Name one thing you wish was different in this hobby

Highly specific, but stronger headcap attachments / magnets for doll heads. The Volks doll I have keeps together okay, but my Crobi guy, I had to reglue the magnets in and even then, I still ended up having to use washi tape to keep the halves from jostling if I did a "big" motion like hike him up on a shelf.

 

@elphrain sadly you'll hear the same sentiment toward the way things have changed from people in any hobby, not just BJDs. The centralization of the internet has completely changed the very mindset with which you approach the online world.
In this regard I'm very happy about DOA because there's still something of the "old" internet here, which is not the case for most surviving forums.

 

I think it's been mentioned already, but some kind of standardized resin tones so making hybrids wasn't such a pain would be awesome. A bigger variety of skin tones would be great too, cause you don't know how scarce a good dark tan is until you're desperately looking for it and finally admit that you'll have to have it custom dyed to get what you want.

 

I wish the mature mini market was a bit more standardized. Not in terms of body shapes, but just in terms of visual compatibility. 38-51 cm range actually makes for a lovely 1/4 scale line-up of petite to pro athlete-like builds, but because just about every company settled on their own proportions, the size range has heads anywhere from 4-5(!) to 7", with eye sizes between like, 5mm to 14mm. I have one of the aforementioned "petites" at 40cm with a 6" head and she looks like a lovely 1/4 scale shorter young woman. I can barely find her friends because the vast majority in this size range are out-of-scale pinheads - or just in general are out-of-scale, because it's obvious that some of the 40cm dolls are not proportioned like an 160cm (5'3") tall adult. If they'd all stuck to roughly 6-7 size heads and 6-10mm sized eyes, you still have a lot of room for the idealized, superhero proportions above 45cm, but now there's a lot more cross-compatibility for props and collections.

 

@Lelite I know what you mean. It used to be a bit more uniform, but now there is just so many different dolls out there. I mean it's great that there is so much variety to chose from, but sometimes it can be tricky to envision how dolls will look together before you actually have them in hand. Comparison photos help a lot, but it's not always possible to find relevant ones (I am eternally grateful to everyone who do post comparison and who reply to photo requests) and no flat picture can ever tell the whole story.

I find it even more difficult for mature tinies, because it just takes so little to make them look off.

 

I wish there were more physical BJD stores to got to. Or doll collecting stores at least carried some BJD's.

I love going to doll shops and looking at dolls. It would just be fun to go shopping and see BJD's out there with the other collectable dolls. I like shopping online, but there is just something fun about picking out a doll in person.

 

I wish the hobby was more common in my country and we had more doll meets etc. There was one small “convention” once a year but it’s been 2-3 years since the last one

 

Hmmmm, minor things such as makers actually checking eyes fit flush in the sculpt before fully going into production! It’s a small thing that can cause a lot of extra expense and frustration!

One bigger thing (based on a rather noticeable trend over recent years) is that I wish companies would stick to the styles they’re known for rather than jump on popularity bandwagons and then just ending up blending in with everyone else. Yes skills improve, technology changes, artists and sculptors move on and updating is required (sometimes forcing a new direction which cannot be helped) but if you’re known for a specific style that’s what your customers and fan base are drawn to no matter how extreme. Suddenly ditching those in favour of more mainstream looks is not the best move to make as they then lose everything that made them who they were, fashion is a very fickle and dangerous thing to follow blindly!

 

I wish for companies to stop ignoring the 62-65cm male and resume making bodies at this height. Yes, bodies already exist, and maybe I'm falling into "recency bias" (popular trends aren't everything; not everything new is necessarily good). But I feel that the 62-65cm male is a no-man's land. Either they're tall 1/4 mature males at around 47-51cm in height, or 68cm+. Chinese BJD companies don't seem to realize that 65cm male exists. I've also seen Korean BJD companies abandon/discontinue the 64-66cm male in favour of 70cm male bodies and above. And the head sculpts and clothing service follow this trend too.

C'mon, BJD companies. Volks SD17 can't be the only representation and clothing service on the market. Though there's a glimmer of hope: one Chinese sculptor is making a 58cm male body, and another may be making a 65cm male body too. Both sculptors are indies. Please, I'm begging, make shorter 1/3 males.

 

Oh I feel this so much...! I wish it was easier to find BJD content or storyboards, stories, etc, I remember a lot of people being very proactive about posting them on here and it was really inspirational to read them and the photography was AMAZING. These days, I see IG posts, but it's not quite the same as posting story comic strips on dA or DOA. I've heard from individual BJD hobbyists that they do write stories on characters their dolls are based off of or do doll photography and craft stories around those photos... But for some reason, I haven't seen much posted

Another sore point for me is accessibility at least from North America for BJD items. While much has improved form 10, 15 years ago, BJD items are still still quite inconvenient (for prices, wait times, limitations to what we are able to buy or even see) as opposed to in Asia... It's also frustrating that third-party sellers and buyers for sites with loads of BJD items like TaoBao can really inflate the prices of items that would otherwise be fairly reasonably priced...

 

I wish there were physical bjd stores, a lot of them are just online only and it's disappointing because there's a lot of physical stores in Japan, South Korea, etc.

 

Also more frequent large conventions for BJDs specifically.... in Taiwan alone, we have four that are quite BJD-focused and Dollpas happen once or twice a year in multiple cities in Japan iirc?

There are physical stores all over Asia, that's true, it's nice because a lot of them let you try on stuff if you bring your dolls

 

Yes, that's true haha, I've never been to a doll con before but I hope to one day go to one, that'd be fun.

 

There's two big ones I know of in the US - Resin Rose on the West Coast (I've gone once and it was great!) and NYC Doll Con (I think that's the biggest in the US?)

 

I'd like to see more convenience in the way teeth, tongue parts, and eyes are attached. Recently, we've been seeing magnetic attachments and "eye movers" that fit the head perfectly, so I'm looking forward to seeing this become standardized. I'm not the most delicate person, so I've been known to scratch my eyeballs or ruin the paint on my teeth while trying to attach parts...

 

@river_seine I was briefly into 1:12 figures before BJDs and the one thing I really miss from those is how convenient it was to move the gaze or change faceplates. An eye moving mechanism adds so much expression and it would be great.to have, but I understand it's not as easy to implement into BJDs since how many different eye shapes there are.

 

Nothing original here - I wish the average production time for a doll was shorter. It bothers me that I have to wait for months and months to get one simple body, and without any guarantees that it will fit! Because of that my doll collection is always in some form of disarray

 

I wish there more more in person doll stores! Doll collecting isn't as big of a hobby as it used to be, at least where I live it's not. And it seems like the few physical stores have been dwindling for what I'm assuming are economic related reasons. I think the hobby would grow in popularity if there were more physical stores to shop maybe even ones that did buy and sell.

 

I wish people only reviewed dolls that are properly strung. An insane amount of doll body reviews I've seen will acknowledge that the stringing is very loose, and then proceed to review the posing. Of course the doll doesn't pose well, it's floppy... Why not restring, first? It's nice to have a doll that's nicely strung out of the box but you're supposed to restring yearly anyway, you know, basic maintenance? Cherry on top if they immediately claim they're selling it

 

A long shot of a wish, but VERY standardized clothing sizes for SD dolls? As in, my Amadiz fits Sartoriaj which should fit Iplehouse EID roughly, but to group all of them together into a single standard size I could select when shopping would be so lovely. 1/3 works...somewhat?... but seems to vary wildly. Basically something in the manner that Minifee/Slim Mini standard sizes have their poop in a group and it makes shopping super easy for them.
Also wishing for in-person doll stores, too! But I don't think they'd last long in the US sadly.