What's up with Male Dolls?

I'm fortunate to live near a major metro area in the midwest and we have a local group that meets up once every couple of months or so, but I haven't yet had the chance to go. I agree with the assessment that Americans are so spread out that it makes in-person meeting difficult and usually the only time you see one in the wild is at conventions.

I disagree that this is a factor in the popularity of the uncle size, though, at least compared to vinyl boys. I quite like the idea of uncle-sized men (hello, dehydrated beefcake!!) largely because they are so manly. Much as I like Volks DD boys and wish they were more available, they're very slender and lack muscle definition. This isn't a bad thing! But it appeals to a fundamentally different audience, particularly if you want to display them with buxom, womanly women. Volks DD boys appeal to the anime schoolboy-esque physique that goes well with the DD/DDS girls, but lacks a comparable doll to display with Dynamite girls. If they made a boy body with a little more girth in the muscle-y areas, we would likely see more overlap.

Edited February 2 by Thespian

Looks like Dollbot will be releasing a male doll.

 

Oh, color me interested. 👀

Are there more pictures from the body yet?

Oh, he's cute!  Can't wait to see more pictures when he comes out!

Sliding into this thread perhaps a bit late to put in my own two cents as... I suppose more of a general "physical media" person and less of a specific "doll person". I will say that, in my experience, in the West, desire for male characters is often just seen as less common than desire for female characters. Across many artistic mediums.

For physical merch, specifically... Trying to stay on-topic, I will say ahead of time that I am saying this to compare it to what I witness in vinyl dolls so far. And to stop people from being aggravated, I will also say this again, is my experience in the West, and not me saying it as though it is international fact.

Stuffed toys tend to be pretty 50-50; I see them most often with indie creators. Compared to more 'proper' dolls/figurines, I see them a lot more. Then again, stuffed toys are seen as largely a female thing, so perhaps there is something there that impacts such a thing.

I find people who will make clay dolls from scratch pretty frequently, though they often have mostly female character portfolios. But when it comes to BJDs in particular, I will admit I mostly got sucked into the resin rabbithole. I'm not much of a doll person; I'm just exceptionally infatuated with specific characters (especially those from obscure media), and have been introduced to dolls as one of many good ways to get custom merch of them. I became aware of BJDs after playing a specific otome game that, iirc, had some sort of deal with a company, so they had BJDs of the characters at the time (I played the game very late, so I was not aware of these until years after). Which is what got me into them.

I have literally only seen male resin BJDs. Everywhere. I was never into doll stuff before because I'm not that interested in female dolls. But it was enough to solidify BJDs as a general 'male doll' thing in my head.

Then, I see vinyl BJDs, and when I see that it's mostly female characters, I was about ready to toss in the towel and write it off as about as female-centric as anime figurines. So I walked away from them for a while.

While I can't speak for the monetary opportunities within specifically the doll-collecting community, I can say that there will almost always be those people who come in, snatch up merch of their favorite characters from a fandom they adore (or save for ages to get it custom made..), and they are a bit of a buying factor, themselves. As well as potential future doll collectors, if there is enough of the merch.

Uhm.. to wrap this up, I guess, what I am mostly trying to say is that there's not much pushing dolls into the forefront of the mind of a lot of fans of male characters, I guess? Which might contribute. Whenever I look at male characters in figurines, for example, they are made in a way that, to me, lowers the quality of the doll itself, and the higher quality and attention to detail has been put into whatever props makes them look like they're doing some cool action move... Rather than being as nice to look at as female dolls for guys. And it has me like, yeah, that sword is nice, now put him in a maid dress, you know?

All in all, I am lingering around the vinyl community in hopes it will experience what the niche parts of the resin community did for anthro dolls. There used to be relatively fewer, and they didn't look as appealing to me, but given time, that changed. So I am hoping that given enough time, I will be able to witness more vinyl male dolls and be able to comfortably snatch some up.

Listing is up for the Dollbot boy and they contain some more pictures as well as the measurements. The torso and thighs are different from the girl body.

https://www.dollbot.jp/items/100689623

Pretty dang cute! I like the details on the tummy and hips, though if I snag one I might give it the girl thighs just for fun.