Discontinued

The easiest way to see if a doll is going to be discontinued is to look for an ordering period - some dolls can only be ordered for a certain time period, like thirty days, then they're unavailable. Or if it says "limited," it will be discontinued quickly. However, many doll companies have "standard" sculpts that stay available for a long time. Even so, eventually they may remove the sculpts to make room for new ones - and no company is guaranteed to stay around forever. I currently have an Iplehouse JID Ryan and Luts Junior Delf Rigel on layaway because their sculpts were discontinued, even though they were standards (not limited.)

 

You can never predict what a company is going to do with their dolls at any given point in time. Sometimes whole lines vanish. Luts discontinued all their Delfs when CP split from the company (although you can get a fair number of them in the Feeple line over at Fairyland now). Volks discontinued all their standard SDs. Dollshe discontinued their entire line at one point. Elfdoll discontinued all their boys a couple of years ago. It happens.

That said, though, even if a doll you want is discontinued, it doesn't eliminate your chance of owning it. You can find just about anything on the secondhand market if you're willing to be patient. So don't sweat the threat of discontinued dolls.

 

I was just curious as to whether each type of doll is only available for a certain amount of time?

There are some dolls that definitely have a limited selling period. The companies will have that information listed. This is pretty much the same as Pre-orders, where a doll is available for order during a certain period. There might or might not be a limit on the number of dolls sold.

Some dolls are limited by number: "Only X-number of dolls will be sold." The period of time can be very short or go for a longer time, but you can never tell when the dolls will sell out, or if the company will just stop selling the dolls (they don't HAVE to sell the complete number).

Limited Dolls-- often it is not revealed how many will be produced or sometimes there is no set selling period... This term applies to the dolls above and to some others that are just not Basic dolls.

Of course, Basic dolls and other non-limiteds aren't guaranteed to be on sale forever. The company may decide not to sell any more at any time. A company may or may not announce that they are going to stop selling them... and they may give you a lot of time to buy before they discontinue--or NOT! But that is just life, really. There is nothing that you can count on still being available down the line--not clothes or shoes or computers or cars, etc. There will always be a finite number of anything. You can make a guess as to how long something might be available, but nothing is certain.

Do most dolls become 'discontinued' or are there some dolls that are just around for ages?

These dolls are not mass-produced. Even Basic dolls are made in pretty small numbers. Companies are small and can't afford to keep making certain sculpts that aren't selling so well. And moulds break down and materials and resin recipes and sculpts change... It just doesn't make sense for them to keep dolls available forever. Even big mass-produced things could be sold and then stopped, with no announcement. (I saw a really nice throw that was on sale at Costco once and it was gone the next time I went--and I couldn't find anything like it anywhere on the internet. Sometimes you just have to buy something or lose out.)

I'd say that most dolls sold are limiteds, because doll companies are small and the doll market is small (relatively, very small, even though it seems like there are a lot of dolls and buyers around). So it's best for companies to do a pre-order and just make that many dolls and stop. They might bring back the sculpts in a different way, or make them Basic, later on... but it depends on the company. Often they will never come back.

There are a few dolls that have been around for ages. Not that many, because they would need to be a sculpt that remained fairly popular for years. Some Volks standards were around for maybe ten years, since the beginning of all modern BJDs... but they are being discontinued, slowly. Luts was selling some Delfs for around that long, but many of those sculpts reverted back to CP and Fairyland may or may not re-issue them... I can't think of too many more that have been around that long...

But as I said, it is only the way everything else works. Even inexpensive Barbie dolls that are all over the big-box stores are only available in those configurations for maybe a season. They don't say they are limited, but they are--like everything else!

 

Popularity seems to have an effect on how long "Basic" dolls are available. For example, Fairyland's dolls are so popular, they aren't going any where any time soon. Soom's dolls are practically all limited. The fantasy ones are only available for one month ordering periods.

 

"Popularity" has nothing to do with why Soom's dolls are limited; it's simply their business model for their fantasy dolls. Plenty of those dolls are very popular, but whether they sell a thousand or ten, they're all going to become unavailable at the end of the ordering period, no matter what.

FairyLand, on the other hand, has a model that tends more toward "introducing and keeping," however, they've temporarily stopped production on several lines recently in order to catch up. Their ChicLine dolls, as well, are discontinued again due to poor sales (as I have read on their site) and may not return, though the parts are at least still available.

"Discontinued" dolls have more to do with the company itself than how popular a specific mold may be. It's true that a less popular mold may be phased out or fully discontinued, but a popular one may be eliminated as well simply to allow the company to release something new without the overhead of having molds on hand for all previous releases, or due to the company revising all sculpts, or situations such as CP leaving Luts, or any number of other situations that may occur. As others have said, there's no guarantees in this hobby; the doll you're looking at today may be discontinued tomorrow. At least the companies are generally good at communicating the news about discontinuations, however.