That’s right! Another f*cking Alice.
Fantastic Alice, Another Alice, Lunatic Alice, Romantic Alice Blue, Romantic Alice Pink, Alice du Jardin. And this one looks even less original than the previous iteration, seeming to be a flowery print version of the romantic Alice outfits, with a face that is….eh at best. Romantic Alice had a faceup that looked like a faded version of Blanche, but was at least nice. Alices are now being reased at a rate of more than one per year.

The eyelashes bother me. It’s like they took Romantic Alice’s lower eyelashes and then scribbed some more on top, in a different color/style.

And what’s alice without another f*cking bunny? Aside from the many, many regular bunny editions, there has been Another Clock Rabbit, Another Soldier Rabbit, Lunatic Rabbit, White Rabbit, Romantic Rabbit, and now Rabbit du Jardin: the pastel easter-bunny edition. Isul’s face looks a bit better than usual, for once his eyebrows are somewhat normal looking.

Looks like they’re dividing up the Alice releases as they did with Romantic Alice, so this month’s Dal is not an alice, it is a ballerina:

And two outfit sets:

I usually try to be more optimistic about new releases, but yet another Alice set coupled with the re-release of older dolls is really grating on me. Pullips used to have a lot more variety. It wasn’t just lolita-collab-lolita-collab. There were pirates that looked like pirates, instead of ‘pirate lolita’ which is really straight gothic lolita with some ocean-y charms sewn on.

I have noticed that in the last year or so there are fewer and fewer pictures of new releases by owners online which I assume means fewer people buying them. Blame this on the economy if you want, but personally I COULD get new dolls, but the only new dolls I’ve gotten I’ve bought for the outfits and then sold the dolls or used them as custom bait because they were so ‘meh’.

Now, over time the style of doll faces has also changed. Older dolls had faces that were more stylized, newer dolls tend to be more like ball-jointed dolls, which also goes with the trend towards lolita dolls. I like ball jointed doll type faces, but after a couple they seem to blend into each other. The expression is always somewhere in neutral/cute/delighted face. There is very little personality, very little ‘energy’ that always defined pullips apart from other dolls.

I think one of the reasons I stayed in pullips so long when other people migrated to BJDs or Blythes was because I really do just like pullips. I don’t want a BJD head on a momoko-ripoff body. I have a couple of BJDs. They are gorgeous, but they’re just dolls. I have a blythe, too, and while she has a certain personality of her own, it is not the moxie of the pullip doll.

For a long time I’ve thought that they should bring back the old style pullips. Not the specific dolls, but the style of faceup, the moxie, the originality. Not on every release: There is nothing wrong with BJD type faces, either. Say 4 stylized dolls, 4 collabs, 4 BJD-type a year for regular releases. There are dozens of old prototypes people have been lamenting not being released for years–like the red-and-black bat girl prototype, or the second pirate who was originally shown with the Rovam prototype.

What we get is more lolitas differentiating themselves from other lolitas by slapping ‘Alice’ on them at least once a year to cash in on the ‘Alice’ fanbase, and then adding to the lack of originality by re-releasing some of the best selling old-style dolls in an obvious cash grab.

I know, I know: “If you don’t like it, don’t buy them.”
…well, I won’t. I already bought the old style dolls I liked. And I don’t generally buy new dolls because they’re all so very pretty and so very…forgettable. I suspect I’m not the only one, which might hint at why they are finally giving in to requests to re-release older editions to regain interest/sales when up until now the line has always been “all dolls are limited runs, when they’re sold out they’re sold out.”

Regeneration series 2012 start new project!
“Regeneration series (reprint)” Release of

Since its launch Pullip first of July 2003, Pullip series
Now has grown to more than 400 titles.
This is what growth there is in love with Pullip Kudasaru support of our series solely,
We are grateful to. Thank you very much.

In nearly 10 years of history, such as email and the following letter has been received from our fans,
Recently, a growing number that we dominated. We introduce some of them.

<1 e-mail submitted from users like>
“Could be seven or eight years ago became interested in the Pullip.
At the time I was a junior I did not want to buy a Pullip.
I started working, you could afford a little, get a product that is not historical.
Most of those auctions are expensive but I see they have ”
“From about three years ago, but now Pullip fans can get the product past.
Have them or can not reproduction? ”

And so on

E-mail you ※, We will be writing a letter excerpt, please understand we introduced

Among the over 400 titles are also a variety of situations at the time of sale,
From our fans, “the phantom” referred to by phrases like, some things very hard to get.
Until now we, reproduction was not made ​​any Pullip series.
However, these voices from people asked, seriously confronted,
What results can not be considered to meet,
From March 2012, some models,
“Regeneration series (reprint)” to be released in the form of we.

“Regeneration series (reprint)” is not reproduced “re-time items of products fine” is.
As of Pullip body has evolved, while making the best of the original
We have products that match today.
Specifically, in speaking Pullip, even with the 1st original body,
“Regeneration series (reprint)”, the body will adopt the current 4th,
With its well designed, some, re-use our fine.
Quantity for sale is limited to top 500 will be the world’s
Package for, “Regeneration series (reprint)” and special packages.

Will be released in late March 2012.
First of Regeneration series
Pullip / Fantastic Alice (the original, released July 2004)
Pullip / Fanatika (The original, released in January 2005)

Will be released late April 2012
Regeneration series second phase
Pullip / Moon (original) Pullip first model launched in May 2003!
Anne Pullip / (original, released in April 2004)

Regeneration series after the third bullet, we will be announced

This is similar to something that happened in the Blythe community, and I’m not especially happy with it, either.
Why am I not happy with it? Well, a few reasons:
1: pullips have always been marketed as being made in a limited quantity. They sell out, become hard to find, price fluctuates, etc as with all collectables. If you really love a doll you can still get it, it just takes work. So while this may be a cash grab disguised as pandering to new collectors, it is a bit of a slap in the face to more established collectors who saved up and scoured Japanese auctions sites to get that dream doll.
2: the dolls are all being re-released as type 4s. We don’t have any pictures yet, but for Moon, a type 1 doll with a shiny face and rooted scalp to be converted to a wigged type 4 doll that is probably matte, this is going to be strange. I adore my Moon, but she is not an attractive doll, stock. She also would look nothing like her original self with all these changes. As I demonstrated when I made my Faux Noir, a Noir with something as minor a difference as painted eyelids COMPLETELY changes the ‘personality’ of Noir.

3: People will still look for the original doll, either out of collector’s OCD or a desire for the older version which will look slightly different from the new version (I know some people who do not like the 2-part head mold and any dolls released on it) and this will make fraud/scamming/honest mistakes a lot more common.
4: I will now have to put up with new collectors going “I GOT A _______” for the sake of saying they got an old HTF doll. Let me explain. In any fandom, there is a certain type of person who shows up and immediately goes and buys the most expensive and sought after items so that they can achieve instant ‘status’ instead of because they actually like those particular dolls/ponies/transformers, whatever. They are generally VERY ANNOYING PEOPLE and the only solace I can take is that due to the cost of obtaining a “bragging rights” type of collection, there aren’t that many of them. This will remove some of that barrier. Joy.

So yeah. Not happy.

I mention this because I’m not especially talkative, especially online.  If I have something useful to add, I will.  If I don’t think I have anything to say that is either a) useful or b) interesting I tend to spare my fingers the typing and everyone else’s eyes the reading.  If I were a comedian, I would definitely be one of those “Don’t think I’m nearly as funny as I am” people.

I’m sure there are dozens of topics I could talk about that people would find interesting, just as there are dozens of topics I could talk abut that I don’t generally because I think most people would find it terribly boring.  Like my fascination with nail polish.  See?  I bet your eyes are already glazing over.

(suffer the sparkles!)

And yet there are blogs on nailpolish.  I’ve visited them.  To me, they are interesting because they are things I don’t already know.  However, this is not a website about nailpolish, it’s a website about customizing.  Therefore, to most people reading this, the nailpolish is not so interesting.

See the problem? I don’t blog for myself, because I already know everything I put in the articles and tutorials.  To me, most of the things I could write about are less interesting than reading an article on how to wet-marble nailpolish, because I don’t know how to do that and I already figured out how to do whatever it is I would be blogging about.

What’s the point of all this?  Feedback.  Specifically, if you all want to see more posts in the future, tell me what you want to see more of. Pictures of customs?  Random dissertations of the evolution of the pullip bust line?  The story of the time I accidentally shrunk a doll head?  Leave a comment here (or in whatever blogpost is most recent if that’s easier)or shoot me an email.

Next up: Romantic White Rabbit

It’s cute but… there have already been 2 alice dals in rabbit outfits as well as a regular rabbit dal release. The face is nice and all, but I was rather hoping for an outfit that wasn’t just like the other ones, except with stripes and plaid accents instead of solid colors.

Here’s the Barbara customs, which it turns out are a Japanese costume jewelry line. First is Yomi:

……………….ehm. Here’s a closer picture of her face:

My impression of Yomi is that she’s like a rough draft. Someone had an idea, threw it down, but didn’t do much refinement to make sure that the whole face went together. My second impression is: if they don’t have the bangs cut right on their prototype, good luck with the factory dolls! I remember the problems with Tezca’s bangs!

Finally, the Tae-Yang release is Ama:

“Unusual” is the word most people have used to describe him so far. I like unusual. Here’s a close-up of his face, too:

He seems a bit more coherent than the pullip design, and it is nice to have a tae yang who looks a little unusual as there are so many of them that are bland in the face. On the other hand, his eye makeup is a bit schizophrenic, too. The feathery heavy upper eye lashes take away from the streaky mascara lower lashes since they seem to be stylistically different, much like Yomi’s weird eyeshadow clashes with her halo fringe eyelashes. I don’t see any way how his wig is not going to be a monstrosity. His stock is nice, though.

All in all, it’s nice to see some new ideas, but the execution is a bit disappointing.

Let’s start the list off with Dal, and the only customizer I’ve heard of, Mr. @nai:

Considering this was his doll fair custom from last year, and most of his blythe customs are bright colors and interesting designs…I’m confused.

The boy this month is Isul, not taeyang. He comes with 6 shirts, which is awesome, but… well I can’t really tell anything else about him. It’s a really crappy picture, mostly black, and with those glasses on, I can tell he HAS a face… just not what it looks like.

Pullip’s concept, “Bloody Red Riding Hood” sounds interesting, and her dress looks like it could be cool, but… again, with this photo, I can’t tell a darn thing about the doll’s face, other than that she probably has black hair. Or dark brown.

All around, I guess the problem is that unless I’d read that they were customizer collabs, I never would have thought that these weren’t standard Groove release customs. Kinda bland.

I think I was mostly offline due to computer difficulties for the whole Isul release. I generally like Isul. I like that he’s a doll that looks like he should belong to the same group as Pullip/Taeyang/Dal. Unlike Byul. And since that was all I really wanted out of Isul, I’m happy. But I can’t help but wishing that I didn’t have to check the captions to figure out which one in this group is Pullip and which is Isul.

In other news, the computer I built had a defective part, which I had to isolate to figure which of the new case/motherboard/powersupply/ram/SSD/processor/etc was causing the USB ports to randomly fail. It was the motherboard. I hope. Anyway, I’m still waiting for a replacement motherboard, so yet another lull in all things photography. Which sucks, because I have some WIPs that need to be shared.

Just to get this out of the way: This is not going to be a happy post, mostly because I already think of 2010 as “The year everyone dicked around with Requiem” so if you don’t want to read bitching, don’t go behind the cut

1: The wrists. This is not doll-caused, but it had the effect of cutting down my hobby abilities to almost zero for most of the year, along with everything else in the world that includes my hands, up to and including being able to hold a fork during a couple of very bad periods.

2: Commissions. Every commission I took through the internet this year during the periods I could do a little bit of customizing went wrong in some way. Either the commissioner didn’t pay (once), delayed payment for six months (twice), or turned out to be utterly batshit insane (once), I have come to realize that I am way too nice and obviously need to change my way of doing business on the rare times I do do business. Resolution: from this point forward, I am going to have to be a lot stricter on these things. If you manage to get me to take a commission, I will no longer accept commissions for trades or partial trades unless I have done business with those people before. I will no longer allow people to delay paying for commissions until completion. A non-refundable downpayment will be made for supplies before any work is begun, and while I will continue to allow payment plans, work will only progress as payment plans are made (I.E. if you only want to pay x per month, I will only work x amount per month).

3. Trades. Not a single one went smoothly with people I haven’t dealt with before. Items in much worse shape than described, missing parts, traders randomly changing gender and identity in the process of trades. Resolution: Unless I’ve dealt with you before, it isn’t happening.

4. Volunteering to help strangers. This is going to sound very bad, but again, did it twice beyond standard ‘this is how you can fix that’ advice, both times the people I offered to help tried to lie to and cheat me. Resolution: I will still answer all the emails I get every week on repairing dolls and similar things, but that’s it. I’m not fixing people’s dolls for free anymore, sorry.

5. Selling. After all the issues with commissions and trades through doll forums I’ve had, I switched over to Ebay on the assumption that ebay is more binding and people actually have to pay for the things they buy or say they’ll buy. I think that possibly as a result of the new feedback system where sellers can’t leave negative feedback, this is no longer the case. I haven’t been paid for ANYTHING that was sold on ebay. Resolution: Will try Etsy, since they manage payments for you.

Good things that happened in 2010: I went to Chicago and PUDDLE. Established a chatroom for the website that forum people can hang out in which has been very entertaining and full of bizarre emoticons. Made the Dal Calendar and generally improved my photography since I got the new DSLR at the end of ’09. Did some really cool customs, even if they were few and far in between.  Corrective wrist surgery scheduled. Still not worse than 2008.

Their current stock is pretty depleted–well, by their standards. There’s still a TON of dolls, but I realize that their large assortment has spoiled me. The JP USA representative has turned over, so they’ve been a little late getting a restock in for the holidays, but they’re still hoping to put one through soon.

However… they still have some of their rares! Though their online store isn’t up yet, they do take orders over the phone and ship them. I think they are the only store that still has rares like Noir, Bianca, Leprotto, and some others in stock. Actually, Leprotto was on hold for someone already, which is why she wasn’t in the picture.

I also may have left with a new doll. Because… well, because. You can’t just go look at all the pretty dolls and not be tempted!

How awesome? This awesome:

Obviously words alone cannot describe the awesome, so go check it out!

This is MundoPullip.com, from an Argentinian “customizer”.  No, Sheryl Designs, Lovehaze, Kenji, and I have not merged into one person, moved to South America, and are now offering 50% down bargain customs.  WTF.  I use “customzier” in quotes because hey, with no examples, there’s no proof you’ll get your doll and/or money back if you aren’t a well-rounded collector and can recognize that the photos on the examples page are stolen.  Considering the influx of younger and younger collectors, this is not unlikely.  The person who initially posted about this website has noted that comments left on the website (I assume in the forum section) about the ‘examples’ being from other customizers are deleted, which makes this appear to be an intentional deception, not some kind of innocent mistake.

UPDATE: The photos have been taken down. The owner claims that she just opened a pullip store in Argentina and just wanted people to be able to see all the pretty pictures of customs. Also, that it’s completely not her fault because her competitor is sabotaging her, and implied that it was the competitor who stole the pictures, hacked her website, uploaded them, and then started spreading nasty rumors.   Since absolutely no one believed her, she had flickr remove the screenshot I took of the website (as far as I can tell, all of the photos were located and stolen from flickr).

However, this opens up an entirely new set of concerns.  For example, if the website wasn’t just a commission website and is actually a new pullip store, with all of the custom examples listed with no real differentiation from the promotional images on the factory doll page used to sell factory dolls… was this store trying to sell my dolls?

Whatever the situation, considering the contradicting stories the store issued, refusal to take responsibility for their actions, and trying to sweep the whole controversy under the rug by having flickr delete the screencapture/copyright infringement reporting information, I would not trust this store with my credit card number.