Are the otakus okay???
This showed up in my YT feed and it was too cursed not to share. What gets me is that this is an officially licensed, SquareEnix-approved product
It’s seemingly made by one of those Chinese companies that make incredibly realistic and expensive action figures for rich nerds so it’s technically not a RealDoll but there’s probably a reason why its life-sized and why they chose the HoneyBee Inn outfit
Imagine visiting someone’s house and seeing this thing on their couch
spoiler
Also imagine what it’ll look like in 20 years once the silicone starts to degrade
i can’t find any information about ‘juicy made studio’ besides literally this product, i’m not sure this is a real partnership with the studio, seems kind of grey market. there’s apparently a bit of a market in sexed IP-figurines & dolls that directly reference the content while clearly being unauthorized. but it’s presumably niche & hard to crack down on
I guess I was tripped up by the “Collectible Figure” branding and the assumption that something on this scale would require official backing of some sort. Like when I think of unlicensed merch I think of cheap stuff you can find on AliExpress but I suppose they don’t give a flying fuck about IP in China either way
modern specialist handicraft markets are definitely something i don’t understand very well, but low-numbers high-cost operations like this probably aren’t ‘real’ factories with high capital investment, my theory is that these businesses would take normally manufactured sex dolls and bespoke customize them to look like characters, then they’re marketing them in slightly more ‘reputable’ places as an extension of the ‘figurine’ stuff. it’s a bit bizarre that they’re coy about it, wouldn’t a buyer want all the specifics/operation manuals on a really expensive sextoy? but i guess the barest pretense that the sexdoll is a collectible would be important to some prudish markets.