#recasters

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Ouneifs doesn't do "original sculpts", you just don't know what some of them are mashups or rescaled versions of. And even if, having some original dolls peppered in doesn't make the rest of the catalogue not recast? Just buy from legit makers man, no amount of brain gymnastics will make supporting a counterfeiter any better (or just admit you're pro-recast idk).

~Anonymous

[blacksheepdolls]

alright so, recasters (counterfeiters) on etsy are becoming a not-insignificant problem. there aren’t that many, but they all show up in the first few pages if you search “bjd”. of course, there are also companies and individual artists who sell on etsy, so it would be easy, especially for someone new to the hobby, to get confused. so I made a list of for-sure recasters that you can avoid.

before we go any further, let me be clear: this isn’t meant to be a “callout” post or anything like that. I’m not exposing anyone, they’re all pretty obvious if you’ve been around bjds for a while (though some of them do have little tricks to get people to buy). so don’t go harassing these sellers. this is just a warning for those who don’t want to buy counterfeits or from recasters.

- SophieToyParadise

- wholecolor

- EXBUSHI

- TSscrapbook

- highRICH (only has one recast doll)

- StrangeOccurences (this shop renames sculpts)

if you know of any others, you are free to add them in reblogs or comments. but please, before you accuse any shops of recasting, make sure they are not the company’s shop, and that the sculpts really don’t belong to them.

[bjd-confessions]

Yikes, but she has to have that doll, even if she can’t afford it.

~Anonymous

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Is shuga fairy luo??? I'm so confused by the sudden apparition of that name everywhere

~Anonymous

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Funniest shit ever is the fact that so many recast collectors don't bother to get Oueneifs' name right. And I don't mean just accidental typos, ppl just don't give a fuck if it's Ouniefs or Queenifs or Quenits or wharever xDDD

~Anonymous

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️ here. Where is the “loudest anti-recast voice” from? This confession reminded me of something interesting (and makes me feel very old at the same time). There are a lot of aspects to the recast market (and yes, Econ Anon, I hear you! It’s a market thing! 👍 ) and part of it is geopolitical. I guess that’s where I come in.

Let me walk you back to the late 80’s when China first opened its doors to the world. At that time, because of Chairman Deng’s policy of “letting a small group of people get rich sooner”, the Eastern seaboard opened itself up to foreign investment. However, one should never forget that China is a totalitarian, Communist state. It meant that “the law” is prone to changing, the government owns most large industries and through the ways of loans, the government also has a backdoor to most businesses. I still remember the blatant accusations of what we used to call the “Chinese honeypot” scheme. The government (or some government-funded businesses) entice foreign investors to set up factories along the Eastern seaboard.

Part of the agreement to receive government subsidized benefits was to hire more than 50% local labour, and this included the managerial staff as well. In the beginning, a lot of the early investors reported that they were earning hand over fist because of the cheap labour. But after the first wave, investors were being expelled out of the country one way or another, after being stripped of their assets and their trade secrets. I still remember multiple family members (and business friends of these said family members) recounting stories of foreign bosses catching their Chinese managers stealing trade secrets and deliberately sabotaging equipment when their aims have been fulfilled. In some cases, actual honeypot traps were set up so the bosses would be set up with adultery (which was a severely punishable crime at the time) or saddled up with a Chinese wife. To cut the horror story down, China found itself where it is today through alleged systematic and government-sanctioned intellectual theft. It is no wonder that the Chinese boomers are not known as big sticklers to copyright law. In many ways, they are still the ones in charge. Folks like Luo, for example.

However, just as a coin has two sides, the closed-in totalitarian state also fostered an “ever-inward” culture. Children born to these boomers were taught on a steady diet of nationalism and extreme self-centredness. These are considered to be virtues. Their children, the Gen Z, have even more of the same cultural upbringing, bolstered by being the “only child” of “only child” parents. As a consequence, there is a lot of internal cohesion based off of nationalism, which translated into a specific type of cronyism that is hard to fathom. Most of us have heard of the term “rabid fans” – for an old fogey like me, I think of Deadheads caravanning across the country to catch the next concert. Folks these days are probably more familiar with the fans of famous singers such as BTS and BlackPink and the hijinks they were up to from time to time. In today’s China, on the other hand, pretty much every fandom can boast their own “rabid fans” – from Apple Fanatics to a self-professed fan groups for an actor/singer/artist to… well, BJDs. When I say “rabid fans”, it’s because I cannot come up with any other word for this behaviour. If you can think of a better descriptor, please let me know.

I lurk in Chinese “BJD Circle.” And this fanaticism has its highs and lows. The lows are plenty and serious – people will refuse to sell second-hand dolls to newbies because “they don’t speak the lingo”, for example. The faceup artists are known to smash heads if they are found to be recasts. Scammers and questionable behaviours are “hung” out in the Tucao bar for a public lynching - and because most people in the circle frequent this Tieba, it’s basically a court of public opinion. Thanks to the social credit system, if you are lynched through a virtual struggle session, your ability to be a part of this circle becomes so diminished that you are shunned. And due to the fact that you need your real name and information to set up an account for all transactional platforms, it’s easy to get doxed and cyberbullied. This self-righteous fervor expanded outside of China and was brought under the spotlight for the first time in 2020, during the “Milk Tea Alliance” incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_Tea_Alliance Note: in the spirit of full disclosure, I came from one of the Milk Tea Alliance countries. )

What about the highs? The “high” point in this self-contained lynching culture is internal self-policing. The Circle acknowledges that people who are just entering the hobby may accidentally buy a recast. But in order to be accepted into the circle, you have to prove that you have completely given up your recast dolls by “whitewashing” yourself here: http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/6882408381 (Content Warning: very broken dolls, hammer, fire) If you get caught having a recast doll, you will be shunned. Your businesses (as a faceup artist, seamstress, wig maker, etc) will also be boycotted. In short, the self-policing is slowly squeezing Luo’s business out of China, for better or worse.

Which is why on Luo’s business website (https://chinabjd.en.alibaba.com/company_profile.html) China is no longer its biggest market, which we alluded to here: It took me a long time to try to hunt down why would North America be the second largest market while China itself makes up a small portion. It wasn’t until I came across this post http://c.tieba.baidu.com/p/7792470874?pn=1 that it made sense. It was first posted in the April of 2022, from a Chinese national studying abroad in Japan. This person was surprised that the international market was flooded with Shuga Fairy dolls while another person chimed in stating that a lot of “Westerners” asked if Shuga Fairy dolls were any good. Other folks chimed in that Shuga Fairy dolls were found in a lot of international platforms while another one mentioned that the same doll sold for a higher price overseas.

Then it made sense. For what it’s worth, the Chinese’s closed, cronyism “Circles” have managed to keep most of the recasts out of the hobby. Sure, recast-friendly/neutral circles still exist, but they are in the fringes and having some difficulty interacting with the rest of the hobby as a whole (to the point having difficulty buying doll items from Xianyu stores. Store owners will refuse to sell their wares to recast owners). But that’s not the same with North America. It’s a land where information is scarce(r ), the market is not nearly as saturated and there are a lot more folks who have simply never heard of a BJD before. It’s much easier to con a largely unsuspecting crowd (which explains why recast dealers really work hard on that SEO) into buying something that they thought was “just an expensive toy”.

So, for the folks who think “the US has the loudest anti-recast voice”… I am really, really sorry. You can’t argue with the numbers (or Econ Anon, for that matter). The US is the second largest mark for the recast market. And there are some really compelling reasons why this is so.

P.S. I am not familiar with the Russian market at all. So please, don’t ask me why Russia is the largest market for Luo and his company. Thanks in advance.

~Anonymous

[the-bjd-community-confess]

It is so funny how some people are genuinely wondering and questioning why recasters are upping their prices more and more, some even above legit prices... As if it had not been criminally obvious: Recasters don't give a shit about you. They want CASH and nothing else. Their customers are not relevant to them in the slightest, only when it means money will be flowing lol.

They only do 'customer care' because they know it will get dumb people to think "ooh they wanna offer affordable dolls for people with less money :)" Quick question for people who think that, do you also think Santa is real? It was so evident that recasters would eventually up the price. Their strategy is basically being competition for real artists until they eventually go out of business and then they can up the price. Why else was that Ery doll way more expensive than the other recast dolls right from the start? They do not give a f about customers. They are not artists who put care into each doll and even the packaging. They are just scammers and I am tired of people trying to defend them. 

If you willingly buy recast that is entirely your choice and I don't judge but don't pretend like "It is just as good as legit". Imagine a Sneaker convention or something and someone just comes in with fake adidas shoes where the logo is upside down. That dude would make a fool outta himself trying to pass them off as real and saying the quality is just as good as the real brand. That's what y'all recast people sound like.

~Anonymous

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Listen, you don’t have to like Culor, however, bringing up unsavory things she did close to a decade ago is not only petty, but is incredibly toxic.

How do you expect people to learn from their mistakes and grow as a person if you’re going to bring up those past mistakes at every opportunity even when she doesn’t mess up, especially when a majority of those mistakes happened when she was as young as a teenager (like Culor was in her early 20s when she sold Ery, that’s very young to host a preorder without prior experience). And yes, how she handled and went about her final doll order was terrible, however, she still tried to make it right by offering her own dolls to make up for the shortage caused by her and stopped selling dolls altogether when you know she could’ve just disappeared compared to past ACTUAL scammers in this community, but yet was accused of being one when there wasn’t proof of this (and no, taking two years to ship a doll doesn’t count as being a scammer). And now that she decided to make dolls for herself and move on from what happened (which was three years ago this month btw), it bothers you people that everyone else has moved on when you can’t.

Honestly, I’m just surprised that she still has it in her to remain in this hobby and continue making dolls despite everything, even more that people pushed those the recasters to steal her dolls out of spite. I wouldn’t be surprised she has anxiety because people who keep seeing her as the person she was 10 years ago when it’s clear she isn’t making those same mistakes again.

Seriously man, let her grow as a person and do better because the real “problematic” person right now are people who don’t know how to let go. Like come on man, it’s unhealthy to be this obsessed.

~Anonymous