Bodyless Milk SmD

If he really didn't care he wouldn't keep bringing it up...

I think Cinammon has been more popular tbh, white skin was mostly for people who seemed to be bothered by the difference in skeleton color, but I might be wrong. I'm sure, despite his personal problem against Volks, he watches out for his business and does what is best for it, not -just- to contest Volks. I doubt everything he does has to do with Volks

The price of the heads is pretty ridiculous, I agree. Then again, his wigs alone were like $60-70 right? And his eyes are also similarly priced? So in the end, something close to $250 for a head doesn't seem -that- exaggerated, when he also would probably want to have more gain from selling parts separately (body/ head), just like most other companies do. 

I would pay an artist to transform a blank DD head into a custom masterpiece for $250 every day before I paid it for a basic flat faced smartdoll head that looks the same as every other one..

I was vaguely interested in getting a SmartDoll head to test on an AP (possibly mess around with acetone shrinking) but I'm seriously balked at this "if you're a previous customer" thing. Isn't that an insanely tight leash to keep on your products? I can't be the only one that finds that very weird and offputting.

I was interested in a Kizuna anni. milk head but forget it for that price (not to mention it's sold out).

I do think the "have to be previous customer" clause is a bit of a power grab? I mean... considering he is discontinuing milk, whose to say someone just found this out and worried they were going to miss the doll they liked- but lo and behold, only the head is in stock? The obvious thing would be to buy it and try to find a matching body right?  Doesn't he realize he's severely limiting who he can sell to? This feels a bit like gatekeeping...

It's clearly gatekeeping.  Danny has actively worked to discourage certain people from purchasing his products.  

I also personally think the reason cortex took such a popularity hit was cost.

It made sense to just save a bit more and spring for the vinyl.

And I too agree it is gate-keeping, and boggles my mind.

I'm slightly disappointed that cortex and milk are being discontinued. I really enjoyed cortex or at least the option of cortex as an alternative for outfits that I know will stain like no tomorrow. 

I liked the idea of cortex because assembling a doll from scratch seems like an interesting/fun project. It's a shame it wasn't kept around as a consumer product with that in mind. I can understand them not wanting to assemble them if it takes a long time... but just do it like a garage kit and sell it in a box on the sprue. Plenty of people can deal with that (hello my warhammer figurines)

One thing that did occur to me is that it would be a lot easier to recast cortex though as this is a big problem in bjds, I wonder if risk of that happening might have been a factor in discontinuing it. (No idea how conscious of the problem they are. It has totally polluted the Blythe hobby.)

This is a bit off the main topic but since people are talking about Cortex going away, I felt I'd mention this.

Originally, Danny wanted Cortex to be the gateway into larger dolls like SmD.  Meaning, it would be significantly cheaper due to the costs of making it compared to vinyl being much less.  When it was first going to come out, I had chatted with on Instagram and Twitter many times about what his plans were for it.  His main thing was to introduce 60cm sized dolls to younger consumers and also allow for them to be sold as total kits for artists and modelers to use as they wanted.  Think about this as just one example of how this could be used:

You draw your own web comic or manga or doujin or whatever and love anime figures and dolls.  You have your own characters that people like and enjoy.  How cool would it be to have the ability to buy 10 or 50 or even 100 Cortex kits from Danny at a very low price if they were shipped flat, ie. still on the plastic sprue a'la Gundam kits, that you then build yourself, paint and add clothing to and then SELL as your own characters at a convention or online?  THAT was a huge idea to me and I thought it would be amazing to see happen.  At that time, he was talking about doing those kinds of setups ( the still on the sprue thing ) at pricing like $100 or less depending on the amount purchased.  *To me* I thought that would sell an absolute ton of Cortex kits.

But as we all saw, Cortex was NOT much cheaper than vinyl.  Not by a long shot as it was promised to be.  He never sold the kits on sprue to save the customer more money.  Sure, he did the build your own Cortex kits but most of those didn't come with a head.  And the ones that did were still expensive.  And these Chaos Bundles don't even ship complete frames and bodies!  I don't have all the answers on why he didn't do what he said he would with the sales of Cortex but I think a huge opportunity for sales was missed out on that could have easily propelled his sales way beyond what it is now for those.  

It sucks that a really good idea was tossed aside like that.   

 

 

Billy

1 hour ago, baldylox said:

You draw your own web comic or manga or doujin or whatever and love anime figures and dolls.  You have your own characters that people like and enjoy.  How cool would it be to have the ability to buy 10 or 50 or even 100 Cortex kits from Danny at a very low price if they were shipped flat, ie. still on the plastic sprue a'la Gundam kits, that you then build yourself, paint and add clothing to and then SELL as your own characters at a convention or online?  THAT was a huge idea to me and I thought it would be amazing to see happen.  At that time, he was talking about doing those kinds of setups ( the still on the sprue thing ) at pricing like $100 or less depending on the amount purchased.  *To me* I thought that would sell an absolute ton of Cortex kits.

It sucks that a really good idea was tossed aside like that.   

 

 

Billy

Oh damn, I know people who would be totally into that kinda thing. O_O Maybe not buying so many, but definitely buying a few to make into their characters. My friend made obitsu versions of a couple of her characters, and they always go to cons and sit on the table just as set dressing I guess. XD I could imagine a few people using dolls that way, so it is a super shame.

(Also would make an awesome top tier reward for a kickstarter. Mwehehe...)

(Sorry for keeping it OT)

Edit: sudden urge to shell one of my characters as Smart Doll... even just the regular version o_o

Edited August 3, 2020 by Katsudon
oh no I got ideas ;o;