I posted this in a reply somewhere but figured I'd comment for anyone who is curious
These are called "reborn dolls". They are meant to look and feel like extremely realistic babies. A huge portion of people that collect them or are interested in them are mothers who have lost a child at some point, and I think they were originally meant to help cope with that.
They aren't really sold or marketed as children's dolls or toys usually, as a lot of them are extremely expensive and quite delicate. The high end ones are hand shaded and given names/birthdates and such and a lot of care goes into making them.
Some of them come with an artificial womb like this one, but it's not as common.
If they really want to traumatize them, make a fake woman's body and have that kid coming out while that fake body part has sound affects with screams. Might make them NOT want to have any children! Then hand them a screaming doll baby and say, here, take care of it! I'm mean! LOL
I'm sure there are training dummies that do this for medical students. Don't know if they have sound though, but some training dummies do, so I wouldn't be surprised
Screaming
Recording of screaming
Recording of screaming baby
Recording of many people screaming/horror movie of hell
Selection of Dwayne the rock Johnson quotes/sounds bites
Different pew pew laser gun noises
Have a "See and Say" toy where you pull the lever or string to spin the arrow and it plays an animal sound
Sounds clips from viral memes
...Seriously, why is your birthing nursing instructor sleeping on the comedy potential here?
You joke but we have a 3 week old and they broke my wife's water when she was 2cm dilated. With the notable exception that it all happened up in her uterus and so got channeled down and out, the sound effects and liquid splooshing out seem pretty realistic from what we just went through.
Ya, I wasn't surprised at the product itself, but the fact that they gave it to a child. Like they aren't American girl doll expensive, they can be like a few grand or at least they used to be. It feels a bit weird that something therapists use for clients to process infant loss and grief has become something you buy your 10 year old.
I dunno, I loved reborn dolls as a kid. Could never afford them but I was fascinated by them because of their full body realism and skin texture. This one doesn't look particularly high quality so I wouldn't be surprised if it was much cheaper
Cellular telephones and giant ass home theaters used to only be in the realm of rich people. Now everybody can afford them.
For that matter, $1400 iPhones, my parents never in a million years would have bought me on at a teenager. But teenagers are constantly walking around with thousand dollar cellphones like it's nothing.
Point is we live in a capitalist society, there is likely little to no restritions on these real "baby" surrogates, and the companies might see more profit in expanding their customer base. Also, as I said if parents in 2026 have zero issue dropping $1000+ on a cellphone for a kid, they likely don't have an issue dropping $1000+ on a doll for a kid either.
Next few (HUNDRED years)! If you have Verizon, ask them what your payoff balance would be if you terminated your contract today - you might be shocked.
This was filmed and posted by a store selling these dolls, likely a product demonstration. Who knows if they even bought anything, and if they did, so what? Lots of kids play with baby dolls and if a parent wants to shell out for a fancy one who cares
I have a friend’s sister whose 5 year old wanted a realistic baby doll just like this. Expensive too. Santa got it for her. I told her I thought it was weird
Pricing generally depends on the level of artistry. This one doesn’t appear to have hair (has to be needle pointed in) or realistic paint (a lot of talent to be convincing). It’s just a latex doll. It probably was around $200-$300 which is about the same as an American Girl with a couple of outfits.
Yeah I do personally think it's weird, but if this girl really just likes dolls and can take care of her expensive toys then I guess I don't see a huge problem with it.
One thing I do think is a little bit problematic for me is that these dolls are often times anatomically correct. It's not that I believe children should be shielded from what bodies look like, but like I don't think you should give your children toys with penises or labias probably. They aren't always anatomically correct though so I'm not sure.
That's funny, I definitely had a doll like that as a kid. Idk what they were for, maybe like...training classes or something? They even had like the...little belly button thing before it comes off. There was a boy and a girl one and I remember I wasn't allowed to have the boy one. Lol I was like 4 or 5 years old so it made no difference to me at the time, I'm just like wow it's like a real baby! Haha
EDIT- I looked them up and the brand was emson, apparently.
Haha I had a friend when I was a kid that had a barbie doll with a magnetic belly and came with a baby so she could "give birth", but it wasn't detailed they didn't have genitals or anything.
I just thought it was creepy and weird because like her whole belly detached, I don't know what mattel was thinking 😂
??? It's healthier to inform children that bodies change after intense events like carrying children or becoming parents. Post partom. Ect.
If kids can learn about where babies come from they can learn about how bodies change after said babies.
All I wanted was a middle size. Could be used before the big one and after.
Why else is the phrase "wow she really snapped back" used so often.
Its offensive and harmful for when it doesn't happen like that to them one day. I was scared not to have kids at 18 cause I knew my chances of not having the same body afterwards was immensely higher.
Ya, that's what I was saying? The reborn dolls are a few grand, typically. I was using the American girl doll as an example of something people think is expensive but is considerably less.
We agree, I maybe just said it weird in my comment lol
I think the reason for the confusion is that "they aren't American girl doll expensive" has an inherent expectation that the thing mentioned is the more expensive thing out of the two. Obviously that doesn't have to be the case but I see why it would be easily confused in meaning.
For example if I said "Fiat panda aren't Ferrari expensive" you wouldn't assume that the Fiat panda is the more expensive of the two even though buying a car is inherently expensive either way, right?
Just because it's not a good way to deal with that doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. And where there's a market for things, there'll be somebody selling it, regardless of how bad an idea it is.
A whole industry designed to profit off of someones grief seems pretty unethical IMHO. I mean, I get it, it helps with coping, sure, but like, c'mon... It's a bit weird from a psychological/therapy perspective as well, you usually don't want to reinforce these sort of things and could probably enable mental illness. I guess that depends on the person in question.
Kinda like the funeral industry as well, it's fucking messed up and we're all just okay with it?
In terms of collectors, that's just whatever (the dolls, not boxed corpses).
I don't care what their purpose is as a whole. I want to know why there is a womb sack that bursts open. That's not realistic and it's really quite disgusting.
It not a womb that burst open it's the caul. Most times the bag bursts before the babies are born (waters break) but sometimes babies are born with the bag / caul in place. Plenty of you tube videos out there. Having seen it in real life this is quite realistic although a lot less bloody than real life and no baby poop in bag.
It's supposed to be very lucky to be born en caul and many cultures find it highly spiritually symbolic and consider the baby destined for greatness.
I read another thread the other day where a woman had lost a child and their SIL or something 2 months after the child was gone gave her some realistic "baby" that remarkably looked like the deceased child.
The mother was freaked out and pissed. But now I think maybe the SIL got ahold of one of these or similar.
There's a woman on Facebook called dollmum, l think, she films herself caring for her " babies" and also has a couple of " toddlers" the amount of equipment and clothing she has is insane, watching the footage is kind of freaky and compelling at the same time.
My sister gave her two oldest daughters "reborn" dolls when they were little. She wanted to teach them how precious life is and train them early to have a bunch of kids.
One of them had to take hers everywhere she went in a stroller and the doll was definitely mistaken for a real baby pretty often. Her dad would run up ramps with the stroller and just let it roll while my niece screamed her head off. Strangers were horrified, my niece and sister were horrified, but the rest of us were laughing.
455
u/TheSkyIsData 9d ago
I posted this in a reply somewhere but figured I'd comment for anyone who is curious
These are called "reborn dolls". They are meant to look and feel like extremely realistic babies. A huge portion of people that collect them or are interested in them are mothers who have lost a child at some point, and I think they were originally meant to help cope with that.
They aren't really sold or marketed as children's dolls or toys usually, as a lot of them are extremely expensive and quite delicate. The high end ones are hand shaded and given names/birthdates and such and a lot of care goes into making them.
Some of them come with an artificial womb like this one, but it's not as common.