is a brand of vinyl doll created by the
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese company
Volks
is a Japan-based corporation that produces garage kits and mecha kits as well as the Dollfie, Super Dollfie and Dollfie Dream lines of dolls. The company's headquarters is in Kyoto, with some 30 shops worldwide, and annual sales of about $50 mil ...
in 1997. It is a highly poseable hybrid of
fashion doll
Fashion dolls are dolls primarily designed to be dressed to reflect fashion trends. They are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adults. The dolls are usually modeled after teen girls or adult women, though ...
and
action figure
An action figure is a poseable character (arts), character model figure made most commonly of plastic, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, military, video game or television program; fictional or historical. These figures are ...
. A Dollfie doll is about the size of a
Barbie
Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by American toy company Mattel, Inc. and launched on March 9, 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration.
...
doll, 1/6 or playscale, though there are variants in different heights ranging from . Dollfie dolls generally come blank, i.e., their heads are not painted. When an artist paints a Dollfie, the technique is referred to as a "face-up" or "make-up". Dollfie dolls are much more flexible than typical Barbie-style western fashion dolls of the same size, because of the much larger number of joints in the body.
Dollfie are often confused with
Super Dollfie
, often abbreviated SD, is a brand of ball-jointed doll, or BJD, made by the Japanese company Volks. They are made to be easy to customize and are primarily marketed to adult doll collectors and customizers. They are cast in polyurethane resin, a ...
, a larger 1/3 scale range of resin dolls, also made by Volks, or even similar larger Asian
ball-jointed doll
A ball-jointed doll is any doll that is articulated with ball and socket joints. In contemporary usage when referring to modern dolls, and particularly when using the acronyms BJD or ABJD, it usually refers to modern Asian ball-jointed dolls. The ...
s from other companies. The brand name ''Dollfie'' should accurately only be used for Volks's line of 1/6 dolls though.
Volks Inc. originally manufactured dolls with doll-crafters and artists in mind. For those with less skill, doll-crafting short-cuts were introduced, such as pre-rooted hair and stick-on eye decals. Later, finished dolls were issued. There are various body types, male and female, with several forms and skin tones for both as well as a line of child-sized dolls. The company also makes tools and materials to customize and maintain dolls.
''Dollfie Dream'' is a line of 60 cm soft-bodied vinyl dolls made by Volks, similar to the smaller Dollfie dolls. This line consists of original Volks characters, but is mostly based on anime characters. ''Dollfie Dream'' has different types of dolls in their line-up, which are Dollfie Dream, Dollfie Dream Sister, Dollfie Dream Dynamite and Mini Dollfie Dream. Until recently there have only been female characters in the ''Dollfie Dream'' line-up, but in
2016 Volks released their first two male Dollfie Dreams, namely the characters Len Kagamine from
Vocaloid
is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, in 2000 and was not originally intended to b ...
and Kirito from
Sword Art Online
is a Japanese light novel series written by Reki Kawahara and illustrated by abec. The series takes place in the then-near future and focuses on protagonists Kirito (Sword Art Online), Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya and Asuna (Sword Art On ...
.
See also
*
Asian fashion doll
Asian fashion dolls are fashion dolls that are made by Asian manufacturers or primarily targeted to an Asian market. Some have received international attention, such as with Momoko Doll, and in 2005 the first annual Dollstyle convention was held i ...
External links
Volks Japan Dollfie sectionVolks USA Dollfie section
Doll brands
Fashion dolls
Playscale figures
{{Doll-stub