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What originally got you into BJDs?

Jan 19, 2010

    1. I saw a picture of them on the Internet and it was like a door opened in my heart. I found a sculpt I liked and Archer has been in my life ever since. I plan to get another to further his story.
       
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    2. Mine's a little odd. I've always collected toys and figures from films. I loved LotR and the hobbit, and I wanted a toy of Lee Pace as Thranduil... But all the ones available were terrible. They just looked nothing like him, and I was disappointed. I set about trying to find a better one, and then thought of commissioning a 1/6 head sculpt on etsy. While on etsy, I stumbled upon the Modoll Thranduil sculpt and thought it was amazing, so I looked up 'BJD' and thought they were like action figures, but much, much better. Customisable and beautiful. I bough him, with no idea about anything BJD related, and ordered a body from Telesthesia. I still have him, and I still think he's brilliant!
       
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    3. A few years ago, I was researching Smart Dolls because a lot of people around me were praising them. The facial style of the doll line was not my thing, so I looked up BJD companies instead and found Iplehouse. I did not buy anything, but I really liked the concept of customizing my own doll. I suddenly remembered about Iplehouse for some random reason last month. I looked up the website and decided I should search for other BJD companies that would appeal to me the most. I discovered SWITCH and Crobi Doll and now I'm here. :thumbup
       
    4. Back when I went to a boarding school, my roommate (and later best friend) and I were searching for J-rock cosplays. We were heavily into Japanese pop culture. We stumbled upon Izam's Gazette cosplays, and after researching them we decided it was way too expensive. But less than a year later we both bought our first dolls. ;)
       
    5. I saw Tonner dolls and fell in love with Ellowyne. Customizing was good but then I found my first elf girl by Kaye Wiggs and I was beside myself. I love all things Fae and her sculpts are so amazing I kept adding more. I really got into sewing and making wings. But I love the SD size so much so I started getting more of that size and I have never been happier.
       
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    6. I've always been obsessed with all kinds of dolls and while looking up Fire Emblem figures I came across two dolls styled as Ike and Soren. When I did a little research and found how customizable these dolls were I was instantly hooked on the idea! That was almost five years ago and I just got to a place in life where I was able to order my first doll.
       
    7. I've always loved dolls and toys, I've always collected dolls but I was also envious of people who did repaints on Barbie, as I never got the courage to wipe their faces.
      One of my best friends showed me her customized Volks Dollfie and Obitsu dolls; I was in bliss when I learned there were customizable toys that were actually meant to be customized.
      It was then that I stumbled across Volks' Shirou Tachibana and decided to give large resin dolls a chance. I did get some Volks Dollfie, but thought it would be a million times easier to paint
      larger heads than "1:6" tiny faces. I got a Volks DD, and was immediately in love with the endless possibilities. When I got my first blank resin doll a few years later I was even more in love with
      the customizability of resin. I still enjoy my larger dolls, but feel a lot more attracted to the 1:6 world. Maybe it's because of the wide availability of props in that scale, or because you can actually
      find things in that scale that look properly sized next to the toys, but I am not a huge fan of out of scale buttons, buckles, etc.. It's a pain to find closures for larger dolls, even if sewing for larger dolls is easier for me,
      I still prefer making things for my smaller dolls because it's easier to find sewing notions that look better scaled on smaller dolls (with the exception of metal separating zippers). Regardless, it was the
      customizability of these dolls that got me into the hobby; if I had been a bit more brave about wiping Barbie's faces back then, I would probably not have gotten into "BJD" but I don't regret having gotten the dolls I own now.



       
    8. The never-ending search for unique male dolls!

      I had a pretty good variety of female dolls growing up, but finding male dolls was different entirely. I got pretty bored of Ken and his fake tan and plastic hair pretty quickly. As a preteen, I often dreamed of doll companies that would let you customize your own boy dolls, like American Girl had Girl of Today (Now called Truly Me), something where I could choose his hair, eyes, skin color and more. Finding BJDs was like the dream I never thought could come true! I found them by accident when searching eBay for OOAK male dolls wayyyy back around 2002 or so.

      Once I found BJDs, I said I only wanted boys because I had enough female dolls in other types, but somehow my collection ended up being half male, half female. :P
       
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    9. I thought they were pretty, and I fell in love with the idea of tailoring for them. They are the reason my sewing stash is so big. :P
       
    10. Woah! I just got back home and saw a whole bunch of answers! XD

      I will now read em. :3
       
    11. I was actually on YouTube when I saw a random Bjd box opening, curious I clicked it and I as in love. I have always been into dolls and figurines but this was a whole new level. I did my homework and bought my first Bjd soon after. I'm very thankful for that LS box opening that introduced me to this amazing hobby:blush
       
    12. I was still a schoolgirl. I remember that I began to look for any information about models for the essay. Among the search results was Haneol Moon`s photography. This bjd was the first one I saw.
       
    13. Ah, so I always had dolls as a kid, especially Barbies and assorted porcelain dolls. I never found the glass eyes unsettling but I really wanted dolls who looked like and could embody all the characters I imagined. When I saw my first BJDs at a convention, I knew these were the dolls I'd always wanted. I had to do a lot more searching before one sculpt in particular (KDF Bory) really stole my heart and I had to do a lot of saving and being patient before I could actually get my boy but now I have him I know this is the collecting hobby I should have gravitated to.
       
    14. Growing up, I was never into dolls. That changed a few years ago when I fell hard into Monster High. I've been steadily looking at larger and weirder dolls ever since, but only finally decided I wanted a bjd when I found a sculpt I wanted. Making that leap was hard, because of the large gap in price, but buying one large doll vs several small dolls is going to be better for my space overall.
       
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    15. haha! What got me into dolls was a friend that already into dolls :)
       
    16. When a certain off-topic fashion doll was released in resin a few years ago, I was skeptical -- what was this material? How did it feel? What did it look like compared to plastic? Why was it so much more expensive? Did I need to have this? So I started to look online for the feedback from other doll collectors who had already examined the new doll, and very quickly found comparisons to ball-jointed dolls. I'd never heard of them before, and was fascinated by the owner pics I saw. There was so much variation in the sculpts, and so much customization by the owners!

      From there, I found my way to Alice's Collections, Peakswoods, Angell Studio, etc. There weren't very many BJD at the Austin Doll Show that year, but I looked at them closely. I did a lot of browsing of all the doll websites I could find -- and then I stumbled onto Iplehouse, just as they released The Addiction line, and I was totally smitten.
       
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    17. I was more a stuffed animal person than a doll person growing up, though I loved my American Girl Molly.

      I can't remember when I first heard about BJDs, but I didn't go looking for one of my own until I heard a tree in my parents' yard was going to be cut down. That tree had always been an imaginary friend of a sort since I was a kid, so I went looking for a physical representation of the tree's spirit and ended up finding a secondhand BJD (a Resinsoul Ming) that looked pretty close to how I imagined him. I'm loving how customizable and posable these dolls are - it's very inspiring and comforting having physical representations of characters that have long lived in my mind. ^_^
       
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    18. Two words: Angelic Layer. :XD:
      It's an anime by CLAMP where there's this tournament and you make dolls fight with each other using your mind. At that point I discovered Volks and soon after that discovered even more BJD companies.
       
    19. Danny Choo talking about Dollfie Dreams on his blog back in the day got me into DDs. From there I eventually got a Super Dollfie and... yeah. Too many dolls!
       
    20. Pinterest and online shopping. Found these incredible beautiful pictures of human like dolls and found the cutest doll socks. Decided that I have to have the socks and a realistic doll for them. :lol: