Did you hate dolls?

hahah Im surprised I found this topic in here!
As a little girl I always played with "boys" toys like lego, cars and such
becuase baby dolls and dolls in general creep me out so much!!
I found out about bjds in my early teen ages but I was fascinated by them,
I think they dont have anything in common with a kid toy ~

 

i always liked dolls

 

When I was little I had various baby dolls, but the truth is that I didn´t play with them, I never liked them. Then, I had Bratz, but the same happened.
What I like about BJDs it´s the most mature aspect and the possibility of customizing them as I want.

 

Always loved dolls as a kid. Had a crapload of Barbies and a few Cabbage Patch Kids, a few "generic" CPKs, too. When I was a teen I collected porcelain dolls for a few years but they were never as much fun, so I outgrew those by the time I was 21. Still bought a Barbie here and there but my collecting days had pretty much diminished as I discovered anime and fanfiction. From there I discovered DeviantArt, and it was while I was browsing DA that I came upon an awesome picture and it took me the LONGEST TIME to figure out that I was looking at a photograph of a doll. Luts Delf El, as I recall. I had to ask the artist what it was, if it was a 3D drawing or what. So, they told me and I had to start searching for more info and decided I just HAD to have one (although I almost choked on the price, at first. lol). Just one, I said.

Well, eleven years and 40+ BJDs later.....

 

I've always been quite indifferent to dolls as a child. But BJD's are not the same kind of dolls to me that those I used to have, they are special.

 

I only had a few fashion dolls, and one larger girl doll I loved, as a kid and a lot of plushies. Then at about 17 I saw vintage fashion dolls online and really loved the look, compared to modern fashion dolls. I also saw a BJD, tiny size I think, she was very beautiful, and I watched lots of BJD doll photography on Flickr. As the years passed I started to buy a couple of vintage dolls, jointed dolls, a porcelain strung doll which I customised myself...and now am nearly 2 years into BJDs.

 

I was into action figures, Lego and playing with a "bow and arrow" and suits of armour. I like bjds for their giant oversized action figure-ness really!

Well meaning (gender stereotyping) parents gave me barbies and baby dolls (which I admit I still find creepy), they tended to be used as guinea pigs for other things but honestly I always hated the lack of joints and overall girliness. I think it's telling that the one barbie I liked had more joints than my Darth Vader action figure, and got to parade around as an evil Sith.

 

I was always a fan of dolls. As a kid of course it was Barbie, Bratz, My Scene and Monster High. Then it progressed to American Girl. Six years ago I moved away from all of those dolls to collect pullips. I still collect them, but am now adding bjds to the mix! I will say I never have liked vintage style dolls, the kind that are usually used for horror films. To this day they still make me uncomfortable.

 

I loved barbies growing up but to this day I hate the porcelain dolls (no offense porcelain doll lovers) with glass eyes that seem to stare into my soul. I saw a random YT video one day of a box opening and immediately did my homework on getting a Bjd for myself.

 

I love dolls, always have and always will.

 

Well, I don't hate dolls. When I was younger, I played Barbies, Poly Pockets, stufftoys and cooking sets.
I forgot how I got to know about BJD but I know I really like it but it took me 2 years to finally get 1. Yay~

 

I wouldn't say I HATED dolls, but I certainly wasn't as keen on them as I was other toys. Now, part of this stems from being a creative tomboyish sort. I was into dinosaurs and building toys like lego and knex.
Barbie was too samey, they all looked exactly the same which made story telling hard.
Adding to this, they ALL looked just like my older sister. "oh she's so pretty" grr. I still resent the whole "oh she looks just like a barbie doll!" comments, I never got anyone telling me I was beautiful or looked like anyone or anything else. -_-

Anyway,

The way I played with dolls as a kid i don't think is how doll companies THOUGHT kids would play with dolls. I didn't really do this whole "mummy/baby" thing, I didn't have any interest in doing hair, I didn't learn to braid hair till I was an adult! I didn't much care for their unrealistic clothing in many cases and the fact they all looked the same I found really restrictive to creative story telling.
Instead my friends and I made up elaborate stories involving littlest pets, or my little ponies, or even little paper dolls we drew ourselves. For us the STORY and characters were the interesting thing, and that's carried over into adulthood.

I got into dolls when I was in my early 20s when i stumbled upon a cute little redhead fashion doll in a charity shop. She was cute, she was naked, she was like 50p and i'm not sure why, but I felt compelled to buy her.
She was, I discovered, a Wee 3 friends doll and finding her clothes led me down a rabbit hole. The only things that would fit her quite chunky body were Bratz Boyz clothes. I'd sort of missed Bratz when they came out, being a teen when they launched and I kinda liked how boy bandish the boy dolls were lol. Also, a whole line of male dolls? Awesome.
See, growing up boy dolls were super rare. All we had was Ken and Ken was so dang ugly. Barbie looked young, Ken looked like he was her dad to me. A dirty old man chasing after a pretty young thing, ew.
and his moulded hair and ugly shaped man body just... ew. I still think 80s kens are hideous.
Bratz boys looked young, they looked cute and they had proper hair. they were also dressed like actual teen boys. And they all had a distinct look despite all having the same face.
As a kid i'd always sort of gravitated toward the male characters in any games we played, so being able to actually buy BOY dolls was something kid me would have loved.

Things kinda... escalated. I discovered all these lines i'd missed because i'd been too old and "not into toys" when they launched. My Scene, Fashion Fever, Bratz and so on. not to mention vintage toys I remembered dimly from childhood and then discovered old versions of. Like Sindy, oooo yes Sindy. I joined some collector groups and from there learned about Monster High, which being horror themed really appealed to my inner horror nut.

Now fast forward... a whole lotta years I got more into playline dolls and started looking into the more expensive collector line stuff. Tonner, Pullip etc but none jumped out enough for me to spend that kind of money on. Till I discovered Makies.
Dolls you designed yourself. Dolls who's emphasis was on character and creativity? Heck... yes.
I got a bit addicted to those, buying 3 to "test them out" and rapidly expanding my collection to 30 in only 2 years.
then the company went under.
It was devastating.

then Mattel announced they were rebooting monster high too. Stripping away all the edginess and coolness and turning them into cutesy mostly static bodied junk.
BOO.

so I started to look for replacement passions, something new to sink my money and love into. Hujoo's 1/6 dolls have similar proportions to Makies, so I bought one of those but the limited faces (there's 5 different ones and 1 of them scares me so much i've banned her from ever entering my home, she's horrible!) were restrictive as heck. I fell in love with their msd Arthur though, because tusks and pointy ears? oooo yes.

Now, because Makies had been nearly £70, i'd already bitten the bullet on spending more than a few quid on myself. Stretching to £80 or 90 wasn't that much of a leap... and I decided I really quite liked the msd size even if Arthur's jointed limbs drove me nuts with their awkward posing.
So I returned to BJDs, something i'd discovered in my university years but never been able to justify the cost of. Back then, well it would have been the early 2000s? I didn't collect dolls and while I thought these things were beautiful, the cost and indeed the elitism of the community was seriously offputting. I recall i joined here and took one look at the enormous list of rules and what was and wasn't on topic, felt overwhelmed and backed away.
I decided I couldn't justify splurging my student loan on something SO frivolous. But that was then... 15 years on, well, there was a lot more on the market, the community had expanded hugely and the snobbishness of those early days seems to have mostly worn off (no offense old people lol). I'm also older, wiser and more confident, so less easily intimidated by walls o rules.
And of course, because there's more market and more available, there's a much wider range of price points and products.
Fantasy colours are a thing now, heck back then you couldn't even get tanned dolls! let alone blue ones. Elf ears, fantasy sculpts, horror sculpts... just.. all this awesome artistic stuff that the creative part of me finds irresistible. And shelling characters, yes yes yes. that's exactly what i've wanted for so many years. Makies almost gave me that, if you didn't mind the giant heads and the relatively limited sliders (particularly on the boys) but BJDs expand the possibilities even more so. My inner roleplayer delights.
And so late last year I finally bit the bullet and jumped into the BJD world feet first. So far, no regrets. Unlike the play dolls of my childhood, bjds offer something different, the element that was always lacking for me with barbie dolls and the like. Character, personality, diversity. The ability to pour a personality into that little plastic person and make them unique.

I didn't like dolls as a kid not because I don't like little plastic avatars, but because 80s and 90s dolls were really freaking BORING, lacked diversity and didn't enable me to indulge that creative crafty side of myself or indeed pour characters into the dolls because they all felt like clones of one another. I found them restrictive and uninspiring.
If I were a kid these days though? Man, the diversity in the barbie range is huge. I think, were I growing up with a market like today's, i'd have probably been way more into dolls back then. But they weren't, they were boring and bland and samey. And oh so very pink. *gag*

 

I've loved dolls for as long as I can remember. I still do.

 

I always enjoyed dolls when I was younger, like Barbie then Monster High. Though once I started to get older I grew out of dolls. But then I discovered bjds through Instagram and I thought they were amazing.

 

I've always loved dolls. I didn't like what I thought they represented when I was younger though. I hated "girly" things even as a kid but had a vivid imagination. The only dolls I really didn't like were baby dolls. I was never into being a "mommy". I collected a lot of action and anime figures too and played with them a lot. I had tons of Barbies, Bratz, even Sailor Moon dolls. I really liked acting out stories with them and found that I always wanted to customize them... By that I mean drawing on their faces with markers and cutting hair. Sometimes cutting up socks and washcloths and attempting to make clothes. Lots of clothes made of tissue paper haha.

Then I became a teenager and started REALLY rebelling against "girly" things and what few dolls I had left from moving around a lot as a child got, uh, the brunt of my young and turbulent emotions to say the least. Focused more on action figures and anime figures. Of course then I came across a friend who still liked dolls and played the same way I did, got into BJDs on DeviantArt together and suddenly found validation in the way I enjoyed dolls and story telling. Someone who understood that dolls were more than dress up and playing house, but world and character building. It wasn't just some girlish pastime but an artistic endeavor and a tool for self discovery.

So yeah, didn't ever hate dolls. Just what I was made to think they were for a while.

 

As a tomboy, my only use for dolls as a kid was to make up stories with them, and the lack of variety and poseability back then meant that didn't last long. (My mother was quite angry when I managed to repeatedly pop limbs off a cheap doll by trying to make it do things it wasn't meant to.) Stuffed animals and Legos and electronic games were just more fun as far as I was concerned.

...I do remember later cutting the breasts off an exceptionally badly-made barbie-knock-off to try to turn her into a boy though.

 

I had Barbies as a kid, and even though I grew out of playing with them I never really hated them. I was labeled a "tomboy", but I'd play with dolls and action figures equally - I didn't mind playing dress-up as long as I wasn't the one having to wear the dress! I also have some Disney, Monster High and Ever After High dolls I still keep around and sew for occasionally.

The only dolls I seriously didn't like were Bratz, and that was more because I didn't like their aesthetic.

 

I liked Barbie dolls as a kid, and in my teens I switched over to anime figures. Now I’ve upgraded to BJD!

 

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Small me liked toys- didn't matter if it was barbie, lego, gi joes, or whatever the mutant things my brothers had, tmnt things.

But there was a period of time I hated anything girly in the slightest- and it didn't mean get rid of my barbies it meant like 'hey it's time for a deadly exploration into the arctic' or 'eff this shiz I'm gonna play video games' and ignore them. Or using my skydancers for what they were most proficient in: bodily injuries.

And then the gothic anime sorta style of some BJDs lured me in sometime around when that cooled off.

 

I had many, many dolls when I was a kid. There were probably upwards of 100 Barbies, American Girl Dolls, Bratz, Betty Spaghetti, various baby dolls, and other, less well-known fashion dolls scattered around the playroom at any point in time during my childhood. I have two younger sisters, so we were always playing with dolls. I loved them. Every single one had an individual name, their own style of clothing, and stories we made up for them. Not to say that they were all equally played with, but we had so many that we had a stable of favorites that rotated in and out.

I think I stopped actively playing with them when I was around 13. That seems like a pretty average place to stop. Later, in college, I began collecting mini anime figures, and my doll hobby just kinda started growing again from there. Now I want to collect again! I don't think I ever had a point where I was like, "Dolls are dumb and I hate them!" No, I just stopped paying attention to them for a while, and then, after a while of collecting blind box figures, I wanted to dive into dolls again, after years! It's not that I can't stay away from them, I just really like them and want them in my life. It's my choice to bring them into my home. It's very deliberate on my part, because I've spent months researching and planning and choosing just what I want.

As for how I got involved with BJDs specifically, well, I think it's because I wanted to get back into... or rather, start the hobby in 2017 after I saw an Azone Pureneemo at a swap meet. I began buying Pureneemo in 2018, which escalated into buying Momoko and Ruruko too, and after I had a sizable collection of them I decided I was ready for larger dolls. It was all about working my way towards it, I suppose. I began with 1/6 and one day in late 2019 I was like, "Yep, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna get a 1/3 scale doll." Joining DOA feels like the right move for me in my journey through this hobby. While I'm still a relative newcomer, I've got my first doll already!