I want to hear a story about you

When I was a kiddy (back in the seventies - I'm a dinosaur), if a doll was more/better articulated than the average straight-limb doll at the time, I wanted them. Action Girl/MissDollikin, with her elbow, wrist, knee, and ankle joints - I had them, Pippa with her jointed knees, I had her, Katie Kopycat with her jointed elbows... well I wanted her but didn't get her until I bought her second-hand as an adult. Antique and reproduction porcelain dolls on jointed bodies - I wanted them but didn't get them until I took a call on making them in my teens during the 80's flurry of reproduction sdoll studios cropping up all over the place

I drew pictures, when I was nine-years-old showing my dream dolls. Basically they were BJD's, but it took another 30 years for those dream dolls I so desperately wished for in the late 70s to appear on the market and start being sold as BJDs.

Will that do for a story?

Teddy

 

I apologize for posting photos of OT dolls. These are to show the kind of dolls I'm talking about, which I had in my childhood in the 1950s. If this is against the rules, please delete my post.

I started collecting dolls as an adult because I wanted to find the dolls I'd had as a child, which had become lost or given away when I became too old to play with dolls.

I was a child in the 1950s. The popular doll companies were American Character, Idea Toys, Vogue and Madame Alexander. Dolls were mostly made of what is now referred to as "hard plastic". They ranged in size from 14 inches to about 20 inches. The wigs were glued on.
I had a Toni doll by Ideal. She was a marketing campaign of the Toni Home Perm company. The doll came with everything to wash, set and style her hair, including her own plastic hair curlers. My Toni was 14 inches tall. We couldn't afford the bigger dolls. She was the right size to carry around.

Another doll of that era was Tiny Betsy McCall. She was a marketing campaign for McCalls women's magazine, and made by American Character. I still have my Tiny Betsy McCall, which is about 8 inches tall. She was made of hard plastic and had a glued on wig. Her legs and arms were attached by small rubber bands which hooked onto a hook that as molded onto the arms and legs. The hooks always broke, and most of those dolls had their legs and arms fall off. My poor Betsy, which I still have, has one leg detached. She is very loose and floppy because the rubber bands have disintegrated and lost their stretch. But I love her and can't believe I still have her after all these years.
She is very special to me because my grandma took me shopping in downtown Los Angeles for my birthday. She let me pick out a gift for myself. I chose the Betsy McCall. I treasure those memories and that little doll.
Now I have a BJD named Dora Maude, named after my grandma.

Miss Revlon by Ideal Toy Company, was a soft vinyl doll which was the first to represent a more grown up girl. She had a soft curvy figure and high heel feet. She came along in the mid 50s, several years before the first Barbie. She was part of an advertising campaign for the Revlon cosmetics company. My Miss Revlon was 10 inches tall and came dressed in an airline stewardess outfit.

When Barbie was invented by Mattel Toy Company, she was considered quite scandalous. She had the unrealistic figure of a high fashion illustration. Tiny waist, long legs, tiny feet and very pointy breasts. Many parents (mine included) would not let their little girls have a Barbie. But I saved up my own money from my weekly allowance and was allowed to buy a Barbie with my own money.

Alice In Wonderland by American Character like the one I had:.


Little Miss Revlon by Ideal:


Betsy McCall doll like the one I have:

 

I was so sick of growing up with just about all my Barbies having the Superstar face that it's turned me off from any doll line with the same face, American Girl and knock-offs, Funko Pops, most play line. Really didn't like smiling Malibu Ken either but liked the guys from the turn of the century so when I finally got to customs, like Obistu and Volks, most have been male or androgynous.
I'm so enamored by Power Team Elite/Click N Play guys having different and sometimes I can't believe it's not based on a celebrity face I've managed to get almost all of them.
I'll gladly pay $$$ and ship from half way around the world if a head resembles someone I want a doll of.
But it also got me into making my own heads where I need to so...

 

Growing up was an adventure for me, I was taking care of myself by 5 or 6 years old because my parents didn’t have the instinct to parent. A lot of scary things happened because of them or the lack of them being around. I read a lot and got lost in imaginary worlds of the stories, then I recreated that world with my dolls. I didn’t have much and what I did have was left behind in many moves so when I grew up I started replacing those things I lost or missed out on.

 

Growing up in the 70s I wasn't allowed to have dolls , not even GI Joe or Big Jim because my father said " Boys don't play with dolls." . As an adultt I conformed to that until I was almost 40 when I finally decided that nobody was gonna tell me what to do. (yeah , I know)

 

I grew up in the 90s, and as a girl I was given plenty of Barbies and dollar-store knock-offs. I actually lost interest in dolls pretty early on in life because for my friends it was all about dress-up and stuff. I've never been into that, and I'm barely starting to get my own fashion sense now at nearly 30. All I wanted to do was tell stories, and sometimes I did use dolls for that. But I also used Hot Wheels and Legos and whatever else I could find.

So when a friend first introduced me to BJDs in late middle/early high school, I thought they were gorgeous dolls, but didn't have any real interest in them. She loved them though, and I kept listening to her. Then she showed me how people were using these dolls to create stories. All of a sudden, they became characters and I've been sold ever since.

Well, I haven't been in the hobby ever since. There was about an 8 year gap for me after I got my two dolls and my dad disliking them and how I was wasting my money on them and just feeling terrible. But I'm married and moved out now and my husband is super supportive of them so I'm back.

 

I didn't really have dolls when I was a kid, because I didn't like them. The only options were Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids. I didn't like the babiness of CPKs (and only had one; I did like the anthro Koosas though!), and I hated how Barbie was so stiff and awkward (and thought the molded underwear thing was weird too). I preferred animal plush of all varieties and My Little Pony (yes, they weren't posable, either, but they weren't pretending they were), so that's what I played with as a kid. I did pick up a few action figures here and there, mainly as collectables for properties I liked, and never really played with them.

I was introduced to the idea of "kitbashing" (customizing action figures) at a convention in 2000 and liked the idea--action figures were generally more flexible than Barbies (if still awkward), tended to have more body shapes (if fairly blocky), and more variety of faces (if often a bit off). I poked around in the idea a bit, but couldn't find any that would serve as a good base for the original character I wanted to make into a posable, 3D representation. Everything was just too bulky for him. The idea just sat in the back of my head as I kept an eye out for something that would work. Always figured it would be a one-off project that I'd get to eventually, make that one character, and put him out on display.

Finding a doll that resembled him about eight years after that is what got me my first BJD. Who was supposed to be a one-off project, not a slippery slope, but, well, here we are.

 

I had dolls as a child because I'm female and it was expected. I used them mostly for clothing models. I loved Lego (still do, it's the best toy ever) but my dad said Lego wasn't an appropriate toy for girls so I wasn't allowed to have any. I bought some in secret and played with it but I was always afraid he'd find me playing with it and take it away. When I was about 10 or 11 I told my parents I wanted to be an architect when I grew up and my dad said I couldn't because it wasn't an appropriate job for a lady to have. He said I could be a teacher (primary school up to grade 4 only) or a nurse or a secretary. Oddly, he had no problems teaching me about electricity (he was a master electrician) and insisted on my bringing home A's in "boy subjects" like science and math and if I didn't, I'd be grounded until I brought my grades up.

He passed away suddenly when I was a teen and I did things in a bit of a backwards order as far as post secondary education timing but I did get my diploma as an architectural technologist and I worked for 20 years in the field tossing in some structural engineering and mechanical design as well. If I wanted to (I don't) I could write an exam to be grandfathered in as an architect because of the real world work experience I have.

I still play with Lego. I did it with my son and I do it with my grandsons. Oddly, I don't like building video games and refuse to play them.

As far as the dolls go... I stopped playing with them when I was around 10 or so. I never really gave much thought to dolls until I happened to see a writer friend's post on LiveJournal waaaay back in the day where she put up a pic of a BJD that she bought (an Iple Lion, I think? This was about 15+ years ago) and said that he was a character in one of her stories. I thought he looked amazing but had to be content to admire from afar as I was not in a comfortable money place to be able to afford something that expensive that served no purpose other than to make me happy.

A few years later I went to Ycon (I saved up for 1.5 years to go) and when I came back I still had money left over (this is pretty common for me as I'm excessively cautious about spending money). I was going to put the "extra" money back into household finances but my husband said the money was mine to do as I pleased since I'd saved so hard for it. He's the one who suggested I use it to buy the doll I'd been mooning over for several months (AoD Chi, who is still my favourite 14 years and 75 dolls later). I did and thus began my resin-in-the-form-of-dolls addiction.

 

In the long ago times, many moons ago, I... kissed a deer's butt. I was very little (maybe two?) and we went to a deer park near our house. My mom loves to take pictures and told me to make friends with the deer that was right in front of us. (To my knowledge, the deer at this park were super tame... for wild animals.) So I did make friends. The deer wasn't facing us so I gave it a kiss where I could reach... right on its butt. My mom couldn't stop laughing.

She will tell anyone and everyone this story. I've heard her tell it to people she meets at the grocery store...

 

My recap of the puppet improv show I went to that I posted on my old doll website, which I stopped dealing with years ago, became a Wikipedia reference for one of the performers and now it's on the Wayback Machine.