Now Censored: TBLeague / Phicen and other seamless bodies

shovelchop81 wrote:

Diana wrote:

skywalkersaga wrote:

shovelchop81 wrote:Makes no difference to me personally but I abhor censorship of any kind and think prudes can stick to their own little circles and leave the real world to itself.
Talking of banning things, I'm furious as the UK Labour Party have just announced banning swords completely in the UK as their new attack on collectors not criminals...

No way, please be joking.... I know someone who makes Viking swords for a living!

Also how the hell is King Arthur ever supposed to return now....he'll be arrested the minute he's seen with Excalibur!

Holy cow!! Well, they'd better ban all kitchen knives, too, then. Cause... that makes sense! They can be thrown!

Ugh. Not even going to ask about the state of CCTV...

Kitchen knives are used in 97% of bladed attacks, swords are less than 1%. Yes it will include reenacting, fencing, HEMA, theatre, film making, the tourist industry, parades and anything else you can think of. Sorry to go off topic Ian/Mark etc..

I have no words.

Well, bringing this thread back on topic...

Posted this in the Verycool seamless body thread, but I'll post it here too. I saw this posted on BBICN earlier today (in reference to the upcoming Verycool bodies)-

"Xiangcai customer service said that the details of this body shape have been cancelled."

I asked Giantoy if they would be able to verify this or not, we'll see what they have to say.

I also don’t care about the lack of details (I have no use for the bag of dicks from my male Jaiou figure). But I find it laughable that they think removing the detailing will keep young men from sexualizing figures. Kids still do naughty poses with Barbies. And my brother got in trouble for stealing one of my mom’s expensive collectible dolls so he could strip and stare at it. That dolls was not super detailed. Even then, her first reaction wasn’t to blame the doll.

There are a number of ways that TBL and Jiao can deal with this. I don't know much about Chinese laws of course, but aside from re-labeling their product as "Adult," they could probably produce anatomically correct "For Export Only" versions, which could only be sold to customers outside of China. They could also probably set up plants outside of China, say Thailand or someplace like that to produce these dolls.

craftsrmyluvlanguage wrote:I also don’t care about the lack of details (I have no use for the bag of dicks from my male Jaiou figure). But I find it laughable that they think removing the detailing will keep young men from sexualizing figures. Kids still do naughty poses with Barbies. And my brother got in trouble for stealing one of my mom’s expensive collectible dolls so he could strip and stare at it. That dolls was not super detailed. Even then, her first reaction wasn’t to blame the doll.

You could use the 'bag of dicks' to make a H R Giger inspired 1/6 statue! Just get some lego hoses and bionicles bits

gooboo wrote:Well, bringing this thread back on topic...

Posted this in the Verycool seamless body thread, but I'll post it here too. I saw this posted on BBICN earlier today (in reference to the upcoming Verycool bodies)-

"Xiangcai customer service said that the details of this body shape have been cancelled."

I asked Giantoy if they would be able to verify this or not, we'll see what they have to say.

I expect this is going to affect all seamless bodies from now on, or at least those manufactured in China. As has already been said, The Chinese government doesn't usually back down where it's own affairs are concerned, even if there is foreign money at stake. I'm sure, however, that if the existing manufacturers neglect to outsource this arm of their production outside of China, someone else will step up to fill the gap eventually. Whether or not they do it to the same standard is another matter.

As for the Verycool figures, if their base body is the same as their Bayonetta body then they're not particularly realistic in 'that' department to begin with IMHO (that and a few other issues with my Bayonetta body led me to not bother ordering any).

So it now remains to be seen what happens with the new Mr Z City Girls, the various seamless Chun Li figures, and the more overtly sexualised PDTOYS figure (I suspect that one at least could be about to be altered beyond recognition, or even cancelled altogether).


Whatever happens, it'd be nice if the companies themselves informed the customer of these changes (which are certainly more than 'slight', and which they seem to have known were on the horizon months ago) rather than leave it to us to have to chase up the information for ourselves.



EDIT: Personally, I'm a bit burnt-out on the hobby in general anyway, so (outstanding pre-orders aside) I'm going to consider this a well-timed break. Maybe in six months or so we'll all have a better idea of the true impact of these changes, and whether or not any kind of compromise can be reached or alternative offered.

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:There are a number of ways that TBL and Jiao can deal with this. I don't know much about Chinese laws of course, but aside from re-labeling their product as "Adult," they could probably produce anatomically correct "For Export Only" versions, which could only be sold to customers outside of China. They could also probably set up plants outside of China, say Thailand or someplace like that to produce these dolls.

In principle that idea sounds good, but I wonder whether the profit margins would suffer too much from having double the amount of moulds in production or even multiple locations for production (which would result in smaller/more expensive production runs). But just yesterday I saw an expert say that more production will be moved to Thailand, Vietnam and other places within the next ten years. Will see.

Diana wrote:

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:There are a number of ways that TBL and Jiao can deal with this. I don't know much about Chinese laws of course, but aside from re-labeling their product as "Adult," they could probably produce anatomically correct "For Export Only" versions, which could only be sold to customers outside of China. They could also probably set up plants outside of China, say Thailand or someplace like that to produce these dolls.

In principle that idea sounds good, but I wonder whether the profit margins would suffer too much from having double the amount of moulds in production or even multiple locations for production (which would result in smaller/more expensive production runs). But just yesterday I saw an expert say that more production will be moved to Thailand, Vietnam and other places within the next ten years. Will see.

First, they already have the multiple moulds, since they had to create a new set for the featureless figures. Second, the moulds themselves while expensive to produce, cost a fraction of what the moulding machines that heat and inject the material into the moulds. Third, any added cost in in production that affects profit margins would simply be passed on to the buyers who will pay more to get the figures they really want.

This being said, outsourcing production to other countries is probably not the best solution as either new dealers will have to be found, or the current Chinese dealers will have to rent warehousing space in other countries if the product can't be sold from China. I think their best solutions, if they can persuade the right people, is either to label the product as "adult only," or produce "export" versions for sale outside of China.

Ouch. That's terrible news regarding the newly announced Verycool bodies. Hopefully, Play Toy doesn't make any drastic changes to their bodies.

Doubtless this is just another example of a stupid policy emanating from and overly-bureaucratized and authoritarian government. This being said, business people are not as stupid as bureaucrats. If sales fall significantly, manufacturers will look for a way around, by one of the ways already mentioned or one we have yet to think of.  I'm sure they are thinking of it right now. Phicen knows that if Jiao finds a way around the restrictions and Phicen doesn't, Jiao will take sales away from Phicen. Jiao knows that the reverse is also true. Whoever is the first out of the gate to offer figures with anatomical detail again will get sales the other won't. Notwithstanding those who've commented that it will make no difference to them, the anatomical detail on some of the dolls was a major selling point to a significant portion of the market. Why else would they have gone to the trouble of including it otherwise?

It will be interesting to see where the asian markets will be heading, if Chinese manufacturers are only allowed to produce censored bodies. I really think that TBL and Jiaou might take a big hit in sales numbers, and they might consider to produce abroad to cater the more liberal Korean and Japanese markets.

I'm quite relaxed about the whole thing, as I wouldn't show nudity in my photos anyway.  

The only good news in all of this for those people who actually care about the anatomical detail--and I appear to be one of the few posting here--is that is more than a single manufacturer of anatomically detailed silicone figures. Market competition is will likely prompt the two biggest manufacturers, TBLeague and Jiaou, who are in competition with one another, just as Nikon and Canon are in direct competition with each other and have been so for decades. If either one of these had a consistently better product at the same or lower price and there were no problems with availability, then the other would have gone out of business long ago.

I think it will the same here. First, TBL and Jiaou will take a careful look at how much their sales drop. But even if they don't, or don't drop much, the first company to figure a way to produce and sell these figures, by whichever means is necessary and at a price people are willing to pay will get sales the other doesn't. They both know this. Once again, to draw an analogy with Canon and Nikon, as both companies digitized their SLR's Canon maintained full 35mm film sensors on their pro cameras and used smaller ones only on their consumer and prosumer models. Nikon, ignored this and stuck with a smaller sensor on all their cameras and introduced a new line of lenses specifically designed for use with the smaller sensors. In theory it seemed like a good idea, in practice it wasn't. The smaller sensors never gained market acceptance with pro photographers who were now digitizing and so a lot of pros went over to Canon. Nikon learned from that, and eventually changed their tune, but it was a costly lesson.

So right now, everyone is in the same boat, but sooner or later someone will likely make a bold move find a way around this. In the meantime, expect that scalpers will have bought all of the old stock from Giantoy and other dealers and will try to sell them on e-Bay at rip-off prices.

Gary, I expect you are right about the effect this would have and I hope you're right that they will find a solution.

GubernatorFan wrote:Gary, I expect you are right about the effect this would have and I hope you're right that they will find a solution.

I imagine that they will eventually, but understand why they would want to be tight-lipped about it for the moment. The first reason is that neither company wants to show their hand to the competition at this stage, and the second is that while they seek a solution, they need to keep their cash-flow going. If they were to let everyone know that in six months, they'll once more be producing anatomically detailed figures, a lot of people will hold off buying for six months. If and when they do start producing these figures again, the sales of anatomically lacking figures could take a major hit, and they won't want to have too many in stock. In fact, they may just let stocks run out and replace them without prior notice.

I feel confident they will eventually find a solution, it just might take a while.

My only disappointment is that I had held off on buying a lot of tbleague bodies since the last few years now, planning to get a whole big batch of them eventually when i could afford it. While I don't care about the detailed anatomy, it does feel kind of weird that half my tbleague bodies will be more details while the rest I'd been waiting to get won't be. I can only hope that maybe by the time I've saved enough to make my intended purchase they will have found some kind of solution, OR that I can maybe buy all my fave bodies over again in the censored version so I can at least have them all 'the same'.

skywalkersaga wrote:I feel confident they will eventually find a solution, it just might take a while.

My only disappointment is that I had held off on buying a lot of tbleague bodies since the last few years now, planning to get a whole big batch of them eventually when i could afford it. While I don't care about the detailed anatomy, it does feel kind of weird that half my tbleague bodies will be more details while the rest I'd been waiting to get won't be. I can only hope that maybe by the time I've saved enough to make my intended purchase they will have found some kind of solution, OR that I can maybe buy all my fave bodies over again in the censored version so I can at least have them all 'the same'.

I would tell you to be patient and wait if you aren't in a hurry anyway. The more that sales drop off, the greater the incentive will be for them to find a way around this restriction. They will have far less cause to do so quickly if they don't take a big hit to sales.

I've waited this long....will be happy to wait longer and see what happens...

I’m surprised this change is happening. If I’m being honest, I’d prefer they keep them the way they were, as some were more detailed while others were not. I’m typically not one who cares one way or the other as I really don’t take risqué photos (not saying I never have though) but I could see this hindering those who do.

Personally, I’ve definitely been slowing down on my figure purchasing and look to continue that trend for the time being, so this change doesn’t really affect me. When the time comes that I do plan on picking up more seamless bodies, I will give my money to the company who produces the anatomically correct bodies. It’s the principle of the thing!

Quick update. Although this has been of less concern in the comments posted here, it is theoretically even more likely to be noticed in non-specifcially adult scenes than the censorship of the female bodily details: 
Male TBLeague / Phicen seamless bodies are keeping their nipples (double standards are sometimes a blessing, I suppose), they will just not include the attachable "secret private parts" in the package. This according to Amber (in this instance not Amelia) at GianToy.

Well, I'm glad the men at least get their nipples....seeing as how, ya know, they're so functional and all. (sarcasm, lol).

But seriously, I guess that is good for shirtless stuff, especially since I still had a ton of 'plans' for such scenes in future. Though, yes, the double standards suck.

Truly, if they'd censored the 'lower' bits on both male and female figures, and just left the nipples alone on both it would at least make more sense. It just sounds like they have gone overboard on it to make sure they don't get shut down. :/

So… no more Rumpleforeskins? That’s kind of lame. What about the female figures…?

Stryker2012 wrote:So… no more Rumpleforeskins? That’s kind of lame. What about the female figures…?

LOL If I didn't know better, I'd think you're getting kinda dirty, Mark. The female figures have both their nipples and "secret private parts" removed/smoothed over.

The bottom line is that while anatomical detail is not important to everyone, and figures with anatomical detail are clearly a niche within the overall market, there was and remains a market demand for this detail and it was a major selling point for these figures. Why else would not one but at least two manufactures of seamless bodies go the the lengths of including this detail them sales they would not otherwise have?

I am also somewhat of the opinion that the very reason that TBL released it's "brown-skinned" bodies now at the same time as the detailed bodies are disappearing, at least for the time being, is that they are hoping that sales of these bodies will help to offset the loss of sales due to loss of anatomical detail. I suspect however that this will at best be a flash in the pan and that any boost in sales due to these figures being released will be temporary. There are too few brown-skinned female head sculpts currently on the market and while a lot of people will welcome the additional diversity in the skin tones, few collectors will purchase that many of them. This is an opinion, and I could be wrong of course, but I think I am more likely right than wrong. In the end TBL, Jiaou and anyone else in making seamless figures will have to find a way around the restrictions being currently imposed. Don't expect them to go broadcasting this. If and when they do start making detailed figures again, they'll be released with great fanfare but little warning as their distributors will want adequate time to liquidate whatever stocks they have on hand of inaccurate figures before the new ones arrive. Look for those to go on sale for no good reason everywhere around the same time.

So what I'm going to do is just sit back and wait on buying more seamless figures. If I buy anything right now, I'll spend the money on jointed "special" releases like the EXO-6 Star Trek line or whatever. And if you still don't care about anatomically detailed seamless figures, if you wait a while, you might just get some for cheap when they go on sale to clear them out.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Good points, Gary, just one correction in the timeline. There is evidence (posted above) that originally the darker skinned bodies were apparently going to be just as detailed. So the censorship happened after they were announced.

There have been no releases of newly-designed base bodies from TBL for about a year now after a relative avalanche of new designs during 2022. It isn't as though they've run out of ideas (I can think of at least one design prototype they've previously showcased that is still unreleased) so there has to be a reason for the slowdown in their release schedule. My best guess (and I'll stress that's all it is) is that TBL knew all about the controversy and realised the potentiality of having to censor their figure designs many months ago. They decided against the expense of mass producing a whole new base body design in that uncertain climate, and opted to hedge their bets by finally re-releasing some older designs in new skin tones instead, producing promo material that featured these 'new' bodies with details fully intact just in case nothing came of the 'scandal'.

Plan A: They possibly thought there was room for 'compromise' with the bureaucrats, or that the controversy might even just simply die down by the time it came to actually producing the bodies. They were apparently wrong. Plan B: Release the censored versions as a temporary stop-gap to keep sales steady (as PhotogsBlog theorises above), biding their time in the hope that another solution will eventually present itself.

It's interesting, meanwhile, that (according to reports) Verycool are apparently standing firm on the issue and have no plans to censor their forthcoming base bodies.

I'll definitely be following the progress of that Verycool body. I'm curious to see what changes they make.

I think I may go back to smaller, made-to-order manufacturers like LDDoll. I doubt they'd have to censor their bodies, as they are not mass-produced. It takes about a month to get the body after placing the order.

In principle, it should not be impossible, especially for those who can navigate and understand BBICN, to figure out when the controversy occurred.

I actually contacted Giantoy and managed to confirm with them that they still had some figures I wanted with anatomical details. They were quick in answering so I managed to get in a couple of orders, which will satisfy my "needs" or more correctly my "wants," for the next several months at least. I'll wait and see what happens afterwards, and I suppose so will a lot of others.

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:I actually contacted Giantoy and managed to confirm with them that they still had some figures I wanted with anatomical details. They were quick in answering so I managed to get in a couple of orders, which will satisfy my "needs" or more correctly my "wants," for the next several months at least.  I'll wait and see what happens afterwards, and I suppose so will a lot of others.

That is a way to do it, and I suggested it above. I ordered some of my favorite bodies from old batches (but some were no longer available). Also, there are still sets being parted out at Monkey Depot and Toy Anxiety, among others, that have the old bodies. For example, the light-skinned version of Hatshepsut was parted out today on Monkey Depot.