Ball-jointed dolls are a dangerous hobby to get into. Why? Well that’s because once you’ve bought one, you start wanting more. Unlike heavily anime-influenced vinyl dolls like the Dollfie Dream girls, resin dolls like mine are from a somewhat more established hobby with a larger fan base. As a result there are dozens of different companies, most with their own style and a wide range of different dolls of different sizes and themes. So it’s very easy to find a large number of beautiful dolls that you’d rather like to own, and you almost inevitably end up buying more. Which is what I’ve just done.
My next doll isn’t nearly as expensive as my Volks boy, although he’s not from one of the cheaper companies either. He’s from a Korean company, and is around the same height (a few centimetres taller) as my other doll Maya. Another boy, since of the three remaining characters of this particular universe that I want to turn into dolls, he’s the simplest as the other two (a boy and a girl) require much darker skin tones. ‘Tan’ dolls as they tend to be called, are more unusual compared to paler yellow or pink tones (usually called ‘normal’ by doll companies) and ‘white’ skin which ranges from paper-white to a very pale cream or otherwise tinted colour. Resin-making is a apparently a difficult process and requires an appropriate climate amongst other things, and making darker-skinned dolls without too much unevenness in the colour is tricky, and with the wrong weather many companies just give up until the season changes. So the two other characters will be harder and more expensive to obtain (Soom’s Chalco in tan would have been perfect for one of them and not too tall, but he was far too expensive and the wait times tend to be long on their special monthly limited dolls so I had to give up on him – I might wait until Crobidoll do another limited tan run on one of their sculpts and see if that works for the character instead).
The company I went with this time is called Dream of Doll. They’re very well-known among BJD fans, and have been producing dolls for quite a number of years now. They’re actually one of the first companies I ever encountered and the first doll I ever wanted was from them, so I feel it’s rather fitting to finally be ordering a doll from them, although it’s quite different to the dolls of theirs I was originally drawn to.
The doll I decided to get is this one – Code no.02, DoD’s newest standard release doll. I’m taking a bit of a risk with him as there are no owner photographs to go on, only the promo shots on the company’s website, but having seen plenty of owner photos of their other dolls I’m pretty confident that I won’t be disappointed by him. With standard release dolls, it’s not the same as with the Dollfie Dream licensed character girls where there’s only a set period within which you can order, the company carries on making them until they may decide to discontinue the doll in the future (and DoD don’t appear to discontinue dolls often if at all) but being in Japan gives me the rare opportunity to import something expensive without the horrors of the UK customs process. I’m not sure whether in Japan they can charge customs duties on expensive items, but I’ve imported things valued over $50 with no problems, and the consumption tax here is a mere 5% compared to the 17.5% VAT in the UK.
I’ve taken a couple of promo pictures of him from the company website and posted them here. There are more images of him to be seen on the previous link.
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