Has a new doll ever made you ‘doubt’ the others?

For sure. With my Demon Slayer dolls that I customized, for a long time I was unsatisfied with Giyuu since he was my first faceup, while Zenitsu was my second and turned out significantly better. After I redid Giyuu's faceup that's gotten a lot better, and I love him a lot more than I used to. I also get a little pang of jealousy every time Ringdoll releases a new version of the character Xie Lian- I have the first version, which I love and he's absolutely beautiful, but now that they just released the third version of the character, I get a little bit of FOMO every time, wondering if the new versions are better than mine. (Which by the way, what's up with the new versions? They released the second version just a few months ago- space it out a little more, please! My heart can't take it!)

 

Another one with the “never realized what resident quality was“ experience here. My first doll was a ResinSoul, and though she was lovely, they’re known to have very smooth and somewhat plasticky resin. I don’t think I really understood what tooth was until my second, a Soom Rosette Fir. It was like night and day – I couldn’t stop rubbing her hand to feel the resin, and I think that’s when I began to lose interest in my first doll. I ended up selling my RS not too long after that.

I feel like one reason for this effect could be the fact that, with very few exceptions, we don’t generally get to see or handle dolls in person before we buy our first. Unless you get to attend one of the small number of very localized conventions, or are lucky enough to have a doll friend in your area, you’re going to be making your first purchase sight unseen. I wish there were ways to learn without buying, but unfortunately that seems like how it goes for most people.

 

I have gotten a few dolls that outshine the others and make me question my focus sometimes. I like a variety in my collection though and you can have separate groups within a collection I think. If I love a doll but the aesthetic doesn’t fit in with the rest I tend to start a collection within my collection, lol! It’s chaotic when I am reorganizing but once I get it figured out I enjoy the variety.

 

I kinda had the reverse? I got a full set of the Red rabbit from coral reef dolls, the creepy cute buns. While I loved her and she's prescious, I have bonded way more with her sister whom I had bought blank. I do not pick her up or love on her like the ones I've actually worked on. I have a headless body rn I handle more then her because I've gone through the trouble of dyeing him and his head is sitting my desk while I get the guts up to mod his face.

I'm gonna keep her, she's the beautiful sister to the one I worked on. It's like fraternal twins because they're so different, but I know I don't wanna buy another full set.

 

Sometimes I obsess over an individual doll and wonder if it would be nicer to have them just from that company, but some of my non-doll friends who are otherwise visually aware seem to think they all have the same aesthetic, so they must look relatively harmonious

 

To me it is the real opposite somehow no other doll managed to hold a candle to my Aletheia notdoll which was my first doll , in fact if a fairy came an turned everyone of them into aletheias lookalikes it would be awesome, i wanted variety in bodies and faces bevause i like variety but at the end it's a specific style I like more and back then i overdid it in variety ending up with many dolls that though pretty and awesome to look at they are not for me and don't interest or excite me enough to have them myself.

 

Oh, yes, definitely, multiple times!

The first was around two to three years into the hobby. I had started with 1/4 and it's all I owned, and all I planned to own. Tried a couple of big dolls, they just weren't really for me. Then about three years into it, I started roleplaying my characters regularly and several paired up with my RP partner's dolls...my partner had all 1/3 crew, her only 1/4 being a 10 year old child. Since we lived about 600 miles apart, it really didn't matter that the scales were different, we weren't taking pix of them together. but then....she sent one of her dolls to stay with me for a bit so we could get couples pix and edit/use trick photography to make it work. Having her 1/3 doll in my hands made me doubt everything. I ended up buying a 1/3 doll of one of my dolls and I loved him so much, I ended up upgrading the entire crew to 1/3. No regrets, I'm now almost 16 years into the hobby and (mostly) haven't turned back.

I started out with all boys, said I'd never want a girl...tried a few girls, they were ok but not in love...then got a Loongsoul Michelle I fell head over heels for and ended up with over half my crew being girls at one point. But that seemed to have been a phase, as I'm back to about 70% boys again.

Another thing, details on bodies! Loooooove when you can see every muscle or bone, tendons, veins. Small details that are mostly unimportant for a doll body to look nice or pose well. I once had a Soom Idealian who had fingerprints and a brain in his head instead of an s-hook! I've never seen anything close to that level of detail again. These things aren't a make it or break it, but I do feel a bit underwhelmed by the "block with noodle arms and legs" compared to these amazing tiny details.

And lastly (I think?)....the pets/anthros. So outside my usual range of dolls, but twice now I've gotten one and thought it was so perfect and fun, that I needed more. DollFactory Devil Bobo was my first who made me feel that way (and I'm still kicking myself for selling her), then I got over it, and more recently, got two Eve Studio cats and now I just want all the pets again and have considered.....would it really be so bad if I had like 6 humans and 40 pets? (I can't really do that, I'm too bonded with too many of my crew to sell them all off right now, but buying ten times more pets IS tempting!)

 

Kind of - when I got my Soom Sard last year I started to prefer the smaller 65cm dolls over the 70cm dolls I felt I prefered and still make up the majority of my collection. I got a 72cm body last year I was inititally really excited to get but somehow I felt super dissapointed by and ended up selling it on. However that body had a 62cm version which I also ordered and ended up loving. I think a lot of the dolls I will buy from now on are probably going to be smaller 62-66cms and I’ve realize how much I love that size. It was also the size I started out in the hobby with.

@CloakedSchemer totally agree on those tiny details!

 

Yup. Once you raise the bar with one doll (and usually the price range), your other dolls just don't measure up anymore. At least, it's that way for me.

 

When I got a 1/3 doll for the first time, it made me doubt how much I really liked my first doll's scale (1/4). I considered re-shelling the 1/4 doll's character in 1/3 for a while, but in the end I decided against it.
I probably won't get any more 1/4 dolls in the future but I don't hate the one I do have, I guess I just realized there's something I like more?

I think with a hobby like BJD, where you can end up buying a doll without ever having seen one in person before, it's easy to think you like one thing only to later find out you like something else more, when you finally get to see/feel/experience it yourself.