The Magical First Time

The first time I saw one in person was when I got my own. I remember opening the box and it being absolutely magical, she just looked so much prettier in real life than in company photos, it was one of those childlike awe moments. I was also really surprised by how detailed the face-up was even though it was fairly basic, and by her size, she was a lot bigger than expected (I got an MSD sized doll, so I have no idea how I would have reacted to receiving an SD sized one).

 

I'd seen a doll in passing at a convention but didn't really look. I was curious though so I looked them up online.

The first doll I ever really saw in person was my own and I was just so absolutely smitten! I couldn't believe how awesome she looked (even blank, naked and hollow eyed!). I was sooo thrilled to finally get to hold one and she was MINE on top of that!

I thought she was huge too I couldn't believe it, I guess I thought they were smaller because I'd only seen them in pictures really. She is only MSD sized! I was really shocked too because even blank, the moment I opened that box and looked at her, all blank, I just knew who she was going to be even if it took a while to get her that way. I also immediately unstrung her to see how she worked lol. THAT was a learning experience.

 

My first time was at a convention in Atlanta Georgia called Dragon*Con[I believe 2011], and I had seen a few of these dolls floating around, but officially stopped someone whom I was close enough to to stop to ask questions. I had already knew what a BJD was, but it was one of those 'Wow, I need one!'
She let me hold her precious boy, who was an SD, and we were talking and he was just the sweetest thing ever. I loved the feeling of the resin, the weight, the shape because it just felt so right.
And soon, I will get to order my first dolly, and be a very happy girl!

 

The first time I saw BJD in real, not from website, was when I received my first BJD! I still remembered that a day before he arrived, I did my final exam and was in bad mood + totally exhausted... But when I saw him... I felt like I was reborn and started to try many clothes on him, even though I was so sleepy and tired. Hahaha! Really don't regret that I started this hobby and bought him as my first doll.

 

I saw one in passing at a convention, and it stuck with me and then one day on tumblr one showed up on my dasboard. It was like fate because I had been thinking about the doll i had seen at the convention the for a while and couldn't find out what it was for the life of me. I have been researching and looking at bjds ever since and have finally ordered my own. I have other dolls but none as easily customized as these and that makes me love them all the more.

 

I am one of those people for whom there was no magic in my first time.

The first time I ever saw a bjd was at a festival, in the arms of someone who wanted nothing to do with my "where did you get the doll" question. When I saw it it was way more like a lightbulb going off than magic. I knew I could make that work, I just had to figure out how.

After that it was two or three more years before I saw my next doll in person, which was my first doll. I had not talked to anyone about them, not in person or on the nets so I had no idea what to expect. I was so nervous and scared that I'd just wasted all that money that I really didn't enjoy my box opening. And when I pulled him out he had the default face up and wrong wig (which I was aware of ahead of time - I had always planned on getting him "right" later) and just wasn't 100% right. Yet. I knew just looking at his site pictures he would be what I wanted, he just wasn't at that moment. I still loved him, but there was no magic exactly.

For me the magic comes later, when the potential I can see in photos starts coming out in my actual doll. 6 years later I look at my first doll and there is more magic for me. He's the most perfect doll I own (finally lol) and he always will be. That's where my magic is. First time sightings and box openings don't do it for me. I'm a long-term person (which is probably why I have no issues selling off every other doll I own - once that "magic" is gone, I'm over that doll).

 

I'd had several online friends with BJD's and while I thought they were beautiful, they were simply pretty to look at/admire from afar. I couldn't think of spending that kind of money for a doll (money was extremely tight then) and what the heck would I, a grown woman, do with an expensive doll anyway? Play with it? I don't think so. I'd also never been much of a doll person while growing up.

Then, I managed to save up hard core for over a year to be able to attend Yaoi-Con with friends. Junkyspot had a booth in the dealer room and that's when I saw my first BJD in real life. I was extremely tempted to buy an Elfdoll Catsy but I couldn't quite convince myself to spend that much money on something so small and something I had no idea what I'd really do with. I went home without buying the doll and money left over from the con (I'm pretty tight-fisted with my cash so that wasn't really a surprise). But, the bug was nibbling at me after seeing the dolls in person so I went on random searches on the net and stumbled over AoD where I saw the Chi sculpt.

Bam! I knew that doll was Moswen (a character from one of my novels) and I wanted him with the passion of a thousand burning suns. But... I knew the Hubby was creeped out by the dolls and I knew that if I got Moswen, I'd also need to get him his lover, Kijika and if I didn't really have money for one doll, how was I going to be able to afford two? The Hubby saw me looking at Moswen daily and after about a week of that, he said I should use the money left over from the con and buy him since I obviously really wanted him. The Hubby actually needed to convince me over a couple of days that it was okay to use the money left over for a doll instead of putting it back into general household reserves. He said that I'd saved hard for the con and that any money left over was for me to spend on something I wanted. So I bought Moswen and that started me down the slippery slope of doll ownership.

I remember that my heart was beating super fast when I got him and while he had one of the... "interesting" face-ups from AoD (he'd get a custom one months later after I saved up for it and I didn't want my first doll to be blank), he was perfect and I loved him from the second I saw his naked, bald form. He's still my favourite doll and while he should go back to the original face-up artist to have his face up and body paint re-done, I'm loathe to let him be gone for so long.

6 years and 24 dolls later, I think the Hubby may be re-thinking his position about buying a doll that makes me happy *laughs*. I still save hard core for any doll purchases and all dolls must be an established character before coming home but if I'd been told back then that I'd have 24 of the little wallet vampires and was planning for another 2 to come home in the not so distant future, I'd have said that person was crazy. I still get a thrill when I get a new doll and there are times when I take one out or bring one to work just so I can look at the pretty. I smile whenever I see my dolls and people have commented that I seem to light up when asked about my dolls, so I'd say the magic of them is still strong.

 

The first time I saw a bjd was when my best friend brought his to school for a costume project for out drama class. He said that I could play with her in my free hour as he had left her in our prop room where I usually hung out durin that time. so when it finally got time for me to go up to the room I could hardly wait. I had already been wanting a bjd for a couple months and this would probably be the clincher for me. When I took her out of her case I couldn't help but think that she was so pretty. Her resin was so smooth and soft, completely different from what I expected. I sat her down on the desk and experimented with different sitting poses since she didn't stand too well. Whe I got to trying to bend her knees I just couldn't figure it out (April story's weird knee mechanism where it tracks behind the thigh piece). I thought I was going to snap the elastic or even the jointt but eventually I figured it out and THAT's when I made up my mind.

 

The first BJD I ever saw was a picture of HappyDoll Arthur in 2005-- a snarky friend had sent around a "lookit the freaky shit they're doing over in Asia these days, dolls with penises!" sort of email. It sort of backfired on him because all the girls wrote back, "whoa, that's really kinda hot!" xD I was an anime fan and got fascinated by the idea that there were 3-D versions of those willowy long-legged big-eyed guys.

But I didn't know that they were attainable in our half of the world until I met an online friend who had a Volks SD13 Isao and a Serendipity Sharmin, and had just welcomed an SD13 Heath into her collection... she was so excited about it that I got all the photos, all the info, the whole beginners' 101 tour of what the hell BJDs actually were. When she showed me the Volks Tokyo Boys line, I immediately fell in love with Shiro Tachibana-- he had a leather jacket, shaggy hair, and big boots, and where had he been all my life?? There were no good boy-dolls when I was a kid in the 70s, so the concept had never occurred to me, and it blew my mind a bit, but of COURSE it would be the Japanese who'd be making such a thing. ^^

The prices threw me for a loop, but I was making plenty of money and didn't have expensive enough hobbies to absorb it.... so I gritted my teeth at the prospect of $2000 for an SD13 fullset (secondhand prices were crazy back then in general), but decided to start smaller, just to get my feet wet spending hundreds of dollars on a single toy instead of thousands. With some hand-holding from my friend online-- she price-checked and vetted the eBay seller for me-- I scored a secondhand-new Volks SDC Arashi fullset, and knew this whole nutty scene was for me. That little guy WAS magic! Little Rowan is still the alpha male of the house.

Didn't need any more warmup purchases before I was ready to go chase those SD13 LE fullsets, and I had my Tokyo Boy Army started before the end of the year. Nine years later I have 39 dolls, the house is full, but I'm always hoping for just one more bit of empty shelf-space for just one more...

 

I seen my first bjd when I was 12 years old on the internet when I was looking for Inuyasha action figures and ever since then I've been in love with bjd's

 

The first I saw a doll was back when I was in college doing 3D animation and one of my classmates happened to be looking on DoA. Curious I was looking over her shoulder and seen explain to me and started showing me her boys. After that I started looking into it myself and I decided there and then I wanted to have a doll of my own. 4, almost 5 years later I got my first doll uvu

 

I saw a doll in person the first time at an anime convention. Back then I already had some knowledge about BJDs and I was considering having one of my own, but it was just a very vague 'maybe I would' idea at the back of my mind. The glimpse I had of the doll, oddly enough, was a very fleeting one. I remember the owner walking past me carrying her (an MSD-sized one, I realised much later when I got my own), and the doll was only in my sight for two minutes or so, before both of them were lost in the crowd.

It was quite a shock/surprise, mainly because I never expected to see one, but also because, it was the first time realising how beautiful a doll could be seen with my own eyes, and I do think that experience, short-lived as it was, brought me closer towards getting one of my own eventually. MSD-sized ones were my first choice when I began the hobby, after all, as I decided their size was a comfortable one for me.

 

My first experience in person with BJDs was rather underwhelming, not magical at all. I collected fashion dolls at the time in 2005, and people were just starting to post these weird, huge alien-looking dolls on the forums. I first saw a couple of Volks SDs and a CP Lishe in person at a doll get-together at a local doll shop. I didn't know what BJDs could do and how well they posed because I didn't handle them. I thought they were way too large and expensive. I was pretty dismissive, because I wasn't sure I even liked them and there was no way I could afford them, plus I already had a huge vinyl doll collection "investment". But obviously, I kept looking at them online, and when I decided to make the jump, I did three months of research before choosing one.

The magic didn't happen until my first BJD came home. I didn't know what to expect. My fashion dolls were almost all female, but this one was a teenage boy, and of course I knew he wouldn't be able to pose with the others. I started dressing him, handling him, and the next thing I knew, a character was emerging and he was interacting with me and other BJDs, which never happened with any of my fashion dolls. That's when the real magic happened, when he seemed to gain awareness of himself and his surroundings. With more BJDs came more interactions, stories, and friendships online with like-minded BJD enthusiasts! There is still a magic there, in everything I do with my BJDs, even if I am just thinking about their stories and characters when I'm away from them. And the vinyl dolls are all gone! LOL! They don't contain that magic for me, they never did.

This story is awesome! So interesting learning about the hidden facets of your friend's personality. My friends are always shocked to find out I collect DOLLS of all things, and they think I'm insane. But I just say, "Everyone has their one crazy thing."

I didn't feel the magic until my first boy (Volks SD13 Link) arrived home. I was also worried I had wasted over $700 on something that I might not even like! I didn't open him for hours after he arrived, I just sat there in front of the computer (I was chatting with online fashion doll friends) with his unopened box next to me. I felt anxious and worried before I opened his box, but once I did, I fell in love with him within 2 minutes! I agree with you, looking at your first one in person is like seeing a big bundle of untapped potential! I love when they are finally "right", but seeing their progress through photographs is amazing.

Grumpy grouchy Happy Doll Arthur! LOL! Anime also had a big influence on me when it came to buying BJDs, because they had that "look", especially in the early days. And I liked seeing the emphasis on boy dolls, in relation to the lack of it with fashion dolls, where boys were like accessories and afterthoughts. I couldn't quite make myself shell out $1000+ for a secondhand SD13 Kohya on eBay, so SD13 Link was a slightly less crazy choice. I'm also at nine years and 39 BJDs! And Hiro (my Link) is not the toughest, the smartest or the coolest around here (though he thinks he is), but he is still my favorite.

Linda S.
galatia9

 

I had seen a few dolls before at the convention that I attend. It actually wasn't until this year that I actually got to get up close and personal with one.
Two very lovely women let me hold their dollies. I didn't ask, they offered and goodness, it was a dream. I actually got to hold a 1/2 BJD. She weighed 15 pounds.
I can't wait until my first doll comes in. Then I'll be able to have a more intimate encounter. uvu

 

I bought my first BJD so I could see one in person :-). As I had deeply feared, now I want morrrrre.

 

I saw my first bjd on deviantart. I was just searching random things and then there he was; a beautiful doll of one of my favorite anime characters. I found out what he was and did some research. When I saw how much you can customize them, I had to have one. The first time I saw one in person was when my first bjd arrived at my house. I was so nervous to open the box and touch him. He was so beautiful and perfect and more amazing to see in person. I now own a few more but by far, he's my favorite.

 

I saw my first bjd at a convention. I saw some every year but never really paid attention until I started watching Rozen Maiden. Two years ago I went to the beginner's bjd panel and got to hold one of the speaker's dolls. I think it was a dollfie dream, but I'm not sure. That was the magical beginning for me. The next year I went to the same panel and met more people with dolls. I got to hold an msd doll. At that point I had already decided that I wanted a doll of my own, but this helped me decide on what size I wanted.
When I finally got my girl, the magic increased a million fold! I love her so much! I refer to her and my beagle as my babies.

 

I saw my first BJD when I received her in the mail.. A Lati White SP Belle, standing at all of 12cm. Lots of gushing ensued and it felt truly special. I'd never had a doll as dainty, detailed, or sweet as her. Definitely a magical moment and first time!

 

I have known about BJD since 2005(ish) but never was really into them beyond photographing my friends' dolls. Then my one friend got an EID woman and I had that magic moment. I brought my EID Carina home in 2011 and the moment she came out of the box I was smitten. It took me 2 more years to have that magic moment again when Souldoll released Yeon-bee. Now I have 5 girls and am currently saving for my 6th a Dollshe Ausley Love. It's a slippery slope lol.