Review of ABS Hujoo Rose

I adopted a Hujoo Rose from The Junky Spot.  The sculpt is so new that it's really freakin' hard to find pics of her on the Interwebs right now, so I felt it was my sworn duty as a doll blogger to spam as many pics as possible.  :)  She's 25cm/11" tall ... made from ABS plastic like their Hujoo Babies, not resin.  I love that!  It lowers the cost while giving you a tough little doll that won't yellow over time.  I'd had several resin dolls in the past, and in person she looks just like a resin to me.  She has a good weight to her, good jointing and competent, professional face paint.  She feels like the type of smooth resin that Bobobie uses for their dolls, but with better posing.  (I had a Bobobie March once.  Endearing face, but the posing was just ... bleh.  Really bleh.)

An ABS Hujoo Lily is also available, but I didn't like that face as much as Rose's.  It's driving me crazy that on Hujoo's official site they have two more sculpts in this line on the same body (Mari and Kesha), but they're only available in resin so far, not ABS.  Ack!  Produce those dolls in ABS pronto, Hujoo!  I'm not going to pay twice as much for the resin versions, as nice as they may be. 

Rose is an Asian BJD in every respect besides the material used.  She's a strung doll, and eyes and wigs are changeable.  The headcap was fairly easy to lift off ... a HUGE relief to me, since Hujoo headcaps are sometimes a pain to open.  If I had a billion dollars, I swear I'd buy out the Hujoo company in South Korea and force them to switch to a magnetic headcap system.  LOL.  Then I'd force them to produce Mari and Kesha in ABS.  (And maybe that cute resin BJD cat they have. ...)

This doll is also available at Mimiwoo in Hong Kong, as well as Junky Spot in California.  I don't know of any other sellers right now.  Hujoo (infuriatingly enough) has the ABS Lily on its official site, but not ABS Rose.  Sigh.   As of this writing, the ABS version of Lily is sold out on the Hujoo site, but not yet at Junky or Mimiwoo.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Review of Hujoo Freya

The first time I ever saw this doll I thought she was weird-looking and didn't like her, so it's really really, interesting that I actually OWN ONE now.  You see, I was never a fan of anthropomorphic dolls.  Really, the closest I ever came to liking anthros was my deep childhood love for Bugs Bunny.  Hee hee. 

So ... I began noticing these cat dolls on the Junky Spot Facebook page, and they seemed to be really popular.  They kept selling out.  I was fascinated by them, but didn't actually love them at first.  The fascination continued over a couple of months, and they steadily grew on me.  I was converted over time from thinking they were a little too odd for me, to squeeeing over their cuteness.  (How many "E"s does the word "squeeeing" have?)  Admit it: Cat faces are cute.  Cat paws are cute, too.  Cat tails are cute.

I kind of wish they'd had a rounder, more cartoonish body.  They use the same female body as many of the other Hujoo dolls (the ones with human heads, I mean), but with cat feet and paws, and a tail.  They're 23cm/9" tall. 

They are made of ABS plastic, not resin, but other than that, they fit the description of an Asian ball-jointed doll in every way.  Their eyes are changeable.  They can sit up nicely and stand on their own.  Their posing is fairly good, but with some limitations.  I think they should have had better movement in their head and wrists.  You can move their heads up and down, side-to-side, BUT ... and this is a big BUT ... you can only move their heads side-to-side if it's in the "down" position.  If the head is in the "up" position, for some reason you can't move it from side-to-side any longer.  Weird.  If you raise their arms in the air, the arms do stay in position without falling, which is nice.

They come with a vinyl insert that you can put in their heads to keep their eyes in place without the use of putty.  It actually works really nicely!  The only problem with it is it forces the eyes in a "forward" position, so if you want upturned eyes like mine has, or side-glancing eyes, you're going to have to use putty anyway.  If all you want are forward-glancing eyes, then the vinyl insert works like a charm.  (I only tried it with half-round eyes, by the way.)

They come unpainted, with no eyes as a do-it-yourself dolly kit.  (They DO come already strung, though.)  You have to buy the eyes separately (size 16mm).  The first production run of these dolls had an issue with the pegs in the head plate not fitting properly.  You had to sand the pegs down a bit to get them to fit right.  Mine was first production run, and she didn't really require a lot of sanding.  I found that some plain old sandpaper did the trick quite nicely, and didn't take a lot of time.

Anyway, they're only available at one store right now:  The Junky Spot in California, USA.  Although they're produced by Hujoo, they are an exclusive to just that one store.  (The store's owner co-designed them with Hujoo.)  ... No, I don't get anything for promoting the doll or the store (I never do), but since I bothered to do a review of them, I thought I might as well tell you where you could get them. 

By the way, in case someone is interested:  I did my faceup with acrylic paint (nose, black eyeliner and mouth lines) and oil-free watercolor pencil (everything else).  The eyes are 16mm glass Soom eyes.