The Facebook debacle & other issues

2 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

The problem is I think it’s really a fan base as opposed to a customer base, and I suspect that’s how he sees them. He sells his products to fans and denies them to critics. He is probably engaging in the regular sale of stuff to random strangers who buy a doll on the web for themselves or for their kids, but outside of that I’m inclined to think he only wants his dolls to go to his true blue fans. 

Well, he's lost me as a fan, let alone a "customer", as I've been a regular  on Figure.fm, (before Shoe-san started his 'wabi-sabi', or, "Wig problems that no-one understands why it's so difficult to correct, and it's not MY fault" garbage), instead of standing up for those who've wanted to support him from the beginning. 

I had plans for two Chitose, for my storyline, but, this Utter BULLSHIT from a person I Used to have respect for, has made my two Saber Alter purchases seem more logical, In my opinion... 

I stand on this, grief me as you wish... 

If I had the cash to spare, I'd nap a tea Chitose multiverse and flaunt her all over instagram that I slipped past his ban hammer just because I know steam would come out of his ears.

Really truly sad, because his dolls are pretty and have a gorgeous torso. Really disheartening the direction his company took. I wonder how his employees feel about his behavior, because I sure as heck know I could not work at a job with ethics like that and feel good about myself at the end of the day. There's no way.

I’m not sure if this has been said yet, because even though I’ve read most of this forum I haven’t read everything yet, but do you guys remember the robots? How he was trying to make a real Chi-like robot? He dedicated so many years to it and then somewhat recently in the last few years all articles/posts got deleted about it and DC said it was all one April Fool’s joke. I don’t understand why he did that. Did he feel ashamed or did he not want people expecting anything more from that? I just felt like it was really weird.

I remember how exclusive Volks was and it was really annoying and then DC made his shop and let ppl bring any doll in his shop and I thought that was so cool. Also, back then Smd was cheaper than Dollfie Dream and Smd had a cute story with different characters, including a guy doll, which Dollfie Dream didn’t want to make at the time. Now Smd has become everything DC said he was never going to do. It’s basically now just some brand name exclusive shop that only cares about its most wealthy and influential customers. 

Got to stay on his good side, if you still want a special doll…

Edited October 24, 2021 by Fluffybuns

15 minutes ago, Fluffybuns said:

I’m not sure if this has been said yet, because even though I’ve read most of this forum I haven’t read everything yet, but do you guys remember the robots? How he was trying to make a real Chi-like robot? He dedicated so many years to it and then somewhat recently in the last few years all articles/posts got deleted about it and DC said it was all one April Fool’s joke. I don’t understand why he did that. Did he feel ashamed or did he not want people expecting anything more from that? I just felt like it was really weird.

I remember how exclusive Volks was and it was really annoying and then DC made his shop and let ppl bring any doll in his shop and I thought that was so cool. Also, back then Smd was cheaper than Dollfie Dream and Smd had a cute story with different characters, including a guy doll, which Dollfie Dream didn’t want to make at the time. Now Smd has become everything DC said he was never going to do. It’s basically now just some brand name exclusive shop that only cares about its most wealthy and influential customers. 

Got to stay on his good side, if you still want a special doll…

And meanwhile Volks became more and more accessible ...what a turn of events huh

1 hour ago, Fluffybuns said:

do you guys remember the robots? How he was trying to make a real Chi-like robot? He dedicated so many years to it and then somewhat recently in the last few years all articles/posts got deleted about it and DC said it was all one April Fool’s joke. I don’t understand why he did that. Did he feel ashamed or did he not want people expecting anything more from that? I just felt like it was really weird.

He did say it fell through. It costed too much or it wouldn't be possible to achieve satisfactory results/movements with current technology yet (who would have thought..!)
But to double down after that and say it was a aprils fools joke, geez... Had no idea it was deleted/altered.
He promise too much, when he - with his perceived way with words - could just say it's being experimented with. Don't create hype and expectations for a product you aren't sure on... Unless you want to disappoint.
Plenty of disappointment to be had with his availability-system already.

Yea, that’s what I thought. It just sad that it is now being covered up instead of just admitting that it was too hard to mass produce. I don’t think there’s any shame in not being able to mass produce it. 
 

 

16 hours ago, ladyandlion said:

This is getting quite disheartening, infuriating. What bothers me most is that if this were any other doll brand/company, the complaints would be taken seriously by potential customers. Instead with Smart Doll, we have a really weird cult-y situation which is so unnerving to witness.

The people who haven't done anything wrong (except for those who do not stroke DC's enormous ego) have to hide away, remain anonymous while others who still want access to the dolls continue to lob praise at him. I just wonder how much longer this is going to go on before he's going to lose a good chunk of his customer base. 

Going through all this trouble, stalking the forums and groups to see who is doing what. Any other company and this kind of thing would get around and wouldn't be tolerated.

I'm not going to say who (but if you are in the BJD world, you probably have a good idea), but there are a few companies that have been seriously under fire lately for some version of, "I didn't get what I want (but I got a refund)," or "I got what I wanted, but it took too long." (I am not referring to the notorious BJD maker with a three-plus year waitlist, and the refund waitlist, by the way). And by under fire, I mean excoriated to the point that Den of Angels has taken adverse action against at least two of them that I know of (before I left DOA). 

And then I come back to this thread, and holy guacamole, how those other companies have been treated just burns my bacon all over again...

At this point, it seems like if you are not just an occasional screw-up, but a flagrant, damn-the-torpedoes bad actor in the doll world, everyone just shrugs their shoulders and lets it slide cough cough D0ll$he cough. And frankly, I don't get it. 

4 minutes ago, MaleficentMrsofEvil said:

I'm not going to say who (but if you are in the BJD world, you probably have a good idea), but there are a few companies that have been seriously under fire lately for some version of, "I didn't get what I want (but I got a refund)," or "I got what I wanted, but it took too long." (I am not referring to the notorious BJD maker with a three-plus year waitlist, and the refund waitlist, by the way). And by under fire, I mean excoriated to the point that Den of Angels has taken adverse action against at least two of them that I know of (before I left DOA). 

And then I come back to this thread, and holy guacamole, how those other companies have been treated just burns my bacon all over again...

At this point, it seems like if you are not just an occasional screw-up, but a flagrant, damn-the-torpedoes bad actor in the doll world, everyone just shrugs their shoulders and lets it slide cough cough D0ll$he cough. And frankly, I don't get it. 

I don't know why the website won't let me edit my comment to fix my wording, but I don't think those other companies ARE screw-ups - they suffered some problems. Because of "the plague," or worse, some really horrendous personal life issues.

2 minutes ago, MaleficentMrsofEvil said:

I don't know why the website won't let me edit my comment to fix my wording, but I don't think those other companies ARE screw-ups - they suffered some problems. Because of "the plague," or worse, some really horrendous personal life issues.

Dolls of Wrath.       

12 minutes ago, MaleficentMrsofEvil said:

I don't know why the website won't let me edit my comment to fix my wording

That error usually means that some section of the post has a piece of text that needs retyping. As much of a pain as it is, the only fix I know of is to copy the text and then paste is back in piece by piece, saving the change as you go, until you find the block of text that is breaking your post. Then you just retype that text. 

You could also try pasting into Notepad, and they copying it back out and pasting it back into the forum editor. Notepad should convert it to plain text and remove any hidden formatting that might be breaking the editor. That might work or it might not, but can’t hurt to try. 

5 hours ago, Fluffybuns said:

Yea, that’s what I thought. It just sad that it is now being covered up instead of just admitting that it was too hard to mass produce. I don’t think there’s any shame in not being able to mass produce it. 
 

 

No shame, no shame at all. But I do think it would be wise for him to SLOW DOWN. That goes for his whole way of operating. The speed at which he turns out new dolls and new ideas (blue version etc) is break neck. It all feels rather capricious. There's nothing wrong with innovations and introducing something new to the market, which he did (like with the tan and dark skinned vinyl dolls, which were improved upon and he said he did consult someone to help create something that was more accurate, which I can appreciate.) I also appreciate the new semi-real sculpts which were also improved on. 

But it started to get out of hand. Now the brand feels like his own personal playground and wasn't he selling off a bunch of prototype and well...just junk from failed experiments? Charging people for cast offs? "Oh this didn't work out, better recoup the expensive by selling off the failures." And the issue is he can get away with it because his FANS will shell out the money for the cast offs. It's fine to just let things simmer. It's about the creative process. Sometimes you have to let things sit for a while then come back and work out the kinks. Don't just announce the next thing, get people hyped and then disappoint them when it doesn't happen, or else, make it worse by sweeping it under the rug or making a joke and being an all around troll about it. Not a good look. 

The fact he keeps promising and promoting things that basically won’t ever come out or will, but only in the chaos section is very annoying. Some people end up wrecking their lives trying to stay up to have a chance of buying a special doll or some other supposedly limited design and then he cancels it saying he can’t make it possible, yet he releases a whole bunch of them online through chaos or to inner circle peeps. I have no problem if he wants to make it clear that due to COVID or something that he only plans on releasing the main dolls to general consumers and then mention that he wants to reward his long time fans by giving them a shot at the prototypes, etc. I do not like how he constantly waves special dolls and designs in peoples faces and then you can’t even have a chance to get it unless you have access to chaos. Yes, chaos tends to be so much unnecessary garbage. Very few chaos boxes seem worth it, but you have to have already bought two separate purchase at least two weeks apart to qualify, so not sure if that’s worth it or not. 

 

1 hour ago, ladyandlion said:

No shame, no shame at all. But I do think it would be wise for him to SLOW DOWN. That goes for his whole way of operating. The speed at which he turns out new dolls and new ideas (blue version etc) is break neck. It all feels rather capricious. There's nothing wrong with innovations and introducing something new to the market, which he did (like with the tan and dark skinned vinyl dolls, which were improved upon and he said he did consult someone to help create something that was more accurate, which I can appreciate.) I also appreciate the new semi-real sculpts which were also improved on. 

But it started to get out of hand. Now the brand feels like his own personal playground and wasn't he selling off a bunch of prototype and well...just junk from failed experiments? Charging people for cast offs? "Oh this didn't work out, better recoup the expensive by selling off the failures." And the issue is he can get away with it because his FANS will shell out the money for the cast offs. It's fine to just let things simmer. It's about the creative process. Sometimes you have to let things sit for a while then come back and work out the kinks. Don't just announce the next thing, get people hyped and then disappoint them when it doesn't happen, or else, make it worse by sweeping it under the rug or making a joke and being an all around troll about it. Not a good look. 

Troll dolls:        The price of failure. 

1 hour ago, Fluffybuns said:

The fact he keeps promising and promoting things that basically won’t ever come out or will, but only in the chaos section is very annoying. Some people end up wrecking their lives trying to stay up to have a chance of buying a special doll or some other supposedly limited design and then he cancels it saying he can’t make it possible, yet he releases a whole bunch of them online through chaos or to inner circle peeps. I have no problem if he wants to make it clear that due to COVID or something that he only plans on releasing the main dolls to general consumers and then mention that he wants to reward his long time fans by giving them a shot at the prototypes, etc. I do not like how he constantly waves special dolls and designs in peoples faces and then you can’t even have a chance to get it unless you have access to chaos. Yes, chaos tends to be so much unnecessary garbage. Very few chaos boxes seem worth it, but you have to have already bought two separate purchase at least two weeks apart to qualify, so not sure if that’s worth it or not. 

 

I'm not sure if its worth wrecking their lives to get a chaos/ limited run Smart Doll... I hope no one does that...

I've recently seen a person looking for Ambition (unreleased, except in chaos) and some people being absolutely bewildered with how shes been released but NOT released(?!?!). It really makes collecting dolls **by choo* less fun. And he teases random heads like Courage in G04, Twilight, random prototypes and releases that people have to play the lottery for. And oh boy, they do, and end up with a lot of generic heads too. The smartdoll land twitter is just a study in lottery and FOMO.

9 minutes ago, sumdude said:

I'm not sure if its worth wrecking their lives to get a chaos/ limited run Smart Doll... I hope no one does that...

I've recently seen a person looking for Ambition (unreleased, except in chaos) and some people being absolutely bewildered with how shes been released but NOT released(?!?!). It really makes collecting dolls **by choo* less fun. And he teases random heads like Courage in G04, Twilight, random prototypes and releases that people have to play the lottery for. And oh boy, they do, and end up with a lot of generic heads too. The smartdoll land twitter is just a study in lottery and FOMO.

They might be more sleep deprived, but being sleep deprived can mess with your life. Especially since there usually is not a clear date of when things go on sale, so some might stay up each night or whatever Japan time is for them to try and have a chance at buying the doll. Now, not being clear with certain release dates are not that bad, because it does allow people a better chance at getting certain dolls. One thing he does is promising to release a doll during an estimated time period and then cancels it. Normally, that isn’t too bad, but several of his fans waited months for the doll and stayed up at unnatural times to get it only to find it was canceled. I just don’t understand why DC hypes things so much just to make people so hurt. Why can’t he make a pre-order period for people, so people have a stress free time to order some of his special dolls like he used to? 

Maybe other people who used to browse figure.fm/doll.fm during the era when Danny had his customized Mirai DD can confirm my vague memories on this, but didn't Danny use to talk about how if/when he made his own doll line he'd do away with things like tricky or limited ordering?

Or perhaps I imagined this or am mixing it up with the comments people would leave on his posts.

But I thought that was something he disliked about DD collecting and would talk about being able to do better. In light of that, it seems ironic that Smartdoll sales and marketing has ended up like this -- if anything the rare and limited ones are much harder to get and require more FOMO-based action than LE or retired DDs >__< 

Double irony: I think much of his marketing strategy to loop in people who are otherwise unaware of large vinyl anime dolls existing  is an easily browsable English-language website. This makes the product seem less intimidating to learn about and acquire, compared to navigating machine-translated overseas sites like if you're after a DD, Obitsu, et cetera. Yet this clear-looking website obscures a great many tricky loops in buying a lot of SmD products.

Edited October 25, 2021 by ebil

21 hours ago, battrastard said:

Well, he's lost me as a fan, let alone a "customer", as I've been a regular  on Figure.fm, (before Shoe-san started his 'wabi-sabi', or, "Wig problems that no-one understands why it's so difficult to correct, and it's not MY fault" garbage), instead of standing up for those who've wanted to support him from the beginning. 

I had plans for two Chitose, for my storyline, but, this Utter BULLSHIT from a person I Used to have respect for, has made my two Saber Alter purchases seem more logical, In my opinion... 

I stand on this, grief me as you wish... 

It really is sad. I went to buy a smartdoll and immediately changed my mind. They’re PRETTY. It’s SAD because I’d love one; but there’s no way I am supporting a guy like this. I’ll stick to Volks and Luts.

5 hours ago, Fluffybuns said:

The fact he keeps promising and promoting things that basically won’t ever come out or will, but only in the chaos section is very annoying. 

I remember someone commenting on that in one of the more... Hardcore groups. About the cocoa guys, which, as far as I know, are only released as a kit and through Chaos. It seemed like a very fair point to me. Of course, no one answered. 

1 hour ago, LuluChan said:

I remember someone commenting on that in one of the more... Hardcore groups. About the cocoa guys, which, as far as I know, are only released as a kit and through Chaos. It seemed like a very fair point to me. Of course, no one answered. 

So I know DC has released cocoa guys as prototypes and I believe it was recently he put in the chaos section cocoa guy parts, like uncut shells, frames, and heads, but they are all sold separately and you would have to cut and put the entire doll together yourself. The problem with chaos is that it doesn’t count for warranty, so if you have an issue, you can’t complain, since chaos is by definition a buy at your own risk type of thing. Buying all those parts is more expensive than than his normal dolls and if someone bought the special head it’s almost like paying for a prototype doll, but with no wig or underpants and with the effort of having to put it together yourself.
 

I know many people that stick with Smd because of the cocoa skin color offered and the slightly more mature looking vinyl boy dolls compared to the Dollfie Dream brand or just having a guy option compared to really any vinyl doll company, since there are very few vinyl doll companies that make guy dolls.

7 hours ago, Fluffybuns said:

So I know DC has released cocoa guys as prototypes and I believe it was recently he put in the chaos section cocoa guy parts, like uncut shells, frames, and heads, but they are all sold separately and you would have to cut and put the entire doll together yourself. The problem with chaos is that it doesn’t count for warranty, so if you have an issue, you can’t complain, since chaos is by definition a buy at your own risk type of thing. Buying all those parts is more expensive than than his normal dolls and if someone bought the special head it’s almost like paying for a prototype doll, but with no wig or underpants and with the effort of having to put it together yourself.
 

I know many people that stick with Smd because of the cocoa skin color offered and the slightly more mature looking vinyl boy dolls compared to the Dollfie Dream brand or just having a guy option compared to really any vinyl doll company, since there are very few vinyl doll companies that make guy dolls.

Also, the Chaos stuff isn't open to people unless they've purchased from him before; same with the blind box dolls, which have been the only other way to get boys recently.  And since he's been known to cancel clothes orders if you don't have a Smartdoll to wear them, you basically have to buy a standard doll in order to get one. I suppose you could buy the standard option parts, but I suspect buying option parts for a doll you don't own will lead to him questioning you, and "I just want to be able to get the Chaos stuff so I can have a boy doll" seems like the kind of response that would also get your order canceled.

It says a lot that the DD boys, despite only being available through Dream Choice and requiring a proxy unless you live in Japan, are still easier to get from the manufacturer.

Since we're talking about the availability of boy dolls at the moment:

Lelouch popped up for pre-order on animesugoi.de: link.
The listing mentioned that this is a limited pre-order for animesugoi and Fabric and Friends, so if you are US based it might be worth reaching out to them.

 

This looks like a very rare possibility to buy an assembled boy. I'm not a fan of Lelouch his face type so I will pass, but for those who want a slim type boy body: this might be your chance.

Thanks for the tip @Eiko82

1 hour ago, Wasabi said:

This looks like a very rare possibility to buy an assembled boy.

That isn't chaos quality!

5 hours ago, Yumeiro said:

That isn't chaos quality!

start again!   we need  perfect chaos !  I say       now i order chik nugs.   

Edited October 25, 2021 by DollyDearest

On 10/24/2021 at 2:19 AM, Deyja said:

If I had the cash to spare, I'd nap a tea Chitose multiverse and flaunt her all over instagram that I slipped past his ban hammer just because I know steam would come out of his ears.

Really truly sad, because his dolls are pretty and have a gorgeous torso. Really disheartening the direction his company took. I wonder how his employees feel about his behavior, because I sure as heck know I could not work at a job with ethics like that and feel good about myself at the end of the day. There's no way.

I would say that if you really want a Multiverse Teachose then please don't let your dislike of Shoe Child stop you. I purchased mine directly despite my issues with the company and his behavior since I had the available funds at the opportune time, but if she's in your radar, there's always second hand! She'll be hard to find, but nothing is impossible over a long enough period of time. Multiverse heads have popped up in chaos kits, so there's always the chance someone will have one for sale blank.

And I definitely use ALL the hashtags when I post my Teachose on instagram! She's beautiful and I know he'll never get to see her (or her DDS gf) because he's got me blocked.

1 hour ago, Moonsour said:

And I definitely use ALL the hashtags when I post my Teachose on instagram! She's beautiful and I know he'll never get to see her (or her DDS gf) because he's got me blocked.

That’s sad, but at least others can see your cute doll and her DDS gf.