11th August 2026
Saw this on Vampire Apologist and thought I'd give it a go myself!
Grey, UK
3. I got this Sindy at a car boot sale when I was 3 and she's still one of my favourites.
Barbie! Plus a few Sindy dolls and baby dolls (Zapf Creations, Simba Toys) Later some My Scene dolls too.
This 2000 Fashion Party Skipper.
I was into dolls for way longer than most people in my life, so on a few occasions I recieved hand-me-down Barbies from family members and friends of the family. It was always so exciting! I still have some of them.
I've just always loved dolls. I never really grew out of them, I just pretended to as a teenager when I was trying to fit in and no one would play dolls with me anymore.
My whole life I suppose! Or at least since age 3. BJDs specifically I have been collecting since 2018, so 8 years at time of writing.
I'm not actually sure! I think all the childhood dolls were either presents or hand-me-downs. Perhaps one of my Monster Highs? Or Maybe this Moxie Teenz Melrose. I bought her when I was deeply admiring BJDs but wasn't yet able to get one myself. I loved her inset eyes, larger size and many joints compared to other fashion dolls.
Too hard to answer! I've just always loved dolls. They bring me such joy. I enjoy them both by myself and with other people. I love being creative with them - customising them photographing them. I love dressing them, doing their hair. I think they're very sensory friendly and help me reset. I love how dolls have helped me make friends and connect with other people. I love how me and my boyfriend can enjoy quality time together doing doll things. At some point we want to take a photo of of both our BJD collections together, as one huge doll family! All the dolls in one room!
I don't have space for all the dolls I want! It can also be expensive, but sometimes I guess that can be a good thing in disguise, as it stops me buying dolls I just don't have the space for!
Nowadays I am mostly focused on BJDs, but I do still buy the occasional fashion doll if one catches my eye. I have been trying to do much less buying all round though and am now focusing more on enjoying and caring for what I already have and working on my various BJD customisation projects.
I have always loved Barbie, but I'm not really into her current look, so 90s/00s Barbie specifically. I also really like Novi Stars. BJD wise, I love old Volks and Dollshe.
As a whole, not really, but more so in their specific groups. A section of my BJD collection is specifically dedicated to J fashion characters, for example.
Novi Stars!
I love the look of the new Mirror Mi dolls, but I have resisted impulse buying for now. If I do get one, I would like to get Suki Goldpetal.
I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Barbie's style had changed over the years, so my enthiusiasm for current Barbie releases has become almost non existent. I would love to get the autism Barbie though, as an autistic person with a special interest in dolls, it seems neeeded! In a way I feel like some dolls are ones I have been waiting for my whole life. For example, I've always loved colourful alien girls, so Novi Stars, Monster High and some of the Rainbow High dolls were especially exciting to me when they came out. And BJDs are something my child self would have been amazed by! I loved to make characters for my dolls and customise them to a certain degree (using gel pen to change their eye colour, stripping them of their default outfit and accessories so I could make a blank slate to start building their personality in my head. I even tried to paint one of them blue once!) This kind of customisation is exactly what BJDs are for! So they are just the perfect doll for me. I'm not sure my preferences have changed much, more that types of doll I have been longing for have been released and other ones that I have always loved have changed style. I suppose I do like boy dolls more now than I did as a child, but that might simply be due to the huge lack of variety and unrealistic clothes I always felt Ken had compared to Barbie!
Maybe I have been answering these questions wrong - I've been counting being a child who loves dolls as part of my collecting time line! So, that would make my answer Skipper again.
Ben!
Here is a photo of all my My Scene dolls in the early 00s.
Here is a photo of my BJD and vinyl doll family from 2022
And here are all my BJDs and vinyl dolls in 2025! A few are missing because these photos are from last year and I am also still working on some of their faceups, wigs etc.
People usually love them! But I suppose anyone who would think it was stupid I wouldn't ever show them to. Even when taking dolls out in public, I've only ever had positive interactions though, which is nice. People are usually just quite charmed and curious. I think more people probably like dolls than we think, there's just a bit of a stigma that you might be weird or somehow immature that perhaps put people off.
My earliest memory, as mentioned elsewhere on this site, is getting my first doll (Tropical Sindy) and a My Little Pony Posey from a car boot sale, so that is a very fond memory of mine. She's the posey at the front of the line in this photo.
A lot of my friends collect dolls. I have even made friends through the doll hobby and it was my boyfriend who helped me get into the BJD hobby! I had been admiring BJDs for years, but it used to be a very difficult hobby to get into - with the Den of Angels forum being invite only and very few other sources of useful information out there. A lot of doll spaces expected you to already know all the terminology, so it was difficult to know where to begin. Buying from other countries and navigating doll websites was also much more difficult then too - so much easier now! With his help I finally joined Den of Angels and bought my first BJD!
Yes, my local doll comm has meetups often. We usually take a group photo too. My boyfriend and I are mods of our doll comm discord. There used to be a local doll comm for many years before this one, which my boyfriend was a part of, but it fell apart for one reason or another. My boyfriend started a new one several years ago and now we have lots of active members and regular meets. It's great!
Mostly I just chat in my local doll comm discord server. I post a bit on Instagram, but only really because DoA is going to be shut down and I wanted a space to see other people's dolls. I don't like Instagram all that much.
Same as above really!
Buying things only to sell at an inflated price (although I doubt these people are really doll collectors.) Treating collecting like a competitive sport and buying anything that comes out, rather than curating an interesting personal collection which is much more fun to look at and share with other people. Anything that takes the fun out of it really - if you're not having fun doing your hobby then what's the point?
Maybe that I had made more rules for myself on what dolls to buy? I love all my dolls but sometimes I feel stressed having so many - I don't have much space and I worry they don't each individually get enough care and attention sometimes. But, whenever I think of decluttering, I look at every doll and can't bear to part with any of them!
I actually own all 3 of my grail dolls! Migidoll Ryu, Dollshe Hound and Dollshe Husky.
All 3 mentioned above actually! I also thought I might never find Sideshow Giles, as he seems to come up for sale much less often than all the other Buffy dolls. I'm so happy to have him in my collection, even he's a little out of place. Giles is my favourite character.
Always! I can't resist a rummage through the doll box at a charity shop.
Mostly online, as BJDs are hard to shop for in person outside of Japan. Sometimes I like to make an event of going to the toy shop and buying a fashion doll though, it feels just as exciting as it did as a child! I now have a rule for myself for My Little Pony not to shop online at all, as it's too easy to go online and buy any pony I like. It's more fun to visit toy fairs or my local second hand toy shop and see what ponies find me!
Den of Angels Marketplace has been a go to for me for many years, so I don't know what I'll do without it! I also love Dollyteria. For fashion dolls - Smyths or a local indepedant toy store. Best of all would be a toy fair or doll convention, but those don't happen often and I can't always manage to travel to them.
Yes, I have plenty of Barbie, Bratz and Monster High clothes - enough for a good dress up session and no one will be left naked. I also have lots of BJD clothes in various sizes and am working on getting a personal bag, coat and pyjamas for all my BJDs! I like making these myself too, especially for specific OCs I am shelling, so that they can have character accurate wardrobes.
Dollyteria, from friends at doll meets, or even the rare occasional doll convention (probably the best place of all!)
Not really, but recently I have made a rule to not buy any doll that isn't continuing my quest to shell all my OCs from a specific story. I'm sticking to that for now. Also, no buying ponies online.
I can never collect in box. My favourite things in the hobby are customising, photographing and taking dolls on adventures - you can't do any of that if they're in the box! I do keep the occasional pretty fashion doll box to display the doll in when I'm not playing with them though, like a sleep pod.
No! Never! I am scared of clones, so the idea kind of creeps me out. (And I mean real sci-fi movie clones, not fake dolls. It's a weird fear, I know.) Plus, I'm not an in box collector at all. I have 2 of some of my fashion dolls, but that has only happened when I have been gifted one the same as I already have. I always think they look different enough that I'm not creeped out by it and I give them different characters, or customise them differently.
Yes, if I don't keep the whole box I like to cut the art out and put it in my doll folder.
I like to look over any and all imperfections or damages the doll might have, so that I am fully informed on any repairs I might need to do. I don't care about the box though.
Any smell of smoke!
I can't think of any.
I own 40 BJDs (including 3 blind box BJDs) 3 BJD 'floating heads,' 5 Vinyl dolls, 42 Barbies (including 1 My Size Barbie,) 7 My Scene, 1 Tiny Tears, 17 Bratz, 7 Novi Stars, 3 Sindy, 3 Pullip, 4 Rainbow High, 8 Misc fashion dolls / Action Figures, 28 My Little Pony, 3 OMG, 1 LOL tween, 23 LOL Suprise, 11 LOL Pets, 2 LOL Minis and I don't know how many Monster High, as they're the only doll I haven't started cataloguing yet! I imagine it's a similar amount to the Bratz though. So, that's over 200 total! Yikes!
I'm not really sure!
If you take into account the base doll, plus any mods and customising that I didn't do myself, it's either going to be Samuelson or Astarion, both of whom are still being worked on at time of wiriting, but I will add a photo at a later date.
I'm not sure I really have a measuring unit for what makes a doll unusual! I suppose Samuelson is unusual for a BJD, as plus size dolls aren't so common, and plus size men even more so. Also, I got his head custom sculpted based on my drawings of my OC, and I don't think I've seen any other BJDs with a sculpted moustache. He was sculpted by Krowbar.
I don't think so, but if I do then I hope they are happy living here with me in my collection.
I think in any doll space, most people will have heard of all the brands and companies I own dolls from.
During lockdown I got an amazing Bratz bundle off a charity shop's ebay listing. The photos were awful, you could just see it was a case with 4 Bratz and some clothes in. One of the dolls I could just make out as being one I really liked, so I bought the bundle. When it arrived, it wasn't just one case - it was two! Absolutely packed with dolls and clothes! I'm pretty sure I got the whole lot for around 20 - 30 pounds. I gave one of the cases and some of the dolls to my boyfriend and we had great fun restoring them all together. My Slumber Party Sasha was in a particularly sorry state, with fluffy mould growing on her mouth! Everything else was blessedly mould free and Sasha came completly clean and became my favourite of the whole bundle.
Yes, I have traded with a friend at a doll meet. It was very fun and we both went away really happy with our new doll friends.
As mentioned above, I commisioned a custom sculpt for one of my OCs, but I've never bought a custom fashion doll or anything like that.
I group all the dolls that are my OCs from stories together with characters from the same story, and tend to have the dolls in the diorama all be characters that are friends, but other than that I just group them however I think looks cute and feels right. I have all my BJDs on shelves across my bedroom and living room, plus a few in the doll room box. I move these around ocassionaly so I can enjoy looking at different dolls. I also have a few fashion dolls on display around my room, just chilling on shelves. One shelf is entirely dolls - all my LOL surprise, some fashion dolls and my childhood Tiny Tears. The majority of my other fashion dolls are in bags in a cupboard, but I do wish I had room to display them all!
I hardly use doll stands. My only dolls that need them are my H.Naoto Pullip and Dal. Dal came with a stand I use but the Pullip didn't, so she makes do with the one that came with my Sideshow Giles!
Lots of shelves! An entire doll room full of doll houses and dioramas! A Sindy Super Home for all my fashion dolls! Custom made BJD room boxes in 1/3 and 1/4 scale for each BJD! Maybe even an entire city in 1/3 and 1/4 scale! 1/3 scale boats for Silas and Beck! All the locations of my stories, so my OCs could live in them and I could take lots of photos and play games with my boyfriend! Organised and labeled drawers dedicated to clothes and accessories for each type of doll, so it's super easy to sit and play with them, dress them up and take photos! Maybe even a mini photography studio area! Pure dolly fantasy dream land.
Luckily not. I do want to downsize it a little by choice though.
I think I answered this above - in fabric bags in my doll cupboard.
The ones in the cupboard are pretty safe from dust and sun damage, but to be honest anyone on display is just living dangerously! I like to play with my dolls and they're all sturdier than you'd think, plus I don't fuss too much if they get a few scratches to their paint and I don't mind yellowed resin. I want to just enjoy them as much as I possibly can. I do keep them out of direct sunlight as best as I can though.
I don't have any pets.
Yes, I love people to hold my dolls if they are interested. I like to share the joy. Everyone is always very careful and respectful of the dolls if I let them hold them.
I think that what with trying to buy less in general this year (and not just dolls, everything) I have been feeling FOMO less and less. Going on a few strict no buys or low buys has really helped reset my brain into not wanting new things as much and getting more in touch with what new things I actually do want, and what things are just a fleeting whim or a trend.
Yes. I got scammed in the mid 2010s trying to buy a Deuce Gorgon on a Monster High forum at a time when he was quite hard to come by. Looking back, it was an obvious scam post, as they were selling for a fraction of what the usual price was at that time. I'm not even sure they had photos! But I didn't have any experience. I'd bought dolls in person from a toy shop, but when it came to shopping online, until then I'd only ever bought old and unwanted dolls from ebay for a few pounds. It was also my first time using paypal outside of ebay and I made the mistake of sending money via friends and family, so I never got my money back. This person scammed a lot of people over the same doll. I expect they got banned after, but I can't recall the exact outcome.
Often! I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head though. I feel like a lot of them have probably been impulse buys!
No, but I do unintentionally have most of the Wave 1 Slumber Party Bratz, simply because most of my Bratz collection came from the amazing bundle I mentioned earlier and I assume the previous owner was gifted them as a child. The bundle I got was likely someone's entire childhood collection!
I wasn't actively searching the entire time, but I wanted Migidoll Ryu for 7 years before I got him.
No! I'm not sure how that could happen! I suppose maybe if you got a bundle of fashion dolls online and the photos were a bit dodgy. That could happen pretty easily. But I don't think I'd forget it I was buiying a new boxed doll.
Almost all of them! Some of my fashion dolls are a little light on lore, especially the newer ones that I bought just because I thought they were pretty and haven't made a specific character for, but making dolls into characters or making characters into dolls is one of my favourite doll hobby things.
Yes! I love to restore dolls. Isopropyl is amazing for cleaning this very specific grime that old Barbies and similar dolls accquire. I learned that you can never ever use it on My Little Pony though, or it damages them terribly! Luckily there is lots of useful pony restoring info online, so I have never made this mistake myself. Another must for restoring fashion dolls is soaking their hair in boiling water. It always comes up a treat! As for BJDs, magic eraser is great for removing marks from resin.
I love dyeing resin dolls! Here is how I do it: Page 1. Page 2.
I also love doing doll faceups! But only on resin dolls. I started out doing a couple (literally only 2) faceups on My Scene dolls in 2012, but after getting into BJDs, I found I much prefered working on resin. Vinyl can be so finicky when it comes to sealing! I tried more recently to fix up a Ken by giving him new painted hair, and it was all going so well until the dreadful UK humidity interfered so badly with the sealant that he became super sticky and I had to wipe all my hard work! My favourite for BJDs is using liquitex matte medium, which doesn't work with vinyl dolls at all. For the faceup itself, I like to use watercolour pencils, pastels and a little acrylic paint here and there. I am terrible at applying doll lashes though, so most of my dolls are still awaiting lashes to finish their looks.
Here is my first My Scene faceup, my first BJD faceup and my latest BJD faceup!
Yes, I loved doing this when I was trying out doing fashion doll customising. I much prefered it to doing their faces. I also have some My Little Ponies I want to reroot, but they're surprisingly more difficult to do than Barbie. The reroot tool method doesn't really work very well for them.
I've only ever used saran and nylon for rerooting, and I like both equally. I did once try to make a BJD wig from some alpaca wool (hair?) that came free with a second hand doll I bought and it was awful to work with! I hated it! I don't know how pro wig makers do it, it's certainly an impressive skill.
My first was probably the My Scene and my latest My Little Pony Wind Whistler.
Yes, I want all of my OCs to have clothes that are character accurate, so this means making things just for them. I think I am most proud of the suits I have made, although I haven't finished Samuelson's yet - he still needs a jacket. (This photo is from before he got his custom head sculpt.)
I have been making doll clothes since I was a child, and most of those are lost to time, but I did find a few old Barbie creations when cleaning and organising all my Barbie clothes. The most recent clothes I have made is a 1/3 size suit.
Probably the suits I made. For bought items, I really love Clover's fluffy PJ set, Nina's knitted strawberry top and Ben's sailor outfit. Sadly none of these have labels and were bought second hand, so I have no idea who made them.
No, but I would love to!
I did base Rin's style on Volks Dollfie Dream After-School Akihabara Girls Natsuki, although later I managed to get Natsuki too! She is going to have a different personal style though. I'm currently thinking something that leans into bright primary colours, but she's still figuring it out.
Yes! A lot of my BJDs are based on characters from stories I am writing.
No.
No, although I would happily do faceups or dye dolls for friends. Maybe like a skill trade!
Yes, I love doing that. I would like to do it more, actually. Especially analogue photography
I'm not sure how this is different from the doll brands question. Independant artists maybe? I like Melon Pan dolls and Fiend Crew.
I don't seek them out, but if I stumble across them I think they're cool and interesting.
I don't think I've seen enough of them to say.
No specific characters that I know of, but in absolute fantasy world where money and space are unlimited, I'd love the obitsu 150!
I just want the most variety possible when it comes to BJDs, to make it easier for everyone to shell their OCs. More body types, more skin tones, more facial variety. Especially girl sculpts that are less typically fashion model pretty in the face, and more plus size bodies - particularly for male dolls. And every resin colour imaginable! Would be great if they stopped being called cringey things like 'coffee' and 'latte' in BJD spaces too, but I don't think that's likley.
Mostly it's Clementine or Peppermint that get to go on adventures, because of their small size, but I have taken Ben on adventures too. The ocassional fashion doll as well, fashion dolls are very convenient travel buddies!
I can't drive.
Occasionally, especially if I am really sad or overstimulated. But sometimes I might do just because I'm feeling extra enthusiastic about dolls that day.
Yes! I am actually aiming to have at least one drawing of every doll in my BJD collection, to make a banner for my BJD main page. I have recently added drawings of some of them to their individual neocities pages.
Last Halloween I dressed to match my H. Naoto Dal! I don't have the exact H.Naoto clothes my Pullips have, but I wore some different H.Naoto instead and did my hair and makeup to match. (You'll just have to trust me on the makeup haha.)
I don't think so, but I've enouraged friends who were already thinking about it to do so.
I love looking at everyone's doll collections (BJDs especially) because it's always so interesting to see everyone's different styles and characters. I always find everyone's doll storage space to be more aspirational than the dolls themself - especially if it has neatly organised doll clothes or room box dioramas.
I'm sorry that your life is so empty of whimsy, it must be a sad boring world to live in, haha
Doing faceups I suppose? But it really ties in so well with existing hobbies - sewing, crochet, drawing, photography...
No.
I might stop buying dolls at some point, but I don't think that counts as stopping collecting, as I will still be buying clothes for them and playing with the dolls I already have.
I would like them all to go to people who will love them.
Happy! It was fun! I didn't expect to answer them all at once. I will have to come back and add photos after I have tracked down all the appropriate ones. I love dolls so much. Thank you for this fun doll based activity!
from 2018 to forever
