Name one thing you wish was different in this hobby

More ethnic variety in face sculpts! It's so easy to find white or white coded sculpts, a bit of a search to find realistic East Asian sculpts, and a headache to find anything else.

 

Preorders and wait times

 

How we've gradually started to accept longer and longer wait times and how it's just become normal to wait more than 10 months for an order (talking about pre-pandemic). The new normal is just really long wait times and then companies saying "well other companies take longer".

I wish companies were completely transparent with wait times and didn't just have "order ready in 90 business days" when in reality it's been consistently taking nearly a year.

 

Falling out of love with a sculpt before it even arrives yet, when you wait ten months that's a long time for characters to change.

...Being tied to specific sculpts because I'm a D&D nerd and they *have* to look like my characters.

Yellowing especially for fantasy colors, they turn swamp green!

 

I wish there weren't so many "rules" in the hobby. People get too judgmental over rules being broken in a hobby where being creative and breaking rules is kind of the whole point. At the end of the day it doesn't matter where a doll even comes from, its what you do with it to make it your own. I feel like this is the only art hobby where an artist/company presents a doll to you in the way they want it to be seen only for you to change it anyways.

 

Definitely wait times (I've only been waiting a month for my first one, and I'm already dreaming of the day that it arrives), also seemingly inaccurate time estimates on store listings. One of the parts that I ordered says the wait time is 3-4 months, but most if not all of the posts from owners that I've seen said that it took 6-7 months. I get that the increased time is likely due to Covid, but I wish they would update the estimated time to reflect that so that I don't get my hopes up. I don't expect to see my order until at least 6 months regardless because the head that I ordered seems to have a 6 month wait time as well, but I still catch myself occasionally thinking, "What if the body's wait time is actually 3-4 months and I won't have to wait very long?" Even though I know it will be longer than that.

 

I agree it would be nice to see more guys who are comfortable in the hobby, it's sad that we can't normalize it to the extent that we want.

Something else that bothers me is the negativity some long-time collectors have for newbies who don't know all the ins and out. Like how do you expect someone to learn when you are constantly criticizing them for not knowing something.

 

I guess...quality control? Idk, after my experience with my Miwa event head coming with a loose head cap and finding out that a loose head cap fresh out of the box was considered "normal" after seeing others having more secure ones out of the box was disheartening for me to say the least. I understand wear and tear over time but to accept such varied qualities out of the box shouldn't be considered "normal", at least I think so. She was my first Fairyland doll and after hearing nothing but good things for the price, I didn't expect the quality to be spotty like that, especially on a limited event head.

I don't expect perfection but paying a lot for a doll and finding stuff like that and finding out it was "normal" was very disheartening to me. I've put eye putty to help remedy this problem but still

 

I could probably go on about negative attitudes perpetuated by certain factions in the hobby, quality control issues, crazy wait times, or dolls/accessories not looking like their promo photos upon arrival. But there's one thing that's been an ongoing issue in the hobby for a good many years that needs changing, and only appears to be getting worse as time goes on.

Dollshe. If there was one thing I would change with absolute certainty, it would be his whole business model. Things that are in desperate need of change: time frames for doll production (it is outrageous that there are people waiting 3+ onto 4 years for a doll to be made and shipped), premature preorder releases (setting up preorders on sculpts that only have 3D renderings of them, and not even have a physical copy produced yet; he should at least have physical versions made and photographed for promotion photos before bothering to sell them!), using doll sales to fund the creation of outstanding existing orders (If he had a process of production, say...like Iplehouse, for example, he wouldn't be as backed up with orders as he is now, and wouldn't have to rely on new orders coming in to fund older ones), making promises he can't keep (yes, this covers the broad spectrum of his issues, but the most egregious example that needs mentioning is the expansion of size ranges he promised, and even set up preorders for—but never delivered on. He eventually decided he wasn't going to make them in that scale after all—after already taking people's money for those exact same dolls in those scales).

At this point, every bjd related group/resource across social media should be warning potential buyers about his scammer-like practices to save others the headache and potential financial loss in the event Dollshe never fulfills their orders—or in the event the business folds due to it's poor management. Nobody should have to fall victim to those sales of his, unknowing of the history that exists behind them.

 

There really is a lot to learn about this hobby! I agree! There's a ton of information and it's hard to know where to start, but more often than others, someone has already asked a question before or the information is already out there. Sometimes the question has been asked multiple times before and it does get old to see it. I feel like 10 years ago it was much more common to lurk for months and research before asking questions so that's why a lot of us are so crotchety about it.

@Tsukihime26 Fairyland's quality really has dropped in the last decade and I wish the current culture outside of DoA didn't hide that. You really wouldn't expect to get a doll with such defects from seeing how many ecstatic customers they have, but it seems like everyone wants to hide any negative feelings they have about brands.

@jade-eyed-cat I could not agree more and I wish I had a better way to warn people. I'm dreaming of the day he's declared a scammer so that (most) people stop sending him money and perpetuating this. Money will almost certainly be lost in this situation, which is awful, but just letting it go on makes the overall community loss even larger. It's so painful to watch and I feel awful for every customer involved.

 

I wish the dolls wont yellow with age. So sad to see dolls I have sent so much on just yellow.

 

So true to that!

 

In terms of pie-in-the-sky impossible wishes then I wish the dolls were free but the artists still got paid. Don't ask me how that would work.

In terms of actual realistic wishes. More European/UK dealers.

 

I have heard that there aren't many dealers in Europe/UK area, is it a logistics problem?

 

Either that the dolls were less expensive or that I had better will power.

 

I'm sure this has already been said many times, but I would certainly change the insane wait times for doll shipping, as well as the very high price of some dolls. I haven't spent $600 at one time on anything that wasn't rent or tuition!

But, I can appreciate all of the hard work that goes into them. They're art, after all! So that makes them definitely worth the high price tag

 

Same here agreed.

 

I think lesser wait times would be nice, but I do get why it takes fairly long. However, I will not order from a company taking more than a year to create the order tho. Overall I am very happy with this hobby

 

Cheaper shipping on small items! I want different hands for my DIM doll and the best match in size cost less then the shipping!

 

while i can agree that art is subjective and that ofcourse you should pay for limited things. Spending more on a set for an MSD, limited outfit, than a full limited outfir for my trinity doll seems entirely insane. Especially when i then sit with the frikking dress and the sewing is so shit that it barely holds it's own and all the large dresses for my Trinity is PERFECT... I can't say i'm a happy camper.
If you make cheap crap, please price if accordingly... If i pay 150-200 usd i EXPECT the outfit to be PERFECT and made at a certain quality. Not falling apart with barely a touch.

I won't be putting in names or anything, but urgh...

I'd like some companies to look at what they ACTUALLY make and price it more fairly is all i say...

 

I wish it was easier for me to get the style of clothing I want without having to spend hundreds on a commission. I wish I could see how dolls look in comparison to others more easily - even in the same company, differences in scale/head to body ratio can look off when shown together. I wish resin colors were more standardized, with a wider range of tan and darker tones. I wish that there were more vendors, artists and seamstresses in northern Europe (and Scandinavia in particular).

On another note, I don't find the community all that bad compared to other hobbies I'm into. No large online community is going to be perfect, but the BJD could be much, much, MUCH worse.

 

Oh I so relate! I bought many dolls in a short time span and a few are still months away from being finished! I would wish for wait times to be decreased if I could wave a magic wand to make it so!

 

More shoes which actually fit minifees. I've got a bag full of msd shoes which were described as fitting minifees, but turned out to be too big. They are even too big for my DIM Larina.and my Bobobie Mei.

 

Shorter wait times! I just don’t get why some companies are taking a year or longer when Angel of Dream is currently shipping in 2-4 WEEKS. I can understand popularity results in more orders, but even ResinSoul who is super popular and also accepts custom orders is only taking about two months. As much as I hate limited dolls and ordering periods, I think they might be a good idea for companies who can’t seem to get caught up and ship in reasonable times.

 

Did that really happen? Which are those companies? I will try to avoid.
I agree, if I am paying so much, I would want decent quality too.

 

I agree with so many things here. Shorter wait times, cheaper prices that don't hurt the artist's profit, less limited edition doll. I also wish some companies would make some sculpts in different sizes. Petit Gems from Soom are so adorable... but so tiny! They sell out so fast and they cost so much (well, for a newbie like me anyways). I hope one day I can snag one of them second-hand, but my true dream would be for the doll to be slightly bigger and still cost the same.

 

As @jade-eyed-cat said, Dollshe has a seriously problematic business model. It was recently reveled that they have yet to do the preliminary work to cast the tiny dolls some of us collectors paid for 3 YEARS ago. The promo phots were all of their existing SD sized dolls or computer-shrunk images. A few of us are stubborn enough to keep waiting.

Meanwhile Granado actually has photos of what they are selling, and ships their dolls in under 3 months. If Dollshe is having technical problems, maybe they should talk to Granado.

 

Wish there were more people from Poland and more conventions in Europe

 

I wish it was easier to make hybrids, and easier to find different doll companies. I have a hard time finding individual artists and smaller companies, and those are the sculpts I usually like. Maybe it is cause I am new, or perhaps it is just difficult to get your name out there if you are a small company.

 

Yes … SO much yes to this. Especially at such price points. I had received a fullset once, and the clothing has pen dots and marks on it. It’s not washable - not even hand washable since it has feathers and such used in its clothing. I totally agree with you!

 

Im sorry, i won't add names. mostly for my own sake as laws are different everywhere. But reading reviews are very important... >>

 

I really just wish the hobby were more active in my country and Europe in general.

 

Right now I just wish the second hand market was functioning for me as well as it was about ten years ago.

 

While I don't enjoy things like long wait times and certain prices for certain things, I also understand how we got there (bigger output/demand + not so many casting services). If I could wish for a thing to change, I would wish for new dolls to come out at a slower pace, because maybe that would help... but that is not going to happen or maybe doll businesses could be more proactive about communicating about delays and such, I think that would make waiting a lot easier.

Another thing I wish for is that companies archived their old work better! I hate it when it's impossible to find info on old sculpts because they have been taken down after no longer sold. I do understand not wanting to show old and embarrassing work but older popular sculpts can be such a treasure to look at!

 

I wish that Dream of Doll never went under or at the very least, the reason why.

 

I wish new accessories didn't cost the earth. Time was I could buy eyes, wigs, and shoes for mine and not pay $25 and up for them. Now the only way to do that is to go to China and I don't like doing that.

 

Wishing for a wider variety resin accessories (weapons, head attachments, etc) and:
1. For them not to be limted edition,
2 . Can be bought separately,
3 . And does not cost an arm and a leg.

 

I wish paint and sealant didn't chip off so easily from resin. So I could pose dolls freely without worry that every fall would ruin the faceup or blushing. More similar to vinyl dolls, but without the staining.

 

I wish regular old jeans and shirts were available all the time. lolita and those big dresses barely look "premium" when its only thing ALWAYS available.
AND I wish gaming had more influence on the hobby like it used to. Fairyland! BRING US STELLAR BLADE in doll form PLEASE. I needed those outfits YESTERDAY. volks used to do the Phantasy Star outfits, PSO2 had INCREDIBLE headgear I really wish would could have seen more of those pieces brought to the dolls. Final fantasy 14 aesthetic doesnt remotely compare to what PSO2 had.

 

I feel like what I wish for is more of a yearning for lost nostalgia or something in terms of the activity or community aspect of the hobby. When I was first interested in BJDs (2009 and onwards), I felt like the actually community for BJD hobbyists seemed pretty active in places like deviantart, blogs/tumblr, or even youtube. Deviantart especially was really great to organize photos, and the group aspect was a good touch so you could put your photos in different groups and meet people through there. Once I got into the hobby, though, it seemed the hobby moved more towards Instagram but I've slowly begun to hate IG as a platform. So I'm not sure, maybe in a way I'm more so just nostalgic for the way the internet used to be, now it all feels very isolating.

 

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.