Your Experiences in BJD History

I remember when Unoas seemed to be everyone's grail! At the time, I think they were more popular than MNFs and were kind of status symbols since they were relatively more expensive and you could only get them first-hand through AL via a shopping service. There was even a whole discussion thread dedicated just to Unoa updates. I really didn't get the huge popularity; at the time, there were only 2 actual facesculpts for the girls (Sist and Lusis), and I didn't understand why everyone seemed so excited to have a doll with the same face as everyone else's!:P

 

LOL I remember that too!!

I do remember that back in the old days there was a lot of BJDs wearing sock dresses... as in, VERY simple dresses made out of socks...

One thing I miss tho is all the punk/goth BJDs. There used to be so many dolls dressed in such styles and I really liked that. Guess punk really is dead huh.. ._.

 

Wow, I remember majority of these happenings!
Dollheart Fers were so popular, Gumdrop eyes, the "El Army" and the "Shiwoo Army." I recently saw a CP head on the MP for $400? Maybe more? That's probably what I paid for my FULL CP Shiwoo second hand years ago.

Junkyspot pretty much sold everything.

Ebay had to go back and reclassify their doll categories as "Dollfie & BJD" I believe it was originally "Volks and Dollfie" or something of that nature.

COAs were not something to worry about. Most companies didn't really offer them.
Volks were the standard elite dolls.

Soom Monthly dolls were the first line of "creature" based dolls.

There were pretty much two categories your boy dolls fell under, Goth or Girly.

When jointed hands came out you'd see threads pretty much just showing off the hands and how many things they could hold. Now some companies offer them pretty standard.

I'm sure I'll think of more...

 

I remember when Mythdoll (Divinity Doll) and Abio Angel came on the scene. They were so cheap for 1 doll (DoD's 2 doll packs were probably the next cheapest) that everyone thought they were junk or a scam. And then the dolls came and were decent... and then the companies died... amidst all the same or similar problems that caused other big companies to die.

Fur wigs were the only boy wigs you could get unless you wanted a Beatles bowl-cut synthetic or a super long anime style.

All the faceups looked just like the company faceups with very feminine boy make ups, those thin long arched eyebrows. Now faceups are much more broad is style/coloring/etc.

The debate that seemed to be focused on if an American company could actually make an ABJD and then the shortening to just BJD that gradually happened and the (somewhat) acceptance of American BJDs

The threads dedicated to giving away new clothing to new doll owners. I got my first outfit that way and still have it lol (hoarder)

The beginning of the Minmiees. I still have my J.D. Minimee. Spurred a whole bunch of look-a-like dolls.

There used to be (comparatively) NO local shops for BJD items, now there's shops everywhere.

 

I had never even heard of "scene" style until I found this hobby. I grew up in Southern California- we didn't have anyone wearing "coon-tails" stripes in their hair, etc. The closest anyone came was those gigantic pants with straps all over them.
But when I joined the hobby 80% of the dolls on this board were LUTS dolls in "scene" clothes.

 

The model doll release from Dollmore. This experience was a first in my bjd history. After I didn`t remember individual dates). I can just say what dolls caught my attention. This is E-An from D.O.D. and Sabik from Soom.

 

I've been in the hobby about eleven years now. A bunch of companies, doll, clothing, publications and so forth have risen and faded during this time.

Volks used to have NYC Dolpas and stopped between one reason and another.

For a while, there was an arms race to see who could make the biggest and teeniest BJDs.

 

As someone who never gave BJDs a thought until last year, I love reading these threads! What’s changed since the last posts?

 

It used to be a lot easier to remember all the doll companies out there. There were two. The end. Now, I'm completely out of the loop, since I've stopped buying new sculpts and prefer old-school molds anyway.

 

I remember when I first started with BJD (late 2012/early 2013) Elfdoll Rainy girls were super popular! They were the dolls that I first saw on Flickr that got me looking into and researching BJD, and then I joined DoA and they were all over the site. I got an Elfdoll Rita for my first BJD...and then within less than a year after I got mine, Elfdoll closed up shop. I know the Elfdoll sculptor, Rainman, has come back to making new BJD heads here and there, and they're pretty, but I kind of miss the old Elfdoll still, even though I'm mostly done actively buying new dolls-- especially since it was the company that first made me want a BJD bad enough to take the plunge into such a pricey doll hobby! There was something very magical about those dolls

 

I got involved in the social media side of the hobby back in 2011, though I didn't get my first bjd until 2012 or 13 I want to say, and I remember basically the entire rise and fall of both the YouTube and Tumblr bjd communities, as well as major drama highlights from both. Things are much quieter now that the hobby has mostly moved to Instagram and Facebook, but it's also much less personal. Bjd YouTubers used to feel like you and your best friends sitting down to have a dolly gab after school or work!

I also remember back when Kinoko Juice dolls (the resin ones, not vinyl Kikipops) were only sold in Japan and it would easily cost someone $1k to get one imported to Europe or the States via proxy! They were super rare and hard to get ahold of, so having one in your collection was practically a status symbol. Nowadays, they sell their resin dolls through Etsy at half that cost, and the Azone line is half of the cost of resin, so anyone who wants one can get one if they're willing to save for it. It's amazing how much more accessible some aspects of the hobby have become over the years.

 

I was more into the LJ side of the BJD hobby back in the day than DOA and I left the hobby in 2010/2011 for a long time until this year. This is what I remembered from that era.

• I remember there were people that were either Team Volks or Team Luts with the few Team DoD.
• Volks purists thinking all of the other brands were poor imitations.
• How the "it" budget doll was Notdoll Lab's Belladonna. I remember seeing so many people who couldn't afford Luts or DoD dolls having armies of Belladonnas.
• How it seemed like all of the "cool" owners had CP Delf El, CP Delf Shiwoo, DoD Ducan, or Dolknot Kiss. If you had a CP Delf or a DoD doll but it wasn't El/Shiwoo or Ducan, you were still cool, but not as cool as the El/Shiwoo/Ducan owners.
• That at one time hybrids were considered taboo and that good BJD owners only had pure brand bodies. (Eg. If you had a CP Delf head, that body it is attached to had to be a CP Delf body and not some other brand if you didn't want to be shun by certain people.)
• Everyone's dolls were styled like they should have been in either a scene kid or a member of an oshare kei band. If your doll didn't look like that, a good chance your doll was dressed like a vampire.
• All of the female doll bodies that had the breasts sanded off so people could have femme male dolls because they wanted their dolls to wear heels and skirts.
• Remembering how excited people were when Minimees first became a thing. I remember there was a company doing commissions for people as long as there were at least 10(?) people who wanted the sculpt. Can't remember the company though.
  
• The shock of Luts quit selling the CP Delf sculpts and then CP announced they were launching CP Fairyland months later.

 

LOL! This thread brings back so many memories! Most of mine are the same, but I also remember missing out on a bunch of stuff, like the Volks Mansion parties! My first doll was a CP Delf Lishe! Who was the popular girl I had a friend order her through a proxy service (I think). Anyway, getting her was a rather involved process... I remember not being sure about any companies beyond Volks or Luts. I was scared to buy anything else! Then I threw caution to the wind and ended up with a couple of Dollmore MSD girls and that was the flood gates for other companies.

I remember Dollshe?? accusing Dollmore of ripping off their body for the big Dollmore boys but I don't remember if anything came of the case and Dollmore was never banned. I remember pining over Volks dolls A LOT and being mad about how hard they were to get and I LOST the lottery for Suigintou despite having two other people and myself enter. The Soom fantasy dolls BLEW MY MIND when they came out! I bought Sard and then when i got him I realized I did not like giant boy dolls.... I ended up with A LOT of the Soom tinies, but I have sold a few of them over the years and just kept my favorites. I was super into Soom for a long time.

There used to be so few companies. I honestly like the expansion that's gone on. I like seeing all the styles, and it seems now that there is something for everyone which is great.

 

There were also a fair few of us who went Traditional Asian (usually Japanese, since Chinese hanfu were few and far between at the time-) instead...

But yeah. For awhile there it was platform rock-star boots, black pleather and Shiwoos in skirts as far as the eye could see.

 

Ooh, I remember this! I was very invested, haha.

I feel like you can't bring up Dollshe without bringing up Bermann and his last few releases. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth - for good reason. The selection process was kind of suspect, with essays(?). I know there was usually drama when someone who already owned one was picked.

 

This thread makes me feel old lol.

When I first heard about the hobby, sometime before 2006, the only way I knew to purchase a BJD was to pay someone in Japan/Korea to purchase it for you and ship it to you, or to go there yourself. I think aside from maybe Volks, the companies didn't have English websites yet!

I remember when Angel Region wasn't owned by Soom, and the sculptor who does Blue Fairy was the sculptor there. I, too, remember when Luts and CP still worked together, before Fairyland. I remember when the only database for sculpts was a site called "gigglegeek" or something like that, and I'd browse it constantly. Dealers weren't much of a thing, so you had to know all the companies and go direct to their sites, or use that database to see what was on offer.

I attended the one (and only) Dollism that took place in the US. It was a really fun time, and I wish they'd do it again, but it was sponsored heavily by the dealer Mint-on-Card, which no longer exists. Now all the US conventions are in the pacific northwest.

It's been really interesting watching the general "style" of BJDs go from super anime across the board to different looks at different companies, to more realism, and now there's a lot of avant garde weird stuff happening, and I couldn't be more here for it. I remember when the first centaur doll came out, and people flipped! For a while there companies like Soom and Fairyland were almost one-upping each other with different fantasy parts. The clothing trends have changed just like they do for humans. We had a TON of goth/scene stuff (at one point that was like, all you could get, it was frustrating,) and then everyone was into military themes and suits briefly. Decora (the trend where you vomited glitter and nailpolish all over your doll) gave way to mori and fairy kei, which gave way to pastel goth, which gave way to loungewear.

It's been quite a journey.

 

I remember when I first started lurking c. 2007, feeling like the odd one out because I only wanted girl dolls. Boy dolls were the real hot items, and while they're still popular, I feel like girls get more love these days than they used to. Back then, so many photo game threads, and the entire Box Opening Gallery, were dominated by male dolls. (Which is odd considering the first modern BJDs were girls, but you never know how a hobby will evolve over time.)

It's also kind of funny to see the soft, pastel IG photos of Minifees in trendy modern outfits and remember the days where- as others have mentioned -every doll was a vampire or a punk rock star. And, of course, the radical differences in amount/type of stylization.

All I wanted at age 14 was a Dark Elf Soo dressed like the cool kids who were allowed to shop at Hot Topic.

 

I remember when I first became interested in BJDs back in 2007, there was no such thing as a truly "macho" male. Not that I didn't appreciate the lovely, somewhat effeminate male sculpts (and still do), but masculine in the traditional sense was not really a thing. I love the current diversity!

Oh...and the upsurge of the previously nonexistent fantasy sculps has been a delight!

 

Back in the day, people would compliment my "boy" dolls. Boys in drag were common enough, it didn't occur to them my dolls are female.

 

@saraquill Very interesting to me, because then (and even now) people were far more likely to mistake boy dolls for girls...so the assumption is pretty funny. I guess we just couldn't win, lol!