Insights into the Blythe doll modding scene

With eyes as round as grapes and lips too small to do anything but pout, Blythe dolls look like grumpy angels. These intense stares work to their advantage in a crowded market; Blythes has spent the last 23 years charming a dedicated group of mostly female fans, many of whom pour thousands of dollars into customizing their toys.

Blythe, with toothpick legs and stormy eyes Change color With a tug on a string tied to the back of her head, she was once the strange girl at the lunch table. Although explodes Google searches for “Blythe Doll” are a testament to her current popularity Fashion brands and collector, American manufacturer Kenner originally discontinued them in 1973 after just one year on the market.

Still, some were intrigued. In 2000, photographer Gina Garan published a romantic photo book, This is Blythe, which presents Kenner’s earnest doll as a perfect model, posing in oversized sweaters, then topless and demure, peering through a veil of eyelashes. Junko Wong, president of Japanese advertising agency CWC, saw these gauzy photos, blurry as if they were coated in vanilla lip balm, and “could feel the potential of it [Blythe] as a cultural icon,” she told the website Plastic and Plush in the year 2005.

Wong re-released her “Neo-Blythe” through CWC in 2001 and the doll has been expertly using hypnosis ever since. “I found out about it through YouTube videos [about four years ago]”, 66-year-old Marna Kazmaier, who runs the information website Whimsical Blythesays Polygon. “They were not appealed to me first of all. But one day – I don’t know why – they were just very appealing. I immediately bought one online.”

Kazmaier now has a lot of custom-made and already sold Blythes. Her collection includes some original Kenner dolls (these have a resale value of up to about $1,000), dolls from the Ashton Drake and Takara companies (both valued at about $300), and a doll from the Good Smile Company, which currently makes $160 dolls for Blythe’s official online store, June moon.

Kazmaier’s colorful collection represents the typical shopping experience for a Blythe enthusiast. Like gaming PCs, Magic the Gathering Cards, fancy headphones and other geek fare: Blythe dolls enjoy a niche but thriving online marketplace. A potential buyer can pick genuine Blythes straight from the Junie Moon vine — now made in limited quantities and only in Japan — or buy one of several iterations from a vintage dealer for around $200. But the world of custom-made Blythes allows fans’ imaginations to stretch far beyond what can be found in Junie Moon’s straightforward online store. Careful scouring of eBay, Etsy, and Instagram reveals purchasable dolls with sensual airbrushed faces, four sets of custom blinking eyes, poseable body parts, and studio-level outfits.

Pre-made custom-made dolls typically cost $300 to $800, although the dolls also often cost between $1,000 and $2,000 based on the materials used and the number of hours invested in their creation. The really high-end stuff – flying hair made from Angora goat wool, hand-sewn lace dresses, Leonardo DiCaprio replicas The revenant – can retail for up to $5,000.

This may sound like a huge fuss about dolls… and it is within the Centuries old Doll collecting community. Members of the relatively new Monster High Doll The fandom rarely alters its dolls beyond a $200 paint job, and fans of one of the oldest collectible dolls, the Kewpie Cherub, which went into production in 1912, tend to stick them in $5 hand-knit onesies at most. But according to collectors, Blythe dolls exert an unrepeatable maternal appeal among avid collectors. It’s all in her world-sized eyes.

“When I saw those big, swaying eyes, I couldn’t resist adding them to my collection,” Natalie Preston, the 37-year-old New Yorker behind the Etsy collectibles shop WonderTreasures, tells me. “Her biggest appeal to me is her shifty eyes. The fact that she has four different eye positions makes her more lively and expressive than a static doll. She can evoke different personalities or moods with the pull of her string.” These flickering eyes offer collectors a more robust and intimate customization experience than any other doll on the market. Blythe makes women realize their dreams down to the last detail, and she is more real than one Designer baby.

Graphics: Matt Patches/Polygon | Source image: eBay

But “some people will say that the only true Blythe dolls are Kenner’s original 1972 creations,” according to a 2022 release Toy Box Philosopher post Explains the difference between real and “fake” Blythes. Other people buy relatively cheaper “factory” Blythes, or imitation dolls “that are marketed as made from ‘real factory parts.'” ICY Blythes have, as Toy Box Philosopher puts it, “chubbier cheeks and more almond-shaped eyes.” “, while the “DBS doll”, a fake from the Chinese company Zhongshan Debisheng Toys, has different dimensions.

These so-called imitations may or may not be a scourge; it depends on the Blythe collector you talk to. Kazmaier tells me that she personally “doesn’t refer to Blythe dolls as ‘stock’ or ‘fakies.’

“Both words seem completely wrong to me for dolls,” she says.

June Moon sells lots of crafts Eye chips ($5), Dresses (up to $138) and Custom airbrush dolls (up to $900) also in its authentic window display. But Trish, a 52-year-old web designer who sells custom-made Blythes through her website adorable, is specifically looking for “inexpensive factory dolls” from China to be used for more customization. Hunting is a luxury. “I spent $700 on dolls alone,” says Trish, and thousands on raw materials and art supplies.”

Abigail Rigby, who runs custom Blythe shop The Quill and Clay, tells me that her most expensive modified doll cost her “about $1,300” and a month of her time. For Rigby, working on a doll generally requires “sanding, carving, sanding, sanding, and more sanding” of the patient face until she gets to the “fun part,” the color for which she might use PanPastels, Sennelier oil pastels, colored uses pencils and acrylics, among other mixed media.

“Every Blythe customizer has their own way of doing things,” says Preston. She has been modifying Blythes since 2012 (“I loved that her head was easy to remove,” says Preston), initially using them as catalog models for the doll clothes she sold on Etsy.

“I don’t usually start with a plan,” she continues. “It’s pretty easy to damage a doll’s face if your Dremel slips, you sand down too much, or the plastic chips because it’s brittle. I think a lot of customizers get caught up in these little “mistakes” and that’s what gives each doll its unique personality.”

“The carving process usually takes the longest,” says 31-year-old Nancy of Etsy shop BlytheDreamsCo. Nancy sells fully modified Cherubic Blythes, a process in which eyelashes are changed and placed individually and eye chips are handmade, as she notes in one doll’s description. She packages a Blythe by “painting the face and refining all the little details before a doll is finished.”

But it’s an enjoyable affair, say Blythe’s fitters, and it bursts the shimmering boundaries of their imagination like bubbles.

“I have this funny little fantasy belief that everyone [doll] finds her real mother (and vice versa),” says Trish. She remembers a doll she made last year named Gracie. The woman who bought her thought that stumbling upon the doll might be a sign that the sun was peeking through the clouds. Her childhood friend Gracie had died a few years earlier, she said, and Gracie the girl looked just like Gracie the doll.

“I still get goosebumps when I think about it,” says Trish.

Moments like this—tender moments that connect women of all ages over falling in love with Blythe’s bizarrely large eyes—make modifying Blythe a worthwhile hobby.

“People outside the community can watch it [customizing Blythes] with a certain stigma and make comments about how “creepy” it is,” says Preston, recalling that she was known as the “creepy doll girl” at her high school after she started collecting them in 1999. “But people in the community have a fundamental understanding of what makes us all the same: a sense of wonder and excitement about all the possibilities of our creativity.”

Plus, “the women and men I know who collect Blythe are generally at an age where we don’t care what people think of us,” says 43-year-old Beth Ramsden, who publishes doll customization guides on Youtube. “I think Blythe seems to fit this non-conformist mindset with her 70s retro style and oddly shaped head!”

“Sometimes it’s scary,” Preston reflected. But “being scary is fun too.”