Fashion doll crazy

I am tired of common US playline fashion dolls (Barbie, LOL O-so-bobblehead, Rainbow High). I have been scouring the internet, looking for new and different fashion dolls. Here's a selection of what I've got, what I'm waiting for, and future acquisitions (maybe). If you know of anything I haven't listed here, let me know!

Mimi World Barista: South Korean fashion doll. HOLY GUACAMOLE, this doll is amazing. I haven't unboxed the doll, because the background is gorgeous. I want to get paperboard and save everything as a diorama. I found this brand new for $40 USD on eBay, and it was a steal. The accessories put Barbie to shame - no pink plastic garbage here. 

 

Horsman Urban Vita doll - Goth - Love you to pieces ($190 USD). Horsman is an established US doll company (1803, I think?). I bought this one new, but I will not buy a new Horsman doll at full price ever again. The outfit and quality of the doll are excellent, but the jewelry fell apart in my hands as I took it out of the box. The body has excellent posing, but these dolls do not come with their own stand. $190 and no stand? Come on... The hair is a hard-cap wig. The face painting is a little quirky, but I am fond of them. There's a DIY doll (do your own face-ups) with multiple face plates for $160 USD that I'm considering, but it's not a priority. 

 

Integrity Toys (IT) - That Witch. Meh. Don't get me wrong - if you can get one directly from the company, they are worth the $120-$150 USD (though Poppy Parker costs a lot more). And they come with their own stand! Horsman, are you listening? The clothing, shoes, and jewelry are exquisite. The problem is, these dolls are released in sets of 300 or fewer, and scalpers snap them up and relist them on eBay for $300 to $500 USD. IT doesn't seem to care. I'm not interested in keeping scalpers in business, so I refuse to pay the scalper markup. I found one for $120 USD from a dealer in France (not this one). The bodies are gorgeous. I'm just not willing to shell out $300-$500 (or more!) USD for what is essentially a good quality Barbie doll. Of course, you can join their "club" for $50 USD annually for the "chance" to buy a doll new (but there's no guarantee, because scalpers are first in line). Really like this particular one, though. I may repaint a Barbie to look like it. 

 

Robert Tonner - Cami. This particular line is 16 inch articulated fashion doll. I picked up a doll similar to this one for about $30 USD, I think? You could find them for a bargain on eBay when Robert Tonner announced his retirement in 2018. Apparently, they sold for $200 USD new? ABSOLUTELY NOT WORTH IT, in my opinion. These are okay dolls at best, but the plastic is - well, garbage. Move the head too much in one direction, and the neck will crack. The clothing falls apart. The vinyl accessories disintegrated in my hands. The face-ups look amateurish. I bought a couple, and I will never, EVER buy one of these dolls ever again. I do not understand the hype. 

 

Momoko by Pet Works. This is Black Coffee (IIRC). These dolls run around $125 (on sale) to $150 USD. I am waiting on a different one I picked up cheaper ($65 USD on AmiAmi), but I love this doll. I'm just not willing to spend that much money until I've seen one in person.  

 

R&D Dolls - Shanghai Susie Surprise (Susie Shanghai Surprise? Surprise Susie Shanghai?). I'd never heard of these. I think they're a US company, but I'm not sure. Snagged one on eBay mint in box for $70 USD. If anyone has any info, I'd love more details.

 

Mizidoll/JHD Toys. I'm on the fence about these 12 inch fashion dolls. Prices range from about $90-$200 USD. I don't know - they just seem like shorter Integrity Toys dolls. Maybe if I find one cheaper, I'll get one. 

 

Madame Alexander - Steampunk Alice in Wonderland series. Madame Alexander is another established doll company, but they mostly make child and baby dolls. Every so often, however, they will put out a series of fashion dolls, like this Steampunk Alice in Wonderland series. Each of these dolls is running about $300-$400 USD on eBay, which I'm not willing to pay. However, I think the quality of the plastic and the face-ups are much better than Robert Tonner. They also released some DC dolls (Harley Quinn, the Joker, and the Penguin are grails).

 

These are the Madame Alexander Marvel Fan Girls. I have the entire set. These dolls were released in the US for Toys-R-Us, the biggest dedicated big-box toy store, right before the company declared bankruptcy. I got each one new in box for around $20 to $30 USD. You can still find them pretty cheaply on eBay or Mercari (US only), except for Suri (left). Good luck finding that doll for less than $80 USD, although now that the actress who played Suri said some dumb things online, the prices are starting to drop. This doll line gets a lot of hate from Madame Alexander collectors, and I don't understand why. The quality of the clothing is excellent. The face paint is beautiful. The hair is also excellent quality. The articulation is great. They are about 14 inches tall. I would say they are halfway between childlike and mature - so teenagers? Sure. Teenagers.

 

GRAIL: FR Nippon Misaki - this one in particular. Integrity Toys doll made/distributed by Azone for Japanese customers. Supposedly not popular in the US according to every US dealer I've contacted (and I've contacted many, many dealers) - except this particular doll cannot be found for less than $350 USD on eBay. I'm thinking I might reroot a Barbie doll and repaint the face to look like this particular doll. My days of dropping anything close to that much money on what is essentially a playline doll are over. I'd rather get a BJD or an Obitsu/Dolfie Dream. 

 

 

This is extremely helpful, I decided to stop collecting fashion dolls and playline dolls recently because I felt like they couldn't match up to the quality of resin and vinyl dolls, I might check these dolls out. I was interested in Integrity Toys dolls, but after I saw the price of some of them on Fabric, Friends and Dolls, I decided to not get one, maybe one day I'll buy one though.

3 hours ago, MaleficentMrsofEvil said:

Integrity Toys (IT) - That Witch. Meh. Don't get me wrong - if you can get one directly from the company, they are worth the $120-$150 USD (though Poppy Parker costs a lot more). And they come with their own stand! Horsman, are you listening? The clothing, shoes, and jewelry are exquisite. The problem is, these dolls are released in sets of 300 or fewer, and scalpers snap them up and relist them on eBay for $300 to $500 USD. IT doesn't seem to care. I'm not interested in keeping scalpers in business, so I refuse to pay the scalper markup. I found one for $120 USD from a dealer in France (not this one). The bodies are gorgeous. I'm just not willing to shell out $300-$500 (or more!) USD for what is essentially a good quality Barbie doll. Of course, you can join their "club" for $50 USD annually for the "chance" to buy a doll new (but there's no guarantee, because scalpers are first in line). Really like this particular one, though. I may repaint a Barbie to look like it. 

120-150$ is actually standard retail price for all IT dolls (including Poppy Parker) except for the more detailed "gown" dolls and some convention exclusives, though prices were raised a bit this year as a result of the pandemic (175-ish is standard at the moment), and the edition sizes are generally in the 500-2000 range, most of the dolls from this and last year being between 1500-2000 as of late. I haven't seen many releases in the 300 doll range since like 2013 unless they're Jason Wu "luxury" dolls (his last Net-a-Porter exclusive IT doll was an edition size of 400). IT is still a smaller brand with a singular warehouse (as most adult fashion doll companies are), so while they've tried their best to increase edition sizes in proportion to their consumer levels, they definitely can't increase production in the tens of thousands for each doll without a guarantee that they'll sell out (which is only a recent phenomenon for IT- their dolls used to be a lot easier to acquire, some of the "grail" dolls that now sell for 1k+ were once on clearance for 70$, even with smaller edition sizes).

The doll you have pictured is That Witch Sooki, she was originally a part of the Dynamite Girls lineup in the early-mid 2010's and was brought back for The Industry line as a convention exclusive last year, I believe her edition size was about 600 dolls (one for every convention attendee)- you can also find the Dynamite Girls versions of her secondhand, though they've risen in price over the years from their original 40-70$ price point (Dynamite Girls was the "budget" IT line)- I personally love the original Spooky Sooki doll (to whom That Witch is paying homage)

And to clarify about Wclub a bit- lots of the dolls are up to chance (some via Right-to-buy lottery, some via clickwar), but you're guaranteed the chance to get 5 made-to-order dolls for the entire year (so everyone in the club can order them within a given time frame, much like a Volks Preorder) as well as the option to pre-order 3 additional made-to-order dolls when you sign up for membership that year, they usually have more MTO dolls but 5 is the minimum. You also get early access to the "mainline" dolls (the ones that sell out fast), the option to go to their convention and access to the Wclub forum/marketplace where you can find better deals on secondhand dolls in comparison to Ebay. Half of your membership fee (25$) is also given back to you in the form of a 25$ gift card to spend on anything sold on IT's own website.  There's more information here!

Speaking of the website, IT recently started a line of basic, unlimited "starter" dolls sold directly on their own website, which will be restocked whenever they sell out (including a lovely Poppy Parker)- there's two other dolls in the basic collection that are currently out of stock, as well as more that will be coming later in the year!

I've collected IT for a long time, and while I have a lot of issues with them (their QC isn't very consistent, though it's been pretty good this year), the dolls are definitely worth their prices wrt detailing and materials imo. Not my #1 favorite dolls to collect but I love the ones I have and the offerings this year have been lovely so far, and the people at the company (mostly) love dolls as well and care about their consumers and taking care of them.

As for the Tonner Cami doll, I believe the one pictured (Cami Basic Blonde 2010) was a retail price of 79$, though the more elaborate ones would run from 150-300$, my Wonder Woman (incredibly detailed, real leather and metal pieces) was around 300$. Tonner isn't for everyone, but I have a lot of beautiful dolls from him and I wish he were still around in the same capacity (though he does still make exclusive dolls for Sideshow). 

I personally did not love the few Mizi dolls I had, one of them broke upon receipt (legs snapped off, luckily I had a spare Poppy Parker body around) and the other one can't even move her head, because the designer basically just 3D scanned and modified the body sculpts from various IT dolls (the one pictured has a recasted East 59th body from IT) for his original head sculpt, which doesn't fit correctly on the neck. Not the best quality and the stealing of sculpts is pretty ethically gross, imo. 

 

Edited October 11, 2021 by Mizuumi-no-Otome

6 hours ago, Mizuumi-no-Otome said:

I personally did not love the few Mizi dolls I had, one of them broke upon receipt (legs snapped off, luckily I had a spare Poppy Parker body around) and the other one can't even move her head, because the designer basically just 3D scanned and modified the body sculpts from various IT dolls (the one pictured has a recasted East 59th body from IT) for his original head sculpt, which doesn't fit correctly on the neck. Not the best quality and the stealing of sculpts is pretty ethically gross, imo.

Hmmm.... I suspected as much. They look so similar to IT. Welp, I appreciate your insight - makes it that much easier not to buy one.

I'll check out the IT links, though. Thanks!

I assume you're familiar with them because they're a lot more... well-known online compared to Mimi, but Takara has their fashion doll lines for Jenny and Licca that you might like, too! They're really, really cute and there is so many different types of Jenny and Licca and friends. I really love all of my different fashion dolls, but I really appreciate how soft and pretty Mimi, Jenny, and Licca's faces tend to be.  

I wish they were more accessible in the USA/the West in general, though. If I had a child interested in dolls, I think those would be great to have... I love Barbie but considering how into Sailor Moon dolls I was as a child, I think Takara family dolls would have been a hit in my house, without a doubt. XD I still remember drooling over some of the Setsunako obitsu customs I saw online when I was like 8, LOL. 

On 6/13/2022 at 4:43 PM, Epona said:

I assume you're familiar with them because they're a lot more... well-known online compared to Mimi, but Takara has their fashion doll lines for Jenny and Licca that you might like, too! They're really, really cute and there is so many different types of Jenny and Licca and friends. I really love all of my different fashion dolls, but I really appreciate how soft and pretty Mimi, Jenny, and Licca's faces tend to be.  

I wish they were more accessible in the USA/the West in general, though. If I had a child interested in dolls, I think those would be great to have... I love Barbie but considering how into Sailor Moon dolls I was as a child, I think Takara family dolls would have been a hit in my house, without a doubt. XD I still remember drooling over some of the Setsunako obitsu customs I saw online when I was like 8, LOL. 

I did end up getting a Licca-chan doll! I think she's called Emo kitty? The accessories and clothing were adorable, and the price (about 3,800 yen) was hard to pass up. 

The body is a little... odd for my taste. I think you're supposed to use a hair dryer to heat the plastic in order to get the arms and legs to bend. I ended up rebodying her onto a 27cm Obitsu body because it was just easier. But yes! Lovely doll line by Takara Tomy!

 

How could I mention Momoko, and not mention Ruruko! Also by Petworks. I finally ordered my first one from Mandarake, and she's already shipped! I may crab about the cost of Mandarake's shipping, but I shouldn't - 3 business days from Japan to the US can't possibly be cheap. 

I'm super excited. Also, I blame Instagram. After seeing picture upon picture of this gorgeous little doll, I had to have one.

 

@Mizuumi-no-Otome - I was admittedly a little too harsh on IT. I am grateful that they are selling the bodies separately now, too. I should really have directed my ire at scalpers. It's not IT's fault that the resale value on these dolls is so high.

Edited August 23, 2022 by MaleficentMrsofEvil