Let's get into this.
When we left off last time we'd reached September of 2015, in the past 12 months i'd amassed rather a great number of Makies very very quickly. They'd become extremely addictive and with my stipend and little else on the market that was interesting me (MH was already on the decline after all) I could afford a Makie a month. Which was a bit dangerous to be honest lol.
In late August came the announcement that they were moving to injection molded plastic bodies to cut costs. With this change came a new lower price (£50 instead of £69) but it meant no more 3d printed nylon bodies at all.
New Makies produced after a certain date would come on plastic bodies,we had 2 weeks to panic buy.
A lot of people had their eye on a few but no money yet, so as people scrimped and saved and tried to gather pennies, the fight for fully 3d printed dolls began.
A few people went a bit mad and bought well... a lot.
Including every single premade Makie in the store at the time (almost all bought by one person which peeved many people off)
Anyway, in a stunning act of spite, after having a doll I was interested in bought from under me by this same individual I was feeling pretty grumpy and vindictive and when I noticed Amazon still had one of those made for you dolls from back when I got August, well, I remembering thinking "HAH, here's one fully 3d printed doll you aren't getting!" and clicking "buy"
I.. totally bought a doll out of spite. That's terrible isn't it?
Still I had been all ready to buy the other doll and had this gaping Makie shaped hole that needed filling and wanted instant gratification to fill that. Also by this point the 2 week window had passed so it was IM bodies or nothing and I wanted just one more proper complete Makie with a 3d printed body damnit.
The poor girl's pictures weren't great. half her face was covered by her wig and she was a pretty dull blonde, blue eyed doll which usually really puts me off. But I guess I was fueled by vindictiveness and happy to overlook aspects I could easily change. I think I might have originally planned to dye her too, but once I got her in hand couldn't stand to.
She was cute, but from what I could see of her, but sort of generic, hence why she'd gone so long overlooked by just about everyone I think.
Though it turned out, she was actually far more interesting under that wig than I thought.
She had really arched eyebrows which gave her quite a sassy expression and was a real surprise when I opened her.
She got a new wig and a faceup which really brought out her angry eyebrows. With her hair out of her face she has a REALLY characterful face. I mean hell, if her wig had not been in her damn face i'm sure someone else would have bought her months prior to me getting her.
She turned out to be a really serendipitous purchase, perhaps I should act in spite more often lol.
She informed me her name was Ayla. Ayla Wyatt, the great granddaughter of my ghost Makie Nate.
I love when dolls tell me their relationships to one another and Ayla was very obliging in connecting herself to multiple other characters in my brain hah.
She got mismatched eyes because I couldn't decide on an eye colour and once I knew she was related to Nate well, it made sense anyway.
She is a purchase I have never regretted in the slightest. Much as her arrival was spurred on by bad feelings, she's a wonderful little doll with so much personality. I love her and i'm actually kinda grateful to the person who inspired her purchase. If they hadn't ticked me off and bought the other doll from under me, i'd have never gotten Ayla hah.
I took a break from Makies for a few months after this, i'd overspent and had to recover.
But then the labs made yet another announcement. They were discontinuing boys temporarily while they rejigged them or something. They weren't sure when they'd be back, so we were encouraged to buy any boys we really really wanted NOW NOW NOW.
It was early November, I frantically scraped some funds together to purchase Adhar.
Ad was a design I made around the same time I desired Tor'ba, he was my other design option for the alien boy.
Tor (3) was made first as he NEEDED to be white, but with Ad i'd initially made him white and then changed him to brown when white had been discontinued. I felt he actually looked cooler brown anyway.
Of course the first thing I did was hack his wig short lol.
I made it asymetric because I decided it actually looked better.
Ad was also ordered with the brand new "toy like me" hearing aids the lab produced. I was curious about them.
The lab said they suggested you didn't use them with pointy ears but I am not one to follow instructions hah, I was curious if they COULD work with elf ears so Ad got ears slightly less pointy than I usually would have done, but still elfy.
And sure enough, the hearing aids fit fine anyway.
They were only available in green for some reason.
Ad got some fun greenish blushing all over.
He's a "transitional Makie" meaning that he has a 3d printed body and injection molded limbs. The boys were all like this at the time, they hadn't made plastic boy torsos yet and that was presumably why they were being removed from sale temporarily.
Unfortunately Ad also came with a faulty neck joint that snapped the moment I tried to take his head off to seal it. *sigh*
I had to tape his head on while I waited for the lab to print me a new torso for him. I was pretty upset.
I'd had a fair few Makies break on me in recent orders and it was making me a bit cranky. This was the worst though. The others had been eye mech snapping, this time it was a fundamental crucial joint, the neck. I tried to glue it and epoxy it, the fix was never strong enough. The pressure on that socket is too much.
Anyway, to their credit the lab did print me a new torso but it took 2 weeks.
The new IM limbs had some positives, their fingers were slightly squishy so could be squashed into gloves for instance lol. Also the joints were a bit sturdier. Unfortunately on the 3d printed body they also SLIPPED really badly in the hips, there's not enough friction between the plastic leg and the 3d printed torso so the legs pop off really easily if you try to make the doll sit.
It's not ideal.
Tor now had more of his crew together. Horah!
Now I had a broken torso and a few bits from the lab i'd ordered to do dye experiments on earlier. It occured to me that maybe it'd be possible to put together some sort of frankendolly from old broken or damaged bits.
Another collector thought this was a fun idea and sent me a head they had laying around (the eye mech had snapped and ended up stuck in the head plate so they had a new head printed)
I scavenged bits from the box of parts and put together FrankenMakie.
His head is literally duct taped to his neck lol. He had one leg that had been printed with the hip socket too shallow so it had to be taped on too (ahahaha) and the other leg was broken at the knee so I epoxied some lego to the stump to act as a prosthetic.
He had one arm that fit loosely and a random hand I found, then his other arm was literally just stuffing of the sleeve and a monster high arm rammed into the sleeve.
Lego prosthetics are fun okay?
Later on I actually obtained better limbs for him, but despite having two good legs and two good arms I just didn't feet right making him near perfect. He's a frankendoll, he's SUPPOSED to look cobbled together. So I kept his lego leg and only replaced the other one so he could stand better.
I also replaced both his arms.
I made his freaky as heck eyes and hacked his fur wig short and sewed dreads into one side.
He was a lot of fun to create actually. I've never been able to fix his neck though. My dad says that steel reinforced epoxy is the way to go so I might try that next time. We'll see. For now tape works ahahah. Duct tape, the solution to most things. It means he can't tilt his head though, oh well.
The brown part is milliput being used to graft the lego to his foot. I used to just have the lego kinda taped on but decided a more perminant solution would make life easier. It used to come off too much.
His limbs are all injection molded otherwise, a caramel tone like his head. I used one hand to test if sanding would make the plastic less shiny, the other side was used to test whether you could paint it and have the paint stick (the answer is... kinda... it peels off if you scratch at it too much as you can see)
So yeah, he's made of experiemental parts. He has a strawberry coloured back plate too hahaha. For whatever reason when the labs reprinted my torso for me they didn't reprint the back plate so I had to pry it out of the broken body and swap it over (really annoying, they're quite hard to open)
So for years poor Frankenmakie had no back plate, just an open cavity in his back. I considered sculpting milliput over it but then someone was selling spare backplates so I bought one instead. Much easier.
Total cost for this guy? like £10 for the spare plastic body for his limbs.
Huzah
December came, and well, christmas money. Someone in one of the groups was selling a part IM boy named Jim.
As boys had now been discontinued and were no longer available, I didn't need much prompting to yell "BOY! MINE!" (I love boy dolls after all) and so I bought him.
He was a funny looking dude, the lab's attempt to do those lips made him look a bit froggish I felt. Poor guy. He needed a more flattering faceup, and a better wig. The fur wigs often felt a bit... tribble-like to me hahah.
I kinda love his expression.
He came with the jumper and I love it. I dunno if the original owner made it or what, but it's so HIM.
I'm so pleased to have been able to rehome this guy. He didn't work for the character the original owner had in mind, but he works great for me as a snarky hipster who thinks everyone else is beneath him lol.
His IM legs means he struggles to sit down. I hot glued the inside of his hips which helps a little and then put tape in there for extra friction (duct tape to the rescue again!) so if you bend his legs carefully he CAN sit, but his legs still pop out every so often.
Annoying.
These days he has white glasses because he got knocked off the shelf by the cleaner and his original glasses snapped. Thank god nothing else broke, I was pretty irate.
thankfully I have a large stash of Makie glasses hah.
Then the lab closed for christmas 2015, saying they'd see us in the new year.
that never happened.
Shortly before they closed they suddenly recalled all gift cards which should have been a warning sign.
then in Janurary a staff member came onto the group to tell everyone that they'd gotten back from holiday and been told to pack their stuff, they were all being made redundant.
Heartbreaking.
And so the London Lab closed, claiming they were moving to the USA.
And that was the end of Makie labs.
but it wasn't the end of my collecting by any means.
A friend of mine had struggled to bond with one of his two Makies. She'd been nothing but disappointment since she'd arrived. She was a white Makie who was far starker white than he'd expected, his attempt to dye her resulted in a weird greyish tone (this is TEA dying, what?) and she'd lost a hand down the drain during that process. Then he just couldn't get her face to work and pretty much gave up.
Disillusioned she'd sorta sat to one side collecting dust till i posted a "wtb" asking if anyone had any Makies to sell to give me my Makies fix (addicted remember lol)
and so Misty came to live with me.
I happened to have spare hands so I gave her a new one. It doesn't match but eh, better than no hand. I blushed it to better match in.
She came to me bald and nude, so I got her a wig from my stash and dressed her up. I also gave her a new face.
She's a really strange colour. She was dyed with tea so she SHOULD have turned a faint brownish beige colour, you know, like paper or fabric goes when you tea dye it, but she didn't. She ended up more a soft silvery tone. She's very grey in parts, more brownish in others, but definitely not "tea" coloured at all.
I can fully understand why my friend was so disillusioned by her, she wasn't at all what he expected and was such a different experience to his first Makie.
I don't think it's a break that can easily be repaired, it's a crack that goes most of the way around her lower arm and I expect is a printing error like my Ad's neck.
She also has weak knees, but that's helped with a teensy loop of elastic around each.
Still, ignoring that, she's a gorgeous little thing. I really love her face, she always looks slightly bored by everything and it amuses me.
I like to dress her in monochrome with red accents to highlight her greyness.
Her eyes were made by Endoesdolls especially for Misty. They are very very pretty.
And then toward the end of January I stumbled upon a ebay auction for a Makie.
Now, i'd not seen many Makies come up for sale on Ebay, they were pretty rare to see come up for sale at all tbh, and he was a decent price AND, even more interestingly, a classic style one.
White skinned, old style head and body. He was a very early Makie from 2012.
Curious about his history I asked the seller where they'd found him.
"A charity shop" was the reply. WHAT!!?? Someone donated this poor boy!??
Well of course I had a home for him. heh.
I'd grown to kinda like the classic boys and he was a piece of Makie history! I'd never handled a full classic style Makie with the old hinge joints.
He had never had a faceup or anything, suggesting he was very early. The first few Makies came like this, totally blank with some quite nice outfits made of mix and match pieces.
He also has "boy" hands, broader than the standard Makie hands and discontinued very soon after they started shipping them out to people because they didn't really NEED different hands.
Unfortunately the totally white faces are REALLY hard to photograph.
It took me a while to decide if I wanted to leave him blank or not. In the end I decided being able to actually photograph him properly and SEE his features was more important than keeping him "as new"
So he got a light faceup just to pick out those features.
He has a cute smile and unusually shaped eyebrows.
I have no idea what his original name was but I named him Noah, because i liked the name.
I THINK I found his original owner by looking through photos of Makies but I feel super awkward contacting him and asking lol. From what I can establish, they were not a doll person, so how they ended up with a Makie I don't know.
Poor guy tires easily it seems heh.
Strangely the older Makies came with full outfits but no shoes. Shoes weren't released till later. Wierd huh?
Now this is where things get... kinda difficult.
See, with the lab closed a few ex staff went and gathered as much stuff as they could fit into cars before a clearance company was called in to clear everything else.
In the back room the clearance guy discovered boxes and boxes of stuff. Doll parts, wigs, eyes, clothing and unbeknownst to anyone else, old dolls.
Really old dolls.
It seems that as well as Staff Makies who hung out on desks or were used for promotional pictures there were also a bunch of alpha Makies who had been made back in 2012 for a popup shop in london. 50 were made, only a few sold at the event and a couple more when they were put up for sale on the site later in the year.
Those that didn't sell were used for promo stuff for a while, or just played with and then at some point, presumably when classics were discontinued, they were all put into tubes, put into boxes and shoved to the back of the store room where they were forgotten about.
Mr Ebay, as we referred to the guy, saw these dolls and realised they weren't something he should just throw out. So he listed a few up on ebay.
There was a bit of chaos here as people tried to understand how this had happened. The owner of the company apparently wasn't happy and wanted the dolls back but I dunno what happened there. Either way, the clearance guy legally owned these things now and they were his to sell. The auction prices went INSANE as people all fought one another to own a piece of this Makie Lab history.
I mean seriously it was a nasty brutal war of whoever had the most disposable income and some of the prices were just scary.
Tempers flared, emotions ran high, there was hurt feelings and jealousy and anger on all sides. Oh it got bad fast.
Anyway, long story short, lots of arguments happened and a great many of those Makies fell into the hands of a small number of collectors who then never shared pictures ever again. Sad.
It's like they just disappeared.
During this time I had my eye on a couple of these Ebay Makies but kept getting outbid by rather massive margins and it sucked. I wasn't alone, it was seriously way too competitive.
Anyway, amidst all this, one of the other collectors, in an act of stunning and shocking generosity informed me the doll I was pining over and lamenting that I had missed out on (A pistachio girl, I had always wanted a pistachio doll) had been won FOR ME.
I was all "wait WHAT!??"
And so Sweetie was gifted to me, apparently as a thank you for the work I did on the forum but really, ultimately, just as a really kind gesture from someone who is far far too kind and far too good for me.
I cried when she arrived. I couldn't help it, she was just such a generous gift. I still get a bit misty eyed thinking about it. She lives on my desk, to forever remind me that someone out there thought I was worthy and good and worthwhile.
Now these original 50 didn't start out dyed, they were all originally white. At some point after the pop up shop they were dyed various colours. Sweetie was dyed Pistachio, a lovely greyish green tone that was discontinued before I bought my first three.
I always found the colour facinating, you don't get many green dolls and green is my favourite colour.
Curiously, they didn't bother to dye the head caps. Probably because they didn't want to unglue the wigs. So the headcaps are white.
Sweetie's original form was this, amazing what difference a little colour makes huh?
Like a lot of classics, Sweetie has a strangely flattened profile.
And like Noah, she came in an old style multi piece outfit but no shoes.
Like Noah Sweetie is on the old style body with funny hinge joints. They're quite fragile.
Her dye job is a bit patchy too. These early ones might have been experiments with the dye, who really knows.
Sweetie got new eyes made by Endoesdolls to match the dip dyed wig I put her into. She also got a slightly more natural faceup with green blushing instead of peach, which I think is a bit more flattering.
She likes to wear bright colours. She looks super cute in them.
A month or so later after many more dolls were put up on Ebay, another pistachio girl showed up and I won her! WHOO.
This girl arrived nude and wearing a wig that had "skye" written inside the wig cap.
This was confirmed when someone else said they had her certificate and gave me the number which matches her head number (the number code inside the head is unique to each doll, the earlier ones all came with a certificate of authenticity that had this number on too)
Ripley had long since lost her original brown wig and funky yellow jumpsuit, and become green.
I gave her a haircut just because I could. Also because the bob wig didn't suit her.
Maybe some day i'll get her a better short wig. I think she looks good with short hair but this wig isn't great.
She's such a dang pretty doll though. One of the prettier classic girls I t hink.
I feel so privilaged to own her along with her sister Sweetie. (I say sister because they were part of the same printing batch heh)
During all this chaos I also found a doll on etsy that I purchased. She came from a member of ex staff and the moderator of the official group.
She was adorable. She had no eye mech as she was a rescue doll from the lab or something.
I turned her into a dragon girl.
Sadly then I had a massive falling out with the person i'd bought her from and some very nasty things were said about me and some nasty chinese whispers style gossip spread.
Hurting, I couldn't not associate this poor doll with that unpleasantness and so I sold her.
I have no idea what her new owner did with her, she disappeared into the ether and i've never seen her since. Which is a shame. I just hope the new owner is happy with her because she was a really pretty doll, I just had too much hurt associated with her to love her as I wanted to.
Things had turned pretty nasty in Makieland and was just getting nastier.
It was a pretty awful time for everyone.
And then in the midst of all this madness, I found Pixie.
She was an ebay find. At the time Makies were selling for well over £100 each, some were going up to £300, it was absolutely mad. So I was pretty stunned to see a Makie listed at BIN on ebay for £8. Yes EIGHT pounds.
WHAT!?
I clicked "buy" as soon as I confirmed it was the doll and not just her outfit or something, and honestly assumed the seller had missed a 0 and meant £80. Even at 80 she was a good price I thought and if they cancelled the transaction on me, as I expected them to do because I was certain it was an error, i'd happily pay that corrected price too.
But it wasn't an error. As it turned out the seller hadn't bothered to do any research and just wanted rid of the clutter. The kid who's doll it was had outgrown dolls and they were clearing out.
I asked the doll's name and was told she was called "pixie"
and so Pixie she remained.
She's a cute little pink haired elf.
I love elf dolls.
My first faceup attempt was horrible, I went too overboard and hated it.
But then I couldn't get all the black off under one eye. Nylon like this is really porous so yeah, a pain to scrub clean. So she got a few swirls on one side to hide the staining hahah.
She's such a cute doll and omg such a bargain. I couldn't believe it when she dispatched and was still in disbelief as I held her in my hand. £8!?? Madness!
So lucky omg.
Months went by, Mr Ebay kept listing random stuff but was starting to get to the bottom of his boxes of stuff. A lot of the dolls he was listing were frankendolls made up from spare parts.
I found myself craving one more doll to dye so I actually emailed him and asked if he had a frankendolly I could buy.
He sent me a couple of head pics he had and I picked one out and he put together a frankendolly for me out of random pieces.
She came without feet and in a couple of colours but hey, I was dying her, what'd it matter? Also I have a box of feet for some reason here hahah.
A cute little elf eared girl with no back plate and no feet. I don't think she had any hands either actually, I had to provide those lol.
Her head was a fairly modern one, as evidenced by her neck knob being plastic, not 3dprinted. She had a head cap that didn't quite fit too but was 3d printed.
I rinsed all her parts in preparation for a method someone else had come up with. Boiling the whole doll in vanish oxy clean to leech out the dye.
This is how she started.
Foamy...
And after boiling her for about 10 minutes (I can't remember how long I boiled her for okay?) most of the colour had gone from the strawberry parts and the caramel bits had turned pink.
So then she got put into "THE DIP" lol. Red Idye Poly.
She didn't come out nearly as red as the fabric I also dyed in the same pot (which became a rich scarlet) but what was interesting was that the IM plastic neck knob dyed! A really dark maroon colour but it dyed! Suggesting that the IM bodies COULD be dyed but matching the head to the body could be a nightmare as the nylon doesn't take colour the same way at all.
The random foot was my test piece hahah.
Not quite the shade I expected but I really love the red tone she ended up. it's more natural than a bright scarlet and quite attractive.
This is Lorem Ipsum, another Kobold.
And cool though the blue wig was, rainbow wigs are even cooler.
Annoyingly, as she has no eye mech, her eyes have to be held in with tac and for some reason, unlike any of my other dolls with eyes held in the same way, one of her eyes likes to roll back into her skull. No matter how much tac I use, that one eye refuses to stay in place. WHY!?? They aren't even heavy eyes, they're hollow default makie eyes!
She also has some weak joints but given she was boiled twice and was made up of spare parts, that's hardly surprising. I love her though, she scrubbed up awesome and you wouldn't know she wasn't originally all the same colour.
She's a frankendolly but unlike Frankenmakie she doesn't LOOK like a frankendolly.
Around this time I ended up leaving the community completely due to ongoing hurt feelings and unpleasantness. It sucked, I got horribly depressed, I spoiled something I loved and it still to this day hurts me.
But I still love Makies.
So many months passed as I tried to recover and come to terms with what had happened.
Then Monster High, the other franchise I loved a little too much collapsed and rebooted too.
And that community began to implode and argue as well. *headdesk*
It was a rough year 2016. My mental health hit an all time low, I kept making things worse and just eugh...
Toward the end of the year I stumbled upon another ebay auction. I had continued to watch Makies even after leaving the community just out of morbid curiosity. I dunno, watching them pop up was interesting, seeing all those unique faces, but it was frustrating to see them consistently selling for twice their original retail or more. Still by this point everyone had given up on the labs ever reopening, they had made no announcements and it had been a year. A horrible year.
So I was pretty stunned to get an email of my watched tags from Ebay telling me a new makie had been listed for £45 BIN.
Buy it now!?? Fourty five pounds? When all the previous ones listed that month had sold for £120+?
I have no impulse control, I was depressed, it was nearing christmas which is a time of year I get super down anyway and need cheering up and so yeaaah... my ability to stop myself was at an all time low.
I asked the seller the doll's name. Koral.
Her ebay photo is the only before pic I have. I was just a bit too eager to give her a face and stuff... this happens a lot.
seriously it takes SO MUCH restraint to take photos before I rip open boxes.
She reminded me of Ayla when she first arrived, so i decided they were sisters.
And yeah, i really like odd eyes okay? Sue me.
I didn't intend for her to stay blonde but this wig suited her so I stuck with it.
She has rather worried eyebrows but a smile, so i'm not sure really what her expression is. Worried happiness? Nervous smile?
A little family portrait for good measure.
She's a cutey.
She was my last new Makie for quite some time.
2017 came and went and I only bought one Makie that year, a classic LE called Ada who was a bit of an impulse buy and one I never really was fully committed too.
I think I only really wanted her for her outfit, but also because of her name. Ada Lovelace is my husband's hero and back when the Ebay Makies happened I thought it'd be cool to compare this one to the custom made Ada doll he had designed himself.
My main problem with Ada was that she reminded me rather too much of a girl i knew in high school. It wasn't that I didn't like the girl, she was a friend of mine, but having a dolly doppleganger of a girl I hadn't seen in years kinda spooked me out okay? It just.. felt weird.
Also i'm pretty sure the circumstances around me buying this doll were not that positive. She was a massive impulse, a spur of the moment buy that never really made me feel better. In fact if anything I always felt a bit guilty about it.
I sold her recently at last, I tried, but I couldn't bond with her and I don't think I ever could.
She came to me at a bad time.
anyway, time passed, I bought no Makies... but then I got brought back into Makies by a fluke.
I was on tumblr, browsing BJDs as I like to do, when I came across a post asking about how best to sell a Makie.
I replied with ideas and suggestions but cheekily also mentioned that I might be interested, because I have no shame.
The doll in question was Holly.
Added bonus, she came with the little 3d printed rabbits Makielab made a few years back that I kinda totally wanted.
They're weird loaf bunnies man!
This photo sent my the seller was enough to make me go "yes yes I want her omg!". I wasn't just swayed by the bunny but the fact she was a cocoa bean Makie and had vividly coloured hair. I mean she's SO CUTE!
So yeah... I bought her. My first Makie in about a year.
She got Ada's dungarees.
Love her.
Then only a few weeks later I stumbled upon THIS. On Schpock of all places. She was listed as "doll", which is kinda weird given she's in her original box and all.
Anyway the lady selling her only wanted £30 but the catch was i'd have to travel across London to collect her in person.
Eeep.
Well I did, because I figured it was worth getting maybe murdered <_<
Nah seriously the lady sounded nice and normal and not like a serial killer, it was fine.
So I headed across London in the pouring rain and waited by the side of the road till a car pulled up and a bag with a doll in was given to me out a car window. it was all very er.. clandestine hahaha.
Anyway, this girl was a Selfridges Made For You, she still had the price sticker on her box. I dunno how the lady ended up with her, I assume she was a gift to one of her kids or something as she seemed to have no idea what she was beyond "expensive doll from selfridges" and I didn't have time to ask.
I named her Lucia, Lu for short.
And I commissioned her a new wig too. It's pretty.
These two dolls brought me back into the community, shortly after returning the #Maymeetthemakies prompts were announced and it seemed like a good chance to reinvigorate and get back into things.
It's been hard. It's dredged up a lot of emotions, both good and very bad. It's brought back to the surface a lot of pain and unresolved hurt but it's also gotten me back in contact with some very dear people.
I don't think it'll ever not hurt, the nastiness that was displayed on all sides, including from me, was just so awful. The closure of the labs brought out the very worst in just about everybody and it's difficult to reconcile that. A lot of cruel things were said and done and I still have deep wounds from all the shit that got slung around.
But I do still dearly love Makies and these two new girls only serve to remind me of what I got into the line for in the first place. They were a unique innovative product, way ahead of their time and sadly quite wrongly marketed to children rather than adults who had the cash flow to afford them. They appealed to a great range of people, brought out the creativity in so many and inspired everyone who handled them.
They were a freaking cool idea and one I really do hope we haven't seen the last of. Makielabs may be gone for good, officially now as of their announcement at the start of 2017, but that doesn't mean we won't some day see another line who tries to do this customization thing.
Dolls you can design yourself are such a great idea, some day the technology will be cheap enough that everyone'll be doing it!
Makies paved the way, and they created some fantastic dolls in the process.
Thank you Makielabs. For so many years of joy and wonder, and for trying to do something so different. I wish it had ended differently, I wish it had wound down on a happier note, but i'm so glad I got to be at least a small part of the Makies story.
I now have 30 Makies, a good number I think. I'll leave others out there for other people to enjoy. You know unless a pistachio boy appears secondhand, then all bets are off <_< >_>
I too was interested in this, and I googled Makies a while ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://dolliehsanctuary.com/sanctuary/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=12416&hilit=makie
They were bought by Disney. And as someone later noted in the thread, you can have your face scanned and 3D printed to make a custom-headed Avatar doll in the Avatar section of Animal Kingdom.
So that's.... interesting. And people are buying them, so the tech is still in use.
I'd love to have a few of the cutie Makies, I never got any due to money problems and shipping to the US. I have been loving the tour of your collection, and I think your dolls all have great style!
Eseme