Living (make that undead) dolls

He doesn't sparkle in the sunlight - he's plastic. He can't hunt for prey - he's immobile. And he's only 17 inches tall - not exactly a towering Byronic presence.

Still, for some fans of Stephenie Meyer's immensely popular Twilight series, the Edward Cullen doll by Tonner is the next best thing to the books' vampiric hero.

The high-end dollmaker, known for its realistic figures based on popular movie characters, saw sales hit a record high with its first Edward doll, released in 2009.

But next month at San Diego's Comic-Con, Tonner is set to introduce another Edward - and a new Bella Swan (Edward's human girlfriend) and an Alice Cullen (Edward's vampire sister). The company also sells a Jacob (Bella's werewolf best friend) and several villains from the first Twilight book.

Cindi Fallon, 53, of Media, owns an Edward and a Jacob and already has all three of the new dolls on order (they'll ship in August). She didn't start reading the books until after she bought her dolls - at first, she said, she was just drawn to their "sculpting and artwork."

"It's not a Barbie doll," she said. "It looks like a human being" - namely, actors Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

For its first Twilight series, Tonner produced nearly 5,000 mini-Edwards, with gray peacoats and shoes with working laces. Three months later, every doll had sold out.

"We've done that well for our Harry Potter dolls," said Tonner chief executive officer Robert Tonner, "but it took three years."

The company is hoping for the same success in the wake of the third movie, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which opened at midnight.

At $129 to $139 a doll, it's a hefty price to pay for even the most die-hard Twihard. But fans aren't complaining.

"They're so much more realistic that it's almost like having the star in your house, rather than having just a doll. It's almost like an art piece," said Glenn Lash, the manager at Happily Ever After on Pine Street, a toy store that specializes in high-end dolls like the Tonner collection.

Many of the customers who buy the Twilight dolls aren't typical doll collectors, Lash said.

"It's bringing new people into the doll world," he said. "We get a lot of tourists, and they come in and go, 'Oh! Twilight!' "

Lash, for his part, owns Tonner's Edward and Jacob dolls (and proudly swears allegiance to Team Edward).