Hello, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. I have debated with myself about disclosing this information. I know I have done something like this before, but this situation is quite different. With your leave, I’d like to borrow your attention for a little bit. I am not in control of when this message will be posted, but I hope it reaches those ears for whom this would be of some benefit in time.
A friend of mine, situated in Asia, had bought into the first release of the “Escape Plans” blind box dolls. The dolls have been released in Asia, but it seems that they have not yet arrived anywhere else. Unfortunately, due to the corner-cutting enacted by the production factory, this release of dolls has been wrought with defects and imperfections.
Mod: some images from above link, looks like it is a thread showing the quality issues:
I have seen Weibo texts from the designer. These defects occurred because of the factory who manufactured them (I suppose they went with the cheapest option available, and the manufacturers were unable to deliver at the same quality of the samples). The designer is also quite distressed over these imperfections, but they have decided to choose the path of ghosting those who complained. Their “aftercare service” channel now only responds with a canned message advising all buyers that they can choose to not accept the deliveries in order to get a refund. The creative team had refused to answer any other questions (including questions from buyers outside of China who cannot use this process to apply for a refund.) At the moment, my friend had decided to ask for a refund from her agent.
I know there are still people who want one of these dolls and are willing to overlook the imperfections. Some are willing to take the girls home to “fix” them. I do not want to stop anyone who likes these girls and want to have them regardless. I also don’t want the agents to lose out on potential sales because of the faults of the factory. However, I would not be able to rest easy without at least trying to warn someone about these flaws before they made up their minds to purchase these boxes. So… I am doing it here. Tell me you won’t mind, would you, folks?
Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon has to be my favorite person on this confession blog. They're always so nice. I hope their dolls never yellow and that their wigs are always perfectly styled and that the outfits they buy never tear.
Hello, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. First of all, I’d like to say a fond thank you to everybody here at the blog. Thank you for sharing your opinions, your preferences and your take on everything doll-related. I still believe that we do best trying to learn from the people around us, no matter who they might be; while our visions may differ, our passion for these objets d’art do not waver.
I would also like to say thanks for the anons here who take time to read the long posts I’ve been writing. More importantly, I need to extend my appreciation to the anons who believe in me to bring them information from Asia. I can’t say I am a very gossip-prone person. But thanks to your trust in me, I get to discover new information that would’ve escaped my casual glances as well. Either way, thank you all for your ongoing confidence in me. I really appreciate it.
Perhaps most important of all, I need to extend a heart-felt thank you to the Mod. We can be an unruly crowd at times, with strongly-held beliefs couched in words that can be less-than-kind. Thank you for tolerating our vocal outburst and the occasional heated discussions. And thank you so very much for always being here for us to the best of your abilities. I know we say this from time to time, but I mean it: Mod, you are one of those folks that I am thankful for at this time; end of a year, end of an era, really. (Mod: thank you so much Anon!)
I am not American, but I do have relatives who are. One of our common threads of conversation lingers on the upcoming strife and uncertainty. While scholars speculate and politicians pontificate, at the end of the day the people who have to suffer the lean years and the fearful futures are still people like us, just the normal folks. The people who make the decisions will never be the ones who will be affected. It is up to us, the common, everyday people, the 99% if you will, to find a way to band together and help each other out. We have a lot more in common than we realise, I think; but it’s easy to let our nationalities, our identities, our laws and our opinions get in the way of us realising that. Our divisions help the 1% to extract everything from us, even down to the little things that give us joy. But if we reach out to each other simply as one human being to another, I am sure we will find that we share more things in common than we are led to think.
On that note, I am fully aware that the upcoming couple of years will keep us on our toes and keep us awake at night. We’ll have to come face to face with our FOMO and our relationship with our wishes and desires. That’s me included, too (in the spirit of full disclosure, I do live in a country that is being threatened by the US’s foreign policies – it’s a long list; there are a lot of us…). As long as we remember to treat each other like someone who are in our own shoes, we’ll always find a place here. Here, we’re just one doll collector to another, with sympathetic ears and open arms. That’s my New year’s resolution, anyway. Anyone feeling like joining me?
Hello, folks. This is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. I am starting to feel like I sound like bad news bears, so I would like to make my stance clear here. I have nothing against blind box dolls – heaven knows, I have a couple of them, too. It’s just unfortunate that I keep on encountering troubling news when it comes to blind box dolls, it seems. Please bear with me, would you?
Now, I need to introduce you to an... old friend. While we all know the resin recaster and his myriad of companies, I think I have brought up the vinyl recaster, DBS, a few times before as well. As a refresher, DBS is a toy company that specializes in vinyl and ABS toys. They bill themselves as the creators of “proudly MiC” toys for the next generation. However, their dolls have been found to be “recasted” from resin into vinyl and they have been plagiarising from several different companies, from Koreans to down-home Chinese. The MäyTrëë line of blind boxes were rejected by the BJD community because while the original designer was independent, the dolls were made by one of the DBS companies and was thought to be one of their subsidiaries. (more information here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/727751969206304768/hello-anon-this-is-your-oldie-chinese-diaspora )
With that as a preamble, let me introduce you to the “Inedible Rabbits” dolls (Well, these ones: https://www.kikagoods.com/products/moon-jumping-time-bunny-series-1-12-action-figure-bjd-blind-box?variant=44766128931050 ). Similar to the “Escape Plan” dolls, they were created by a team of newbies who first 3D-printed their designs and pitched them to what’s akin to a Chinese-version of a Kickstarter called Modian. During the crowdfunding period, people can pre-order these dolls while the team running the KS maintain regular updates, chase goals, changes to the designs, etc. The final production is usually outsourced to a factory. The team is, in theory, working with the team all the way until delivery. I still vaguely remember someone asking “why aren’t there KS campaigns for dolls?” Well, you’re about to find out why… it wasn’t the price or the long production time, There’s a lot more to it.
As with the “Escape Plan” team, there’s a gap between the final products when compared to the samples (https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/756541155738615808/一万次出逃计划开箱-避雷快跑哔哩哔哩bilibili ). One of the problems that was encountered by the buyers from the Escape Plan Team was that they have gone AWOL when people started to receive their dolls and started complaining. With the Inedible Rabbit Team however, my sources reported worse issues with communication. The creative team was not only unresponsive most of the time but they would block anyone who even asked benign questions. We also found out that the creative team behind the Inedible Rabbits did not apply to become a company prior to establishing their KS. It means that all of the transactions are considered personal (think F&F). With their frequent and wilful blocking of people, there are a lot of donors who are worried about how shady their behaviour is.
This is the latest expose from a Chinese source: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e00cce000000001e01903f?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.52&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=normal&xsec_token=CBUsqAi70IwpfK_-OZEZS28zESD2e88FIMRgVnkEaN3D8=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODlFNzlGND02NzUyOTgwNjg5OTc7Szk8&apptime=1725972303&share_id=49435c4b26604cbe8cd6fd49fc41db11 And this is a summary by a Taiwanese proxy: https://www.plurk.com/p/3gac0e1qck (please feel free to use a Google Translator to help you)
The Taiwanese Plurk mentioned that the clothes of the dolls were made by the infamous DBS. This was discovered from a video that the Inedible Rabbit Team posted on their social media showing the interior of their outsourced factory that made clothes for them. (can be seen here: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e26d2a000000001e0193cc?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.53&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=video&xsec_token=CBaBewvBjppksg843In6KcCKwy5e3Tbv8rN-f9ARvjXks=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODYzRUU9PTw2NzUyOTgwNjY0OThISEtL&apptime=1726233161&share_id=189d6a99974941f899342c780b0e8890 ) At the 0:12 timestamp, a box with the DBS logo was shown very briefly in a pan-over shot. (seen here: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e283db0000000027002ca0?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.53&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=normal&xsec_token=CBaBewvBjppksg843In6KcCK1D4UzhNUD8Fm5_7tph_yA=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODYzRUU9PTw2NzUyOTgwNjY0OThISEtL&apptime=1726233089&share_id=9de63adea9b14bd191309c996ed2bc29 ) Thanks to this discovery, a lot of the collectors and donators who also own resin BJDs are asking for refunds because they do not want to be associated with DBS in the fear of being seen as pro-recast. Thanks to people pulling out of the KS, the proxy has informed me that some of the unlocked stretch goals would most likely be rescinded. She is afraid that if too much of the funds get pulled out, the creative team may just pack up and do a rug pull with the money. Thanks to the fact that they never registered as a company, if they run, there’s basically no way to get that money back.
I do not want to be seen as someone who stands in others’ way of having a good time and earning money. But I also cannot stay quiet when I know that blind box dolls are a lot of new collectors’ gateway into resin BJD. This is akin to me knowing that something is a recast but fail to warn the new comers ahead of time. If anyone gets looked down upon or rejected from a group due to association with a doll that uses DBS clothes, I don’t think I can quite live with myself. So… thank you very much for lending your ears to me once more. I know full well that I do not have the ability to change anyone’s mind, but at least I can sleep better knowing that I have tried my best to tell you what I know.
Post Script: On September 14th, the creative team behind Indedible Rabbits posted their first public apology: https://www.modian.com/project/update/detail/161340 They promised to create a business account and becoming more accountable. They also stated that despite the factory video they are not in collaboration with DBS. It's up to you to decide if you want to believe the team. end!)
Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon, if you are reading this, help me understand the CN drama with imomo please! I'm reading that some of their high
This is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™ This is the second part to me trying to detail Imómó’s recent troubles. Some of the issues are trivial while others are quite grievous. It’ll be a bit of a jog, but let’s take it together, you and I.
The first stop is another anonymous whistle-blower who came up to accuse Water of something that I have never heard before.
This person claimed to have worked as DZ and DC’s artistic director. He invited Water in as a collaborator before and thought very highly of her skill and her integrity. Unfortunately for him, a victim reached out to him to let him know that they have been sold the design of a body that is over 90% similar to the Mimi Dog design that’s been made and sold by Imómó (this one:
This goes above and beyond recasting and is absolutely _verboten_ since it makes legit buyers of either “sculpt” end up looking like they bought counterfeits and recasts. Ex-director had screenshots he had with the victim. This made him look like he was complicit in the scheme, and he’s really angry. Other buyers have also popped up to comment that Water had claimed that her sculpts were sold off by “Her boss” in the past (about 2-3 years before this incident) but now it looks like she simply sold the same sculpt to two different companies and tried to play the victim. She was the sole proprietor at the time (which was traced by whistle-blower #2) and there was no “boss”. This is also mentioned in the next XHS link below, too.
The second stop along the way is the quality control for Imómó. Over the last year or so, people have mentioned that the headbacks were of a different colour with a bad fit that was obviously wrong for the face sculpt. (This was mentioned in an earlier XHS post:
As Ex and the two whistle-blowers revealed, the reason why the headbacks do not fit was because they were never meant for the rest of the head sculpt. The headbacks were left overs from previous shipments and the factories were trying to use them up since they weren’t getting paid, so they did not want to make more doll parts for free. This eventually led to more shoddy workmanship because the factories were working for free.
Due to this incident, a lot of the older unboxing and reviews started to float up to the surface as well. People are trying to find out just when did this embezzlement issue really start. For example, this buyer showed off her doll’s shoddy quality back in 2023:
She also mentioned that she bought this head from SWDolls and wants people to avoid both of them. Perhaps it’s just me, but it does seem that these two entities are entangled with each other in some ways. SWDolls is an agent for many, if not all of the Chinese brands, but their names are not attached to anyone in specific like this one is.
And finally, if you have been here for a while, you may have remembered me talking about the problems with PVC as a doll material as well as some issues found on an unboxing of a larger PVC doll (found here:
Hello, folks of the TBC, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️ again. I think this may be one of those rarer cases where I am not going
This is from a different company, of course, but the same issue had been raised with Imómó’s larger vinyl dolls as well. Unfortunately, the results can be hilariously sad:
天杀的这个体子怎么会凹下去 #bjd #bjd私养 #大人也要玩玩具
(The neck and shoulder area had sunken into the torso. This is usually due to the vinyl being too thin and cannot fully counteract the stress from the strings. I am not sure why there are marks on the skin in the neck and the abdomen area, but I think we can agree the workmanship is quite bad. Maybe this is the “revenge of the poor factories”, but either way, it’s a bad look.
Step 3 has something to do with the relatively anonymous world of the Internet. This XHS user called out a new company called “Niji Doll” for the extremely high similarities between their doll heads and the Imómó head:
Niji Doll is another “Three-nothings” stores with a lot of secrecy behind it. There are now people who think that Water is actually selling her doll designs to other brands as an exit strategy. This one is left last because there are way too many speculations involved. But I think it’s a good idea to include this for completion’s sake.
That seems to be where the story ends, for the moment anyhow. I will keep an eye out for more exposé should any arise. It’s not exactly up to me to say if I believe the official Imómó channels or a nameless, faceless (and obviously disgruntled) person like Ex here, but I do have my suspicions. Like I said at the beginning, this is a case of a “Bad business with a good product”. Should the owner stick to decent, good business practices, there is a bright future for vinyl dolls like the one he sells. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it’s hardworking factories and their employees as well as the guileless buyers who ended up being the final victims. And this is just sad all around.
Hello, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. For the new folks here: welcome. I am “that guy” who posted a series of “black history” regarding Rîng Döll. (Hi, Anon https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/752379256585207808/anyone-know-how-to-find-that-one-old-post-about You’re looking for what I wrote earlier? You can find most of them here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/715706495130566656/hello-everybody-this-is-the-oldie-chinese with the latest one regarding the company in question here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/733744328599617537/hello-anon-this-is-your-oldie-chinese-diaspora ) Hope this helps!
Now, https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/752384817713315840/i-keep-forgetting-what-ringd0ll-did-only-to , I have a little secret to tell you. It was something I had planned to post a few months back but never got around to it, but now is as good of a time as any. You see… when it comes to the CCP stance of “China is indivisible” (a.k.a “Tibet and Taiwan both belong to China”), Rîng Döll is far from alone. During the 2020 HK uprising, virtually every Chinese dollmaker had posted – in Chinese, of course – on their social media some version of “China is indivisible”, “Taiwan/Tibet belongs to China”, etc. From the screenshots I have collected, both companies and individual artists have voiced these sentiments and pretty much every name you can think of has posted this stance. What made Rîng stand out is that they also posted this sentiment to their FB in English. That’s the only reason why the people outside of Asia know of their politics.
We make decisions based on what we know, but also how we feel, and as I always liked to say, “your mileage may vary.” The more you know doesn’t always translate to a change in your behaviour, and other people’s response to your decisions may or may not affect you. I remember someone here on the blog mentioned that they were dismayed that people still flock to Rîng for their “official” danmei characters despite knowing their political stance. I see people here lament that they liked the SmD pear body in spite of the knowledge that the company owner has a lot of skeletons in his closet. At the end of the day, the choice to separate the art from the artist is an individual choice, one that is yours to make and yours alone. Even the OCDA™️ is neutral when it comes to other people’s choices in life, despite being personally affected. I like to think that I make the choices that are right for me, and I extend that goodwill to everybody else, too.
Right… one final tip if some vocal commentators choose to bother you: apparently there’s a “good until” date for RD. If your acquisition is prior to the day they posted that infamous FB post, apparently folks will cut you some slack. I think the same goes with second hand RD dolls as well. It might help?
Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon, if you are reading this, help me understand the CN drama with imomo please! I'm reading that some of their high
This is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™ You called, and I will try my best for you. This, unfortunately, is a case of a “Bad business” more than anything else. Unfortunately, when a bad business produces a good product, it’s going to hurt a lot of people. This is also the first time I have to break what I had to say into two parts. There’s a lot of information here, unfortunately. Please bear with me.
First of all, I’m going to remind you of something I wrote about a year ago (https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/733269616582868992/ ) What happened this time is not the first time Imómó had been called out for suspicious behaviour. Previously dissatisfied customers accuse Imómó of shady business tactics (an offshore business address, essentially cooking the books with phony receipts as well as using sock-puppet accounts to spam their own chat-groups to downplay complaints as well as bad-mouthing the competition). These were corroborated by several different customers who showed screenshots. (Sharing screenshots are considered a socially-acceptable form of proving your words. You’ll see them a lot in this kind of disputes.)
This time, the story started with Imómó’s official Weixin channel sending out an urgent “Caution” release. According to the official spokesperson, there had been a robbery at their warehouse, resulting in a loss of a number of moulds as well as some half-finished vinyl and resin dolls. The official spokesperson wanted their customers to be aware of buying their dolls online and wanted them to be diligent in checking their orders with the official Imómó team. This is when the ex-shareholder whistle-blower showed up on XHS.
According to this person (we’ll call him the Ex), there was never a robbery. The reason why the moulds were “lost” was because they factories that produce the dolls have held them hostage. (
Why would the factories hold the moulds hostage, you ask? It’s because the owner of Imómó (let’s call him HipHop) embezzled an unknown amount of money to the point that Imómó owes about 3 million RMB (about $43,000USD) to the individual factories that produced the dolls. Holding the moulds hostage was their last resort to get HipHop to pay up. Ex showed screenshots of internal Weixin messages to prove that he was, indeed, a member of the Imómó operating team. The screenshots also purported to show signs that HipHop used shell companies and sold their uses to the rest of the operating team as a way to save money. Now that things are imploding, HipHop changed his tune and said the shells were only there as placeholders. It’s Ex’s belief that HipHop had embezzled a lot of money through the shell companies, leaving everybody else to hold the bag. Ex also stated that the co-owner of the company had been very lenient towards HipHop’s sleight-of-hand with the money and thinks that there are others who are in on the plot. Finally, Ex stated that he was forced out of the company when he was unable to persuade the factories to release the moulds and dolls. HipHop forced him to leave “naked” (i.e. no severance, no shares) and eventually shifted the blame on him. HipHop has accused him of the alleged robbery of the factory where the moulds were “stolen”. As Ex said himself, if he was to removed all the moulds for all of the 2022 and 2023 dolls, he would need an 8-wheeler to cart them all away. He would never be able to get away with doing something like that without being recorded somewhere. Ex stressed that all of this “robbery” ruse was just that, a ruse. And he was innocent. Ex also implied that the reason why Imómó dolls get to be so cheap was because there was no such thing was a base cost; everything was pure profit, but mostly only for HipHop.
I am not sure if this was Ex or someone else completely. However, this person had listed HipHop and the co-owner (we’ll call her Water)’s various companies and other business entities (not accounting for the shells). This person also listed an estimated amount of money that each entity owed. Altogether, this person estimated that HipHop and his partner owed over $17 million RMB (About $2.4 million USD). According to this timeline and its separate branches, HipHop had independently conned factories out of money but so did Water on her own. They joined forces and succeeded bilking someone out of a substantial amount of money as “investment” into the company. It’s unknown if they ever paid her back (or if she has a share/say in this company.) I also cannot confirm if this investor is Ex, either; I do, however suspect this is someone else completely.
Another insider (once again, not Ex and probably not the DZ guy) detailed more of the shady dealing from Water this time.
This person accuses Water of being a bad-faith business-person and shed more light regarding the “Outside Investor” situation mentioned earlier. This whistle-blower detailed how this investor was conned. Apparently HipHop and Water convinced her that they were the original proprietors of Püyóó Dolls and sold it to the present owners (which is false). They pretended that the big dealer SWDolls was their employee and falsely presented one of their moulds as being “under development” and ready to see profits really soon (it was already being made and sold at that time.) This investor did not see the return on her investment and was practically conned out of nearly a million RMB (about $15,000USD). Due to the fact that the details match but the divulged specifics were different, I think whilstle-blower #2 and #3 are different people, and neither one is Ex.
This is getting to be a very long post. But I do think that I’ve covered the money trail as well as the initial whistle-blower complaint that arose as the flashpoint of this incident. I will be covering other issues and complaints that arose against Imómó. These are only tangentially related to this incident, but I see it as a continuation of the complaints that I have tracked since last year. It’s all blowing up now, it seems.
Note #1: Contrary to popular belief, Püyóó Doll was registered in Japan by Chinese nationals (ostensibly with Chinese money). There’s very little known about the actual owners of Püyóó, therefore it is possible that someone who is not familiar with dolls and doll companies to believe that two Chinese nationals were the original owners of Püyóó.
Note #2: “Water’ is a doll sculptor who ran her own workshop in the past. This means There are other wrong-doing regarding her that’s separate from HipHop. I’ll get to that in the second post.
