Did you play with dolls as a child?

I loved playing with dolls as a kid growing up, and I remember my younger sisters had Bratz dolls, and I was amazed that their feet could come off. I thought that was rather amusing. My younger sisters and I played with Barbies together all the time, but that's not what got me into BJDs. I was browsing through artwork on Deviant Art and I saw a doll named Haruka and Auria, and thought that they were so beautiful that I wanted to look more into it. Turns out the dolls belong to Spacey here on DoA, and her dolls weren't just there to look pretty, but they each have their own stories and personalities. I asked her how to go about buying one, and she linked me to the site where I bought my Annie Dollzone 1/4 model for my precious Yumi Skaisuke, giving her a story of her own in my original novel series.

 

yes, I use to play with Barbies as a child. Whenever my cousins would come to visit they would allways stay at me grandparents house. We allways gathered up his wood scraps, because he was a caprenter, and make then houses. When I got to old for barbies i started playing with Polly Pocket dolls. They were cooler, more portable and i enjoyed costomising there houses and cars.

 

I was a HUGE fan of dolls, Barbie, Bratz, model dolls, you name it! I especially enjoyed the ones which had joints which could bend!

 

I was more of a collector of dolls rather than playing them. At the time, they were Disney Princess Mint in the Box Barbie Dolls. When I was 12 I had to sell them to lighten the load for the move across the country. I love my BJD more than the barbies by far because there are A LOT more makers, more customized options, better quality, anatomically correct, posing more, and taking pictures with them is AMAZING

 

I had Barbies and stuff when I was younger, but I was more into My Little Pony [I still am collecting my little pony]. I got away from Barbies and dolls until I found BJD's after college. I love how customizable they are.

 

I always thought of myself as a girly girl, but then my sister got her daughter. This child is REALLY into pink, loves everything that has to do with princesses, fairies and other romantic stuff and she will never climb a tree, afraid that it will mess up her dress.

Yes, I played with Barbies as a child, but not at all how my niece plays with them. She brushes their hair, redresses them every five minutes and makes up stories of how her Barbie is waiting for her knight in shining armor to come and take her away on his horse to get married.
When I played with them, they were these evil giants, living high in the mountains and my army of Legos knights had to protect the villagers at the bottom of that ridge, because the Barbies started multiplying too fast and began to eat little children in lack of something else (or everyone else who wasn't fast enough to escape their grasp).

So, yep, I played with dolls, but I guess I wasn't as girly as I always thought I was.

 

I did not play with dolls - no Barbies or anything like that. I preferred toy cars and Lego. Now I feel like I missed out!

 

I was always more interested with doing their hair, dressing them and the like than actually playing with them.
I think that's what has me so interested in bjd's- more the customizable aspect which is endless.

 

I had barbies on and off as a kid. I loved them, made up stories and played them out, spent tons of time doing their hair and trying to make little outfits for them. But every time I got in trouble all my toys got packed up and usually tossed. I got back into dolls as an adult - many many years after the last toy purge in my house hold - found a few barbies that were older collectibles that I just loved, and then discovered Monster High dolls. That led me to discovering customized MH dolls and then a bjd popped up on my screen and I fell in love with them but didn't think I could ever afford.... or that if I could afford, I would feel too guilty to spend the money *sigh* but. I suddenly realized that spending 40.00 a week on monster high dolls meant I really could afford to have one or two or three bjd's - maybe not all at once and my boyfriend has been super supportive of me rediscovering my ability to play. Any ways, I do still wish I had some of those dolls left over from when I was a kid - I hope one day, if I ever have kids of my own that aren't furry, I'll have a bjd to pass along to them.

 

I've owned Barbies for as long as I can remember. Played with them constantly as a child too. I've also had those generic baby dolls. Oh, and a porcelain doll or two, but I wasn't allowed to play with them. I used to think they felt so lonely that I wouldn't play with them but I played with all my other dolls.

 

I used to have a lot of Barbies when I was small (the car, the house, the horse, the camping-car, everthing !). I was always creating stories with love, sadness, dramatic situations, etc... A real soap opera xD As a teenage, I totally forgot that, I was a real tom-boy, playing with Mecano's or Lego's, I was short haired and always wearing baggies :p

I came back to dolls by "accident", I was surfing to get information about the Japan Expo in Paris, watched the list of exposants and saw a BJD sector on the map... Got curious, did some search and fall in love with the concept It was two years ago

 

I also played with dolls as a child, I had Barbies and this other local doll line called Susie (I was born in Brazil). I created stories that they acted out. My favorite toys, however, were Playmobils and action figures, they were smaller and easier to carry around and play with. Now that I'm nearly 40 with two small kids, I rediscovered my love for dolls. I found some of my old dolls and got into new ones such as BJDs. I felt a bit self-conscious in the beginning, it was good to find out I'm not the only one.

 

I was a person that loved doll-type things as a kid. I had a ton of Barbies (which I grew to dislike pretty quickly), a little doll house (I still love dollhouses, they're so cool~), and a few American Girl Dolls which I'd play with for a few weeks once a year and then put right back into storage until I felt like it again. When I discovered Rozen Maiden, I thought dolls with joints and customization was one of the coolest things ever, and found BJDs~

 

I have definitely always liked dolls. I had barbies as a little girl, but action figures were my favorite

 

i changed their clothes that was it as a little kid.... then i became rather sadistic to my barbies [as i didn't like what they represented] and began asking for GI joes...] i think ball jointed bolls are better, more proportionate and you give them a back story of your own, not some doll companies made up wanna-be story of what they think girls should be plus i find the storied that BJD owner make for their dolls alot more interesting

how evern i did love my normall baby dolls and dolls [and had plenty of them] i also had a crap load of stuffed animals and plushies [i collected stuffed toys...untill our house flooded during hurricane floyd]

 

Actually, as a kid, I couldn't afford dolls Most of my toys were from my grandfather, whom had snuck them out from the factory he was working in (at the time.) Usually, they were porcelain dolls, and although they were rather pretty and I appreciated the sentiment, their eyes were very unsettling... and I disliked them. Plus I knew that they were fragile so I rarely played with them. I had one baby doll that I played with regularly due to it not actually resembling a baby (as those also scared me.) As a kid, Barbies and Bratz dolls both equally freaked me out, although MyScene ones didn't... (Maybe because they were an in-betwen the two.)

... Needless to say, I was a poor child and a very paranoid child, so I didn't play with dolls ^^; Plus at the time, I preferred animals to people, so I had more stuffed animals than dolls. Stuffed animals were easier to hug~

 

Never was in to dolls as a child. I had He-Man, and My Little Pony as my major toys. I hit my 2nd childhood with BJDs! Love it!

 

Yes I played with dolls when I was a kid, till around age 13.

 

Yes. I had baby dolls, a wedding doll and a Barbie when I was young. I remember worrying about them being cold and placed them in my bed all covered when I wet to school one day. They were still cold when I came home and somehow that changed me and I stopped playing with them then. I was 10. No more dolls in my life until my oldest daughter was born.

 

I guess I sort of did play with dolls as a child, though they were called "action figures" since they were oriented towards a male audience. I don't think that experience had any effect on BJDs, since although the two share a common root they're still different beasts in the end.