The Facebook debacle & other issues

19 hours ago, PlasticJester said:

Maybe someday Eiji and Crimson will finally be Kenough for Danny 😔

we can only pray it be so. lol

I remember DC posting 0nce,that the lack of male dolls, was due to a "Luke"warm reception". i personally would love a male version of prowess.  also so where's the customer comments statng a Luke warm reception?

All this about him teasing stuff and to have more boy dolls has made me wish more and more for the Mecha Suit!!

For a guy that collects transformers as well this would be fantastic with my power masters. But i know... Its a tease he probably only printed 1 set

A lot of these are just Marketing and very alike to how boutique designer labels do it. Mass vs Niche so its not going to suit everyone.

For people like me who only have 1 SmD and diversity to me are different types of 1/3, I will likely be less moved by the current diversity strategy. But he (Danny) has only so much resources... 

And for those wondering why a lottery or preorder strategy is not used... That in itself will cannibalize the mainline... So he has got to work put a way that doesnt pin himself against himself lol.

To change the subject slightly, I went to a con today and saw a Smart Doll in person for the first time! A Pear, the owner was very nice and let me hold her. She also had one of the prototype 1/4 heads, and whoo boy I have gotten way too used to thinking of MDD as 1/4. Those heads are TINY.

2 hours ago, PlasticJester said:

She also had one of the prototype 1/4 heads, and whoo boy I have gotten way too used to thinking of MDD as 1/4.

Minifee and the Iplehouse JID are good examples of 1/4, and they're totally different from MDD. 

I have resin 1/4 dolls, but I somehow forgot how totally different the scale is? I'm so used to MDDs and their giant noggins.

It's a little weird to read this thread and lots of comments about how he isn't doing a male doll when a new one has been in the works and kind of fast-tracked to fit the evolve frame due to customer demand. 

The last post about the new boy was at the end of June, and it looks like progress has been pretty steady. 

17 hours ago, Yuan said:

It's a little weird to read this thread and lots of comments about how he isn't doing a male doll when a new one has been in the works and kind of fast-tracked to fit the evolve frame due to customer demand. 

The last post about the new boy was at the end of June, and it looks like progress has been pretty steady. 

I kind of suspect that some of that may have been motivated by people questioning why, if he was so set on making the Pear dolls regardless of their popularity, the same didn't apply to boy dolls. But the comments you're talking about probably predate the re-release news.

20 hours ago, Yuan said:

It's a little weird to read this thread and lots of comments about how he isn't doing a male doll when a new one has been in the works and kind of fast-tracked to fit the evolve frame due to customer demand. 

The last post about the new boy was at the end of June, and it looks like progress has been pretty steady. 

I was mostly referring to Eiji & Crimson 

Not sure if this is the right place to say this but I have to admit that I'm a bit sad that they've been moving away from doing anime sculpts more and more 

I guess the semi-real sculpts are more unique and therefore offer more brand-recognition or something? Ah well.. concerning the new boy - I think there's also a bit of a discrepancy between 'thing Danny shows/is working on' and 'thing that makes it on sale (outside of his blind box shenanigans)'.

So the video where I found this information is a year old but the comments are recent. If this was brought up before, I'm sorry for retreading an old topic. But I was not aware of all of this and...I don't know what to make of it. Knowing this I'm kind of amazed that I so often see videos of people buying new Smart Dolls. 

Oh wow. With how fast limited dolls of any kind tend to be, having to hunt down a secret password sounds incredibly rough.

The questionnaire is a minor inconvenience at worst; they make the wrong answers really obvious so you're not gonna mess up unless you're intentionally choosing the outlandish questions. I was also able to get the doll in my cart immediately after checking, so this might've been a site error.

The password thing, though, is uhh...interesting. Buying Smartdolls could be a competitive sport at this point.

Honestly, regarding purchasing, it comes down to this: DC is the only one who enforces such ridiculous practices. No other doll company to this day acts like this. It's not normal, and it's not acceptable to treat every single person like a criminal. 

Honestly it's beyond me why fellow doll lovers accept such treatment like it's warranted, or they deserve it for some reason. They don't. 

10 hours ago, Ageha said:

Honestly, regarding purchasing, it comes down to this: DC is the only one who enforces such ridiculous practices. No other doll company to this day acts like this. It's not normal, and it's not acceptable to treat every single person like a criminal. 

Honestly it's beyond me why fellow doll lovers accept such treatment like it's warranted, or they deserve it for some reason. They don't. 

and the fact they target children as whom the dolls are for, but pander to adults. plus how is a rated M video game for kids?" ( the weird cosplays by dc.  Hope this isn't off topic 

At this point your best bet is a dealer...

15 hours ago, Ageha said:

Honestly, regarding purchasing, it comes down to this: DC is the only one who enforces such ridiculous practices. No other doll company to this day acts like this. It's not normal, and it's not acceptable to treat every single person like a criminal. 

Honestly it's beyond me why fellow doll lovers accept such treatment like it's warranted, or they deserve it for some reason. They don't. 

I think a lot of doll lovers tend to accept it because it isn't just about the dolls for them. They are Danny Choo/Culture Japan fans just as much as Smart Doll fans. They end up aligning with his own points of view. They accept "wabi sabi" as a poor excuse for QC issues. They decide that his philosophy is best and think that what may be an innocent question that anyone would ask about a product gets turned into "ungrateful, unreasonable 'folks' who probably shouldn't by Smart Dolls." DC tends to talk a lot about social issues and the like and that can be appealing for some. I'm sure he has had to deal with scammers but I just wonder how much of that are legit issues and how much of it is made up as excuse to push back against people who just expect a normal experience with customer service without having to take tests, get passwords and jump through hoops. 

With all this I found it really strange that there is such negative experience. I did not get my first SmD direct and my first purchase was a milk bust that was recently on sale.

I didn't get any of these issues. Added to cart, answered the questions then paid. Item arrived the next day... 

I was even bugging Danny about purchasing and picking up instore but dropped the idea and purchased elsewhere.

6 hours ago, ladyandlion said:

I think a lot of doll lovers tend to accept it because it isn't just about the dolls for them. They are Danny Choo/Culture Japan fans just as much as Smart Doll fans. They end up aligning with his own points of view. They accept "wabi sabi" as a poor excuse for QC issues. They decide that his philosophy is best and think that what may be an innocent question that anyone would ask about a product gets turned into "ungrateful, unreasonable 'folks' who probably shouldn't by Smart Dolls." DC tends to talk a lot about social issues and the like and that can be appealing for some. I'm sure he has had to deal with scammers but I just wonder how much of that are legit issues and how much of it is made up as excuse to push back against people who just expect a normal experience with customer service without having to take tests, get passwords and jump through hoops. 

Jumping through hoops, like playing those impossible to win basketball games at the county fair.  I would think QC would be a priority for dolls made for da kiddie's lol

The only issue with all these complicated stuff to purchase is, back then he make a fuss of how volks DDs hard to get also their exclusive limited event.... and promising smart doll to be accessible easily and no limited stuff. NOW looks what happen... limited smartdoll is much harder to get and no first time buyer can seems able to get them and to be honest with my personal experience in trading cards and recent drama about LEGO , I personally feel those "hard to get smart dolls" seems to be "artificial scarcity" ... I would assume so people desire them more and FOMO kicks in to boost sales at least those few dolls available will guaranteeed to sold out

I'm not surprised Figufoto felt this way. I think I found them at the point where they were into DDs so I never knew about their Felicity. Danny isn't just driving away potential fans with his behavior but existing SmD fans too.... The reference to Xana7 just adds to it.

I'm looking through the catalogue of SmD releases and man, why are all the "Candidates" and "Prototypes" so much more interesting and appealing than the regular releases?

10 hours ago, PlasticJester said:

I'm looking through the catalogue of SmD releases and man, why are all the "Candidates" and "Prototypes" so much more interesting and appealing than the regular releases?

probably, cause thier more unique. I really was drawn to a couple of prototypes, such as Cupcake candidate and the trio candidate aka. Tea Lelouch.

Edited December 9, 2024 by DollyDearest

On 4/30/2024 at 4:23 PM, RozenGermain said:

Yeah, if I'm being honest, I think with SmD it feels more like pandering more than it feels like Danny actually cares. And this is coming from someone who likes variety in regards to how to customize a doll. I even thought that if Volks had more skintones, made boy bodies more accessible, added optional parts to make your doll disabled or just an elf, heck even making chubby bodies (which would likely be popular with the Kumako crowd if sculpted the same way), I think that would work incredibly well for them, because I think most DD enthusiasts like customizing their dolls and making their own characters, and such variety would aid that! SmD, on the other hand, I don't think Danny's particularly fond of customizers even now, considering his hatred of hybrids, especially in regards to SmD/DD hybrids.... Which is one of the reasons I feel the diversity is pandering on top of the other things mentioned earlier, because there isn't much, if any, encouragement of customizing your doll.... Even then the lack of variety doesn't stop me from loving Volks dolls, if anything, diversity would make me love Volks dolls even more, simply because it makes customizing the dolls easier!

Heck, I got into BJDs/MJDs in the first place because they were easy to customize into your OC (or favorite character for fanart dolls) if you wished! I wasn't into dolls as a kid, but I was into Littlest Pet Shop, and I loved to customize my LPS! A lot! I didn't give them the greatest paint jobs and I was too intimidated to do mods like head swaps, but the thing is I was into customizing toys and OC creation for a long time!

I got into the hobby as well for the same reason! I'm not really a face-up artist/modder 😅 but you can channel whatever personality into your doll. Even if there are two dolls of the same sculpt/faceup they can totally give a different vibe depending on how their styled and photographed; and that's what I love about the hobby

22 hours ago, Mo3cha said:

I got into the hobby as well for the same reason! I'm not really a face-up artist/modder 😅 but you can channel whatever personality into your doll. Even if there are two dolls of the same sculpt/faceup they can totally give a different vibe depending on how their styled and photographed; and that's what I love about the hobby

You're absolutely right! For emphasis on that fact, I wanted to style two DDH27s for MDDs, both were meant to be angel dude characters, but the intended vibe is very different!