I've always loved collecting tiny toys, cute plushies, dolls, and figurines—although a lot of my figurines wound up broken... ^^;; I also love dress-up games! My grandmother used to make me little paper dolls from notebook paper, God have mercy on her...

In this section, you will find:

• Photographs - pictures I've taken of old-fashioned dolls I've seen in shops, I might update this page when I see more I like! I'll also include some of my old dolls, plushies, and toys here too! So, it's really more like an online toybox (but different from the toybox for online dolls and other pixel toys)!
• Dress Up - what I've made in dress-ups, gacha games, picrews, etc., usually fandom/special interest-related, the names of the games all named and linked when possible, I'll also talk about other customization and dress-up portions of games I like!
• Vintage Dolls in Media - it gets a little tiring seeing everyone depict old dolls as singularly creepy after Annabelle, so it's nice to see more varied and loving depictions of bisque dolls and the like! It's mostly going to be anime/manga for now.

Odds and Ends:

Friendship Dolls [CW WWII] - a lovely website about the American Blue-Eyed Dolls and the Japanese Friendship Dolls exchange which began in 1927. This exchange of Japanese dolls and American dolls occurred 14 years pre-WWII and continued after. A famous doll, Miss Kagawa, remained displayed throughout the war, with a placard explaining that while Japanese aggression must be stopped, they believe in the goodwill of the Japanese citizens. They are enduring symbols of goodwill and friendship. Most have been located, but of the original 58, 14 remain missing. Most of the Japanese dolls went into storage or were sold, when war broke out, and most of the American dolls were burned or destroyed on govenrment orders, but many Japanese achers hid their American dolls (300 survived!) at the risk of being seen as traitors. The Japanese dolls were very finely made dolls, dressed in silk clothing made from scraps of real kimono, the origins of some were even traced based on the mon (emblems) on their kimono!
• Am I too old to play with toys? - text version of the question and answer if you cannot read the image:

  “Dear American Girl, I am almost 14 years old, and I still like toys. Is there something wrong with me? -Too old for toys?”
  “There is NOTHING wrong with liking toys. In fact, playing with toys can be a great stress reliever. Kids feel a ton of pressure to grow up fast—so much so that sometimes, they stop doing their favorite things. Here's why that's bad: Growing up can be really, really hard sometimes. It's easier when you get to do the things you enjoy and spend time with the people and things that make you happy. So keep what you love close, for as long as needed. Let your maturity show in the way you treat others and run your life—those things say much more about you than whether you like toys.”

  If you feel that's too biased coming from American Girl, here's one from the author, C.S. Lewis:

  “To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

• The Grim Crime-Scene Dollhouses Made by the ‘Mother of Forensics’ [CW for detailed recreations of real crime scenes and one suicide in miniature] - for a change of pace, read about Frances Glessner Lee, the mother of forensic sciences and the first woman awarded title of police captain in the United States, despite the fact that her parents did not see the need for higher education for their daughter, sending only her brother to Harvard. When she inherited their fortune, she established a department of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School, donated topical books, and used traditionally feminine crafts to make dollhouse-like dioramas intended to educate police detectives in noticing fine details in crime scenes. Her work is well-researched and accurate in its details, as she attended autopsies and built working lights, doors, even mousetraps. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (you can view virtual reality versions!) remain a valuable teaching tool in forensic sciences, the purpose of which is to "convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the the truth in a nutshell." Of the original 20, 19 of her dioramas exist to this day.

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