Website “Window Shopping” XD – Mandarake

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Amy

So I guess I’m “re-discovering” Mandarake after hearing someone gush about a new dolly purchase they made through them. Considering I’m always late to the party it seems, I’m sure everyone knows about this place, but if you don’t then keep reading, heck keep reading even if you do know cause it’s fun! :D

I had already known about Mandarake and in fact I had ordered used manga from them back in the day when I was a more avid collector of manga. Apparently however back then I never bothered with any other sections of their site, and in truth I was not much interested in dolls back then either. Now that I am revisiting I am discovering they have this huge inventory of pre-owned toys and dolls, that I have been happily browsing for about an hour. In my idle browsing I have discovered that they sell a great deal of second hand Pullips, Dals and Blythes among other things. The Pullips and such though I found surprising because for example I saw a hard to find old Namu doll still in his box going for about $80ish, and an old Pullip Street going for a little less. Now I know that many collectors have paid quite a lot more for those dollies before, and even presuming you tack on EMS shipping, I think you’ll still pay less than you would finding those dolls on the secondhand market here in the US. With this said I think it’s possible to get a good dolly deal if you know what you’re looking for and keep track of the going market.

Aside from finding the occasional bargain, Mandarake also appears to have lots of vintage doll goods. There’s plenty of old school Liccas and Jennies to go around as well as a bunch of older dolls I don’t even recognize. Of course Mandarake knows when they have a good vintage item, so there will be no bargains there….then again I don’t know the going rate for a lot of those types of dolls, so I could be wrong. There’s also a ton of other little toys and knick knacks piled onto those pages, for example I just came across an old 50s bunka style doll, and a cute little egg shaped dollhouse chair, all for reasonable prices and I know it’s nothing I can never find around here. So basically if you have time to kill and some spare moo-lah in your wallet you might go have a browse to see what you can see. ;)

Fufufu….to be honest I’m scouting for something in particular, but I’m gonna keep quiet about it so I don’t jinx anything. ;) Here is the link: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ enjoy! <3

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Sleepy eyed tinies

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Amy

I am such a fan of the sleepy/dreamy eyed tinies, and this new Rustle of Spring Modigli is no exception! Aside from mooning over MSDs, I’ve also been researching and considering getting a 20-30cm tiny that I could use with “The Big House”. XD The sleepy eyed Modigli has I think just the right amount of openess in her eyes if that makes sense. Her eyes are closed enough to have a sweetly dreamy look, but also open enough to let the eyes shine. Modigili’s lips also have nice volume and pout to boot. :D The only thing I find fault with in the iMda 3.0 is the body. The body starts out well enough at the top as it doesn’t have the chunkiness of most tinies of this size, and then the fact that she has some semblance of hips is nice, but she definitely has thunder thighs! I guess I shouldn’t be too critical since I have a Dollmore Kid, all of whom have thunder thighs, but in iMda 3.0 it starts looking like it’s a beginner Puns….well this is just my opinion. ^^; So with all this said I still find that my favorite 20-30cm tiny body is Pipos with it’s twig legs and the option for a large bust. However their new body which takes away the lower torso joint leaves a little bit to be desired. :(


Speaking of Pipos, their Dreaming Mari was really the first tiny I ever became interested in. This is mainly because of her incredibly cranky look and slightly more mature face. My only concern with Dreaming Mari is that her eyes almost seem too closed so I worry that it might be difficult to get good photos, and she probably shouldn’t have lashes. As I said before though I think the Pipos body is aesthetically superior, though I can still appreciate the Littlefee Body which also has twiggy legs. My only problem with Littlefees are that their faces are a little too babyish for my taste and you also see so gosh darn much of them. I swear there are probably enough Antes out there to start an army big enough to invade a small country. XD Anyhow I think I’m rambling at this point so I will go ahead and cut this posting here. I still have more MSDs I’d like to blabber on about, but that will be for another post. ;)

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Oh dear, more beautiful MSD

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Amy

It’s been a while since my last posting, and as usual I’ve been busy with my comic work, or more recently struggling with sleep issues. Anyhow I’ve gotten the dolly bug again, for better or worse, lol. I remember reading about Dreaming Doll’s MSD girls Misora and Airi a while back on BJD Collectasy and I remember being super impressed with them, especially Misora, however I was not in a position at that time to purchase a doll. Though considering dolls are a luxury item and in this bad economy is there really ever a time when we’re in a good position to buy a doll? XD I guess the money I’ve been sitting on in my bank account has begun to burn a hole through it’s virtual wall, because I find myself going dolly window shopping again (which is usually a precursor to buying ^^;;;). So it is now that I have rediscovered these fine MSD ladies.

I think I really like Misora the best, but it might just be the dark eyes and cute wig that are drawing me in, as I have a thing for dark eyes. I haven’t been able to dig up too many owner pics of them yet because they are still fairly new on the scene AND everyone seems very taken with Airi, who is also darling with her little teefers. The thing that puts me off Airi though is it seems her eye fills her whole socket so they just look like black pits. HOWEVER, I did find some owner pictures of her where a girl tried 12mm eyes instead of 14mm which seemed to solve that problem, and it put Airi in a new light for me. Anyway the current free shipping offer is tempting along with the fact that they have a lot of TTYA and Nine Style clothing available for purchase on their site. Oh but derp, do I really need another MSD girl? On the one hand, they’ve got clothes and wigs to share, on the other hand, they are MSD and thus can’t play in the dollhouse. XD I’ll dwell on it a little more and hope the free shipping bonus doesn’t go away too soon!

EDIT: I just looked back through my older posts to see when I last purchased a doll and I came to realize that it appears I’ve been buying a doll a year since 2010, except in 2011 I bought Ash and my Brownie. With that said, I guess I’m due for a doll purchase, lol. XD

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Color Matches for Rainbow Dash’s Hair.

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Amy

So my nylon pony hair arrived from Dolly Hair the other day and I must say I’m pretty happy with my selections. There were only a couple slight misses I think in the matching department, but it really doesn’t matter so much since I have enough hair to redo more than one Rainbow Dash. Anyway I had to use my old camera to take these pics, so they may not be the best, but hopefully they will be good enough to help you choose the proper hair color.

This color photographs more like a dark orange, but this color, Pomme de Amour is actually a very warm true red that matches the red on Rainbow Dash’s factory mane extraordinarily well. As you can see, even though it’s orangey in the picture, that it still matches perfectly with her mane.

I decided to order the color called “Nectarine” for Dash’s orange color, and it’s a pretty close match. The differences are that Dash’s factory mane is just slightly lighter and a little less vivid than nectarine. I’m not sure I have any suggestions for which other colors to try, but there is a new shade called Marmalade at Dolly Hair that I wonder if it might be a better match. If anyone has this hair and has compared it, feel free to leave a comment and share any info you may have!

So the color I ordered for the yellow was called “Napalm”, and I feel it is a very close match. If you mix her default factory hair with napalm you really won’t be able to tell the difference between the fibers. If there is any difference between these two colors it would be that napalm is a teeny tiny bit lighter and more brilliant, but I really have to scrutinize to see it.

Ironically this color, “Key Lime Green” was the most agreed upon green color to match Dash’s factory mane at this forum I visited to gather research. As you can see from the image, so far it is the worst matching color of the bunch….booo! Key lime green is much more vivid and green that leans into the yellow side of the spectrum, more than Dash’s factory default mane which you can see leans more into the blue spectrum of the greens. Unfortunately I don’t really have an idea of what would be a better match because “Unlucky Clover” and “Lucky Clover” look a little too sea green, “Sour Apple Martini” is described as being more fluorescent and vivid than Key Lime, so that’s obviously the wrong direction. Anyway again, if anyone has any experiences with matching Dash’s green hair, please feel free to add your input in the comments!

To be honest I really wanted to order the shade “Bluberry Muffin” to try for a Rainbow Dash match, but since it was sold out I decided to go with “Water Nixie” which was yet another suggestion I had seen on a pony forum. As you can see in the picture, Dash’s blue hair is a little less vibrant and slightly lighter than Water Nixie. I still think Water Nixie is a lovely color if you are replacing Dash’s blue altogether, but if you are really trying to match her factory color I am still going to suggest giving Blueberry Muffin a try since it is described as being a lighter version of Water Nixie on the Dolly Hair site and so I think it might just be the perfect match. ;)

So the final color I ordered was “Sour Grapes” which was another color I had seen suggested on various forums. Sour grapes is a pretty close match to the factory original violet. The only problem with it is that sour grapes is is a little more vibrant and shiny….to be honest Dash’s default violet hair looks kinda dull next to sour grapes, so I would suggest going ahead and just replacing her old violet. However if you don’t want to do that, I think sour grapes is a passable match.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll post more of my adventures in customizing my Rainbow Dash in the future as I make more progress on her. :)

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My Little Pony G4 head removal and etc..

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Amy

Well I’ve been bitten by the Pony bug now too after watching the Friendship is Magic series that has the absolute best stylization of the ponies to date in my opinion. My favorite pony is Rainbow Dash but unfortunately her toy looks hardly anything like her as you can see in the pic above. Many of the characters from the series suffer from poor toy design but I consider Rainbow Dash being on of the worst. XP

It should be clearly evident from the pic, which is Dash straight out of the carton, that her mane is styled nothing like her character, AND on top of that her mane nor her tail contain a full rainbow, but instead Hasbro cheated and made her tail teal and violet, while her mane is red thru green. Other problems with the Rainbow Dash figure are that her eyes look a little more like Fluttershy’s and she only has a cutie mark on her right flank, while her left remains blank. :/

So with all of that said, I’ve decided to embark on a customizing project to try to make Rainbow Dash actually look something like Rainbow Dash. The first thing you have to do then is remove the head.

For anyone whose ever removed a head from a doll or toy before, this is super easy. It’s just a simple peg through the hole and you should be able to just pull it right off in a couple of seconds, no biggie. Getting the head-plug out of the neck hole on the other hand is another matter. If you examine your headless pony, you will see that the head plug is a hard plastic, surrounded by the soft pliable plastic of the pony body. The goal here is to separate the two at the seam where they are glued together.

So, I have read some tutorials where people just cut the plug out around the seam using an exacto knife, and I think that will work fine, but for me, I prefer to use objects that are a little less sharp if at all possible since I am accident prone. If you are also accident prone or you do not have an exacto knife then my method should work for you! The first thing I do is I take my blowdryer and on the hottest setting I direct the hot air at the neck. The reason to do this is that it softens up the plastic and makes it easier to insert a knife or other object between the body plastic and the plug plastic. The tool I used, as you can see from the picture, was a small clay carving tool. This tool has a slightly curved bladed tip that you really can’t hurt yourself with. Anyway while your pony’s neck is all nice and warm, you want to find a good spot to carefully force your tool between the body and the plug, then, as if you are cutting out a circle, follow the plug all the way around until you make a complete circuit. If you went deep enough you should be able to wiggle the plug out of the neck now. If it’s still good and stuck, then apply the blow dryer heat and try again. I say it’s always best to be cautious and take your time rather than hurry and make an irreparable mistake.

And now here is Dash getting her tail removed. Once you get the plug out, you’ll easily be able to find the tail inside. All you have to do is take pliers or a curved tool to grab ahold of the tail loop and pull it out. The above pic is Dash with her tail half removed. I just fished the tail out with the carving tool I used to remove the head plug with.

And here’s Dash now, mostly taken apart. I haven’t cut her mane yet as I need to order some pony hair to work with, and I don’t want to deal with keeping track of a loose pony mane until I’m ready to sit down and re-root her. I will probably post a continuation of this tutorial later when I re-root if it will be helpful to anyone. Well, have fun customizing everypony! XD

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