When I first saw custom Blythes, there were two very obvious groups. The ones that were customized lightly, still had their original hair, and some light carving for the lips. And then there were the ones that were completely overhauled. The ones with wefts or another kind of hair change, vampire teeth, body changes. Now there is a huge variety in the type of customs that pop up: sassy little girls, the dolls that end up on Pure Neemo bodies and look a bit like pin-ups, and then there are the vampires, monsters, girls with braces, cross-eyed dolls, and then the ones with severe carving (of which monsters, vampires, cleft palates, open mouths, full set of teeth, and scarred on the faces all fit in).

Lately I’ve seen a lot of vampires and monsters, and more extreme customs that often pop up from time to time. Overall, there always seems to be a good mix of styles – some are lightly customized, some extremely customizes, but the majority are somewhere in the middle. Like most things in life, the spectrum of customized dolls rests on a bell curve.

What is your least favourite custom trend? How about your most favourite?

As I took a little looksee through some active sale postings for custom dolls, I found that quite a few had reroots (usually mohair, although there are some alpaca), usually all custom chips (many gorgeous handpainted ones!), mostly Licca over stock Takara or even Pure Neemo bodies. Most of the dolls that I see selling have minimal carving. Perhaps the mouth, nose and the philtrum, but the majority of dolls don’t seem to have more than that. Teeth seems to be a factor that can, depending on who the customizer is, keep the doll on the market for longer. For some more popular or well-known customizers, dolls with teeth or other more ‘extreme’ carving gets snapped up quite quickly. For those unknown, they just seem to linger longer – or maybe that’s just because Facebook will bump up the post every single time someone bumps it, and it’s like I’m seeing it all over again for the umpteeth time.