The Facebook debacle & other issues

I really haven’t been keeping up with the community at all, but I’m blown away by everything here and I think this will be the final push to sell my mine. Specifically the one I had been most hesitant to part with, my milk Eiji. I know this topic has passed but I’d like to say as someone who is autistic and disabled, I am appalled by how inappropriate what he said was. It’s really ironic since I actually came on here to see how to fix this exact issue with his arms (I’m slowly losing strength in my finger and wrist joints) and told myself I would keep him if he wasn’t broken and then try sell him if he was, only to find out that the problem was actually ME the whole time! Wow! (I guess if my working getting on my phd has taken all my time for my dolls, now my dolls can help pay off getting my phd lol……..)

On 3/11/2022 at 4:43 PM, finnleo said:

erm.. probably tone deaf text at work, didnt really intend to sound annoyed or anything (also was in a rush to work, and .. also ... you know what being a thing too)

just the whole the whole re-affirming that even though im not brittish nor actually ever been to any parts of it, I was somewath aware of just how silly the whole thing got.

Ah phew. I was hoping you didn't feel like I diminished your input ('cos I did post too quickly) just because your posts on the history of it are very useful. 👍

Oops I am posting this a bit late.

On 3/13/2022 at 11:36 PM, Stormlight said:

My biggest problem is her head. He should have left it alone, or done more research. If her face had been burned, she would have no hair. No eyebrows, no eyelashes … hair cannot grow on scar tissue. I think anyone suffering that kind of scarring, who wanted a doll “just like them”, would not really appreciate the lack of thought put into this one. 

I had that thought too 😥 about the hair. The worst thing is that her wig can't be removed without revealing the plain tea headcap. Will give them credit for it looking more like keloid scarring than the original test, even if it doesn't have the texture. I know the texture is a big ask, which is why I don't really expect it... anyway, hair! Yeah it's unfortunate. 🙁

Since, I saw some SMD owners had sold all of their Smart Dolls due to the unfortunate experiences from Danny in this thread.
 

One day, I’ll sell my one and only Mirai Cortex with damaged edges on the arms due to the design flaw on them.

Seriously, even before she fell from the ground and it was at ground level! The edges by her elbows were already becoming loose, and detached from the seams! I had to super glue one at the time. 

I really want a Dollfie Dream doll from Volks and it will be from an Anime or Japanese video game series.

It explains why Cortex versions of Smart Dolls got discontinued since it didn’t sold very well. 
 

Danny originally wanted to keep improving the slightly affordable Cortex SMDs, but he changed his mind and broke his promise.

 

My photos of Mirai’s damaged Cortex arms on Flickr. 

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by ZandurFox

1 hour ago, ZandurFox said:

My photos of Mirai’s damaged Cortex arms on Flickr.

You could try heat shrink tubing as a fix. She’d have bands on her arms, but she might work. 

11 hours ago, ZandurFox said:

It explains why Cortex versions of Smart Dolls got discontinued since it didn’t sold very well. 

Someone remind me, where they even properly sold..? I still can't seem to recall that they got listed. Sure, the standard Mirai and, like, one other was up briefly. The rest were chaos grade.
But it's like he expected 1000 sold the first day for it to be successful..
 

Being nitpicky so please don't mind me, but... They weren't chaos grade - just sold in the chaos section. One of the rare 'this hasn't failed QC' cases. Although they were what they class as 'final boss' grade kits, which means lots of trimming and sanding and sometimes even chopping away some large bits of the internal parts of the shells. Arguably not perfect condition then either.

Is a shame how quickly cortex was given up on.  If only because DIY is fun.

@ZandurFox if you were keeping her, I would have suggested looking around on Facebook to see if anyone had spare parts in the chaos groups. The last of the milk cortex stock was sold off a few months ago, but someone might still have some shells. I haven't checked enough to see if milk vinyl turns up much. 😕 It really sucks that the only replacement offered was cinnamon vinyl.

Edit: especially as for a while Danny was using it in a weird way that got portrayed as Smart Doll owners being pitted against each other. Like, we can't have blue dolls because Danny has to make milk parts. Think of the poor overworked staff etc! (Never mind that the manufacture of vinyl parts is outsourced, and they just trim them in house.)

Damn I woke up salty today!

Edited March 18, 2022 by Katsudon

Regarding Cortex, I said back when it was first mentioned that it would not go over well with established vinyl collectors because they would be ‘cheapening’ the hobby. Of course as his prices, they did not do so money wise. But the quality was just so different.  I know at one point he even talked of going all cortex with some vinyl features for most dolls. I mean, if you want plastic-ish bodies, you can get them much less expensively from China…and there is nothing wrong with those. I am going to build a boy doll around one myself. The joints are quite similar.

Anyway, it was an idea that was bound to fail in the collectors world. It might work for the kids that he sells to or for newer doll owners, even those who enjoyed the DIY aspect of it as was mentioned earlier. But the majority of the vinyl doll world want the quality and price that they are used to.  Cortex failed in quality and was too expensive in price from the start, especially for what it was.  IMHO, of course.

 

Personally I think that had he taken a risk and had Cortex be significantly and competitively cheaper(not necessarily as cheap as random massed produced stuff, it probably couldn't compete with that, but I feel there could have been a niche for it) it might have caught on with the maker crowd or a mix of doll people and maker people and been a more fruitful direction to go with the brand- as long as vinyl was available too (which, if it couldn't be done in tandem, was another issue); customization has always been a huge part of the hobby, after all, and the hobby starting out as adjacent to model kits.

People were excited to anticipate having something available for a lower price (some were guessing under $200) but it just ended up being just under the price of the vinyl line. It had no chance of going big as Danny said he expected at that price imo. It seems like a huge missed opportunity to me, but then again I don't know the business aspect of it or if Danny or the company were well off enough to take the risk of a loss in the short term to gain popularity. Given how he's said the development cost was so high, I suppose that must have factored heavily in the decision.

I agree that if the price had been right, it would have had a niche market.  I could see lots of hybrid dolls, just like collectors do with DD (or similar) heads and Obitsu 40-50cm sized bodies instead of Volks MDD or DDP bodies since they are quite a bit more expensive (though it must be said that Obitsu is still vinyl and not the harder style material).  
 

I am not sure what happened between the earlier announcements and the developments for costs to have skyrocketed so much. I could be wrong, but I think I recall him saying early on that he was aiming for a price point of around $200.  I am not sure if he was trying to develop some type of innovative PVC and that hiked the price up. But it seems that hard vinyl should not be that expensive.  Of course, price was not the only issue. It was just a problem all around.  
 

There are some beautiful cortex dolls around though and I am happy to see them.  I kinda wish it had worked out better so there would be even more choices for everyone.  Who knows? Maybe he will change his mind again one day and try to rework the formula into a better quality, less expensive option.  With him, you never know what is around the corner.

7 hours ago, Misheru said:

I am not sure what happened between the earlier announcements and the developments for costs to have skyrocketed so much. I could be wrong, but I think I recall him saying early on that he was aiming for a price point of around $200.  I am not sure if he was trying to develop some type of innovative PVC and that hiked the price up. But it seems that hard vinyl should not be that expensive.  Of course, price was not the only issue. It was just a problem all around.  
 

I think that's part of what I don't like about how DC designs things; not that quality over quantity isn't bad, but most of the time he tends to get too specific and exacting about the materials and designs he uses which ends up driving costs through the roof, when a more generic but still quality product would satisfy customers just as well. I'll take a decent $15-20 pair of SD jeans over a $70-100 ultra-detailed pre-weathered made-from-material-only-found-by-this-one-manufacturer-in-Japan pair any day. Or at the very least, have both more affordable and more high-quality versions of things like clothes and stands and accessories and whatever available.

mmmh... except for the facts that:

 

1)Cortex was intended as a permanent sostitute for vinyl dolls, so no coexistence;

2)Cortex was no cheaper at all, or not enough to justify not buying vinyl;

3)Cortex break and also "delicious seam lines" (and you are an Elitist, entitled, horrible person if you don't find them attractive, shame on you);

4)Mr. Danny higly despise customizations.

 

 

I just don't know what went wrong...

Edited March 20, 2022 by Testament

11 hours ago, Misheru said:

I could be wrong, but I think I recall him saying early on that he was aiming for a price point of around $200.

He did say something about a higher initial cost due to a need to recoup his initial investment.

 

3 hours ago, monkeypizzasonic said:

I'll take a decent $15-20 pair of SD jeans over a $70-100 ultra-detailed pre-weathered made-from-material-only-found-by-this-one-manufacturer-in-Japan pair any day.

Seriously, TTYA gives you stuff that's just as nice looking at half the cost of Mirai branded goods.

--

IMO, part of the issue with Cortex was lack of Q&A testing. It seems likely that he didn't understand the flaws until after he went into mass production and his customers effectively became the Q&A testers. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he didn't know, because no normal business would want to go to market with a product that cracked so easily. 

2 hours ago, Testament said:

mmmh... except for the facts that:

 

1)Cortex was intended as a permanent sostitute for vinyl dolls, so no coexistence;

2)Cortex was no cheaper at all, or not enough to justify not buying vinyl;

3)Cortex break and also "delicious seam lines" (and you are an Elitist, entitled, horrible person if you don't find them attractive, shame on you);

4)Mr. Danny higly despise customizations.

 

 

I just don't know what went wrong...

& that's the way the plastic crumbles.. 

 

it's so sad to see what was once an inspirational hero for so many of us come apart like this...

I didn't really want to say anything abt it because I don't want to make excuses for his behavior but could we please not try to armchair-diagnose Danny Choo(again)? It's very uncomfortable and while I am aware that people have actual bad experiences with narcissists and I want to respect that, I just feel like it shouldn't be a label to throw around this readily. ._.

14 hours ago, ZandurFox said:

It's time to downsize my Disney doll collection...

 

Or upsize them: https://volksusastore.com/webstores/dollfie/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=2040

49 minutes ago, Starwaia said:

It's very uncomfortable and while I am aware that people have actual bad experiences with narcissists and I want to respect that, I just feel like it shouldn't be a label to throw around this readily. ._.

The difficulty with terms like that is that they can be used as insults, or they can be technical medical terms. If someone uses them in a technical way to describe a collection of behaviors being displayed publicly, then I tend to think it doesn't break the no insults rule, but if used as an insult then it's an issue. 

--

I'll add the observation that in order for a person to have a personality disorder, those traits must be the dominant element of their life and you'll see them reflected over and over throughout the person's life. It takes more than just possessing a set of behavior characteristics, because we all possess those characteristics to some extent. Free speech aside, psychiatric diagnosis is best left to qualified doctors working with all the available data about someone's case, and who have interviewed that person in a clinical environment. 

@baldylox might see it differently than I do, so I'll summon him to the discussion. 

26 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

The difficulty with terms like that is that they can be used as insults, or they can be technical medical terms. If someone uses them in a technical way to describe a collection of behaviors being displayed publicly, then I tend to think it doesn't break the no insults rule, but if used as an insult then it's an issue. 

--

I'll add the observation that in order for a person to have a personality disorder, those traits must be the dominant element of their life and you'll see them reflected over and over throughout the person's life. It takes more than just possessing a set of behavior characteristics, because we all possess those characteristics to some extent. Free speech aside, psychiatric diagnosis is best left to qualified doctors working with all the available data about someone's case, and who have interviewed that person in a clinical environment. 

@baldylox might see it differently than I do, so I'll summon him to the discussion. 

WHO DARES SUMMON MEEEEEE?????  😉 

I'm with you @BeyondTime .  I read the post from earlier and that type talk doesn't pass muster here.  Let's leave any diagnosis or what could be construed as name calling out of this discussion please.  I know that Mr. C. has caused a lot of people a lot of stress and I'm not downplaying any of that.  But in order to keep things here civil and to allow further chat about the issues we keep seeing and finding, we need to make sure not to be mean spirited or rude about it.  

Thank you all, I appreciate it.   

 

 

Billy

I won't post about that again, my apologies.

Though, I do have some buyer's remorse with Smart Doll Mirai after owning her for almost 3 years.

I did a lot of research regarding Dollfie Dream and I do know that vinyl can stain easier if you're not careful. Same for vinyl Smart Dolls, which is why I bought the Cortex version in the first place. I won't fix her arms, I'll just leave it as is because I'm afraid I'll break her arms even more.

I want to know if Cinnamon vinyl arms can fit with the Milk version of Mirai or not? But, I don't want to get the replacements anymore even if Smart Doll support let me get them with a new order, since it costs extra money...

Edited March 22, 2022 by ZandurFox

The cinnamon arms might look OK in photos, as it's a little harder to tell the colours apart in pics. Depending on your camera/lighting at least. In real life though, they will stand out unfortunately. 😕 I wouldn't go for it, tbh. That's just me though. If your Smart Doll always wears long sleeves it's not as much of a problem!

(Damn, I thought there were some milk vs cinnamon comparison pics on the forum, but I can't find them. Sorry.)

On 3/20/2022 at 12:17 PM, DollyDearest said:

& that's the way the plastic crumbles.. 

Cortex was doomed for failure the moment Danny insisted on using same frame as his vinyl dolls. Smaller companies have since done what he could not. 

19 hours ago, Katsudon said:

The cinnamon arms might look OK in photos, as it's a little harder to tell the colours apart in pics. Depending on your camera/lighting at least. In real life though, they will stand out unfortunately. 😕 I wouldn't go for it, tbh. That's just me though. If your Smart Doll always wears long sleeves it's not as much of a problem!

(Damn, I thought there were some milk vs cinnamon comparison pics on the forum, but I can't find them. Sorry.)

Oh darn. That's unfortunate, it was nice of enough that Smart Doll customer support allowed me get two cinnamon vinyl replacement arms on my next order with a unique code. But, I'll pass since Milk and Cinnamon are two different skin-tones...

I remembered Danny wanted to keep making Milk as their primary skin tone for the Smart Dolls, but not anymore. It's Cinnamon and the skin color dethroned Milk which was a huge disappointment..

Time to get Dollfie Dream.

Thank you for letting me know, Katsudon.

Edited March 24, 2022 by ZandurFox

I wanna interject something, i thought about it last night, this whole thread started, cause shoe san, got annoyed by someone who made a unintendtional rant, that got them banned, due to their disablity.    correct?     so why then is shoe san, not makin crutches, hearin aids & wheel chairs?  hmmmmm..   wanna hear ya thoughts.    Thank you🐱

5 hours ago, DollyDearest said:

this whole thread started, cause shoe san, got annoyed by someone who made a unintendtional rant, that got them banned, due to their disablity.

This thread got started because a bunch of people were kicked from a Facebook group and banned from the SmartDoll store because one person in another Facebook group posted a legitimately offensive image of Danny as as Nazi.  

34 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

This thread got started because a bunch of people were kicked from a Facebook group and banned from the SmartDoll store because one person in another Facebook group posted a legitimately offensive image of Danny as as Nazi.  

they did?    Huh.  okays    sorry i misunderstood.    feel free to delete my inquire.

Edited March 24, 2022 by DollyDearest