toy was fitted with a voice box and was the first big success Playtime Co. had. The Jimmy Roth Interview tape lists Poppy among the product names from Elliot Ludwig's time.

The case

The tape that brings the Player back to the factory is her commercial. It ends on footage of a poppy flower painted around a door, and the letter that came with it says to find the flower.

At the end of Chapter 1 the Player does. Past the poppy door is a hallway dressed up like a child's room, and at the end of it Poppy is shut in a glass case. The Player opens it. The lights flicker and go out, and she speaks one line, about the case being opened.

The train

Chapter 2 begins with her voice. During the opening commercial she whispers to the Player to wake up, and they wake in her room with the case empty. She whispers directions through the hallways until the Player finds her behind Elliot Ludwig's Office, where she has knocked over a box trying to restore the power. She thanks the Player for freeing her, says she was stuck in that case for a long time, and offers a way out. She has the code for a train.

She follows through the vents as far as a room with a large hole. She asks the Player to trust her, and a pink arm takes her in the middle of the sentence. Mommy Long Legs shows her off as a hostage with webbing over her mouth and speaks for her in a mock voice.

After Mommy Long Legs dies, the Player finds Poppy held in webs in the Game Station control room, beside the last piece of the Train Code. She asks if Mommy was killed, and she boards the train. Once it is moving she changes the deal. The Player is too perfect to lose, she says, and she cannot let them leave. Terrible things have happened, and the Player is capable of what she needs. An alarm clock beep cuts her off. The train speeds up and derails.

What she wants

She appears again in Chapter 3 when Kissy Missy pins the Player outside Home Sweet Home. She calls Kissy off and says Ollie is the reason they found the Player at all.

On the hidden lift in the dome she tells the Player again that she cannot let them leave, and this time she says why. The monsters who tortured the Player and the toys are followers of the Prototype, and the Prototype is the reason she was trapped in her case. If the Player tries to escape, he will kill them before they reach the front door. CatNap is the final obstacle he has put in their way.

Her voice is in the second Red Smoke dream, asking the Player a series of questions and ending on the answer no. In the Safe Room she talks the Player through the fight over a speaker and a wall terminal, explaining the steam, the green power receivers, the flares and the batteries.

The Hour of Joy tape

With CatNap dead she climbs out of a vent in the Hatch Room carrying a VHS tape. The Player came back because of their coworkers, she says, and the tape is her answer. It is the Hour of Joy.

She heard every moment of it. The toys killed everyone, guilty or innocent, dragged the bodies below and ate them to stay alive. The Prototype has to die.

She boards the lift with the Player and tells Kissy Missy they will send it back up for her. When Kissy is attacked, Poppy tries to make the lift rise faster, but the hatch closes.

Safe Haven

On the lift she tells the Player to go on without her. She calls the place below hell, says they have allies there, and goes back up for Kissy. The two of them reappear outside Safe Haven, hide the Player from the Prototype and bring them in through the showers. The toys inside are surprised to see her. Doey says she disappeared and left them.

Then she explains the plan. The orphans were taken during the Hour of Joy and are asleep in the Labs with the Prototype. The Red Smoke is an accelerant. The Foundation will be filled with it and lined with old mining charges, and once the orphans are out, the Safe Haven toys will set it off.

In the sewers the Player overhears her arguing with Doey. She tells him she had to leave and had no choice. When the Prototype is reported outside she sends Doey to distract him, has the Player repair the generator with Ollie's help, and then sends them on to the Foundation.

It comes apart in Shelf Ventilation Block B6. She blames the Player for Doey's death. Then the phone rings, and during the Prototype's call she asks if there was ever an Ollie. She says she cannot go back in the case, and she leaves through a hole into the vents.

On the tapes

Two tapes in Chapter 4 show an earlier Poppy. In 'Ollie' she tells Ollie that the scientists keep taking things out of her and putting them back, and that she feels it less each time.

The 'Untitled Tape' is her reaction to the Hour of Joy. She thought they were going to leave the factory. The Prototype told her they can never leave, and she hates that he is right.

The Doctor tells the Player that Poppy knew the Hour of Joy was coming. Chapter 4 gives her no reply to that.

Broken Things

In Chapter 5 Lily Lovebraids holds Poppy and Kissy Missy in a cell in the Dollhouse basement, until the Player finds the key and frees them.

At Lily's tea party the Prototype tells Poppy the orphans are in a Better Place. She takes that to mean he killed them and calls him a monster. He cracks her porcelain head.

Kissy Missy carries her out. She is awake but hurt when the group meets Giblet again. After the tram crash the Prototype takes her, and the Player hears her voice while they are in the Poppy Gel.

Trivia

• Poppy and Stella Greyber share a voice actor, Nola Klop.