BIG news from Makie labs.

I hope not Jupiter, I always liked the whole.. futuristic element of them being totally 3dp, it was like... all techy.
Honestly, i'm not convinced even a £20 price drop is enough to stop the stingy parent complaints about them being "too expensive", but we'll see.
I think customised toys and expensive ones will always be a fairly niche market, most parents are after all, not so keen on spending a load on a toy that's likely to be forgotten in a month or two. But there's always those other ones who think it's totally normal to buy their child £300 worth of stuff for christmas every single year... so mmmm.

I do hope they look into the logistics of offering 3dp bodies for those who want them, but i'm not convinced it'd be cost effective for them. At the moment I assume they print them in batches which saves money, if they can print them alongside the heads and they don't take up too much space and time that could be used to print more heads maybe, but if they need their own print run and then the whole dying process etc could be pretty costly to do fully on demand.
I know i'd be very happy to have to option just to order white Makies with the 3dp body to dye at home. No faceup, no clothes, just the base doll for custom purposes. I'd be willing to pay a little more for that option. I'm going to really miss white and while I know they don't sell a lot of them, it's upsetting to lose the option entirely as it did offer a whole different element to the dolls, that ability to have them any colour you wanted and look "in keeping" rather than painted. Yes sure, you can probably paint the IM bodies, but i'm fairly sure they'll chip around the joints and the shiny texture of the body will make them stand out alongside the other dolls.

I'm worried they'll look cheap, though extra posability is exciting and the thought of being less likely to crack a shoulder joint dressing them is nice (after cracking Jian's shoulder bending it slightly too far back to get a top on, i'm now paranoid about that joint. There's zero give in the 3dp nylon, making it really hard to bend it and really hard to get the clip on parts to clip together like the shoes. It took SO much brute force to get the boots onto Juniper because there's just no give)
So in that respect, softer plastic will make that kind of thing easier.

Though i hope a lot of the accessories remain 3dp purely because it allows new stuff to be rolled out so much faster. The turnaround for prototypes using 3d tech is much faster than with traditional moulds so they can do stuff like the "toy like me" stuff in a matter of weeks instead of the months and months it would take a company like Mattel working with traditional mould methods. There's a huge advantage to being able to react almost immediately to customer demand like that.

Anyway, I hope they'll at least consider the logistics of allowing an "upgrade" to 3dp bodies, just not sure how much it would cost doing it that way. it could be quite prohibitively expensive printing bodies totally on demand, even if they are undyed.

I got an email saying my new makie had been sent off to print this morning.
I'm amused by idea that there's currently a small army of makies all off to print due to the new change. XD

I wonder what kind of plastic they'll use for the new bodies. A hard shiny plastic wouldn't be very pleasant, but a matt ABS might be okay perhaps. Makie faces are already sanded down quite smoothly, so certain plastics might work quite well with them in a tactile sense, as long as they weren't super shiny.

Admittedly, if the new body is smoother (but just not barbie doll shiny hard plastic please), I will be partially glad. Having the custom clothes I commissioned snag on the toothy 3D printed plastic can be a bit nerve-wracking. No damage has been done, but only because I'm always very careful. If I was being a lot more rough with them, I imagine there would be a lot of laddering and snagging of various fabrics. It's enough to mean that I don't feel compelled to redress them as much as I do my BJDs, because it carries that little bit of extra 'risk', even if it's not much.

nattherat wrote:I got an email saying my new makie had been sent off to print this morning.
I'm amused by idea that there's currently a small army of makies all off to print due to the new change. XD

Same here - so yours and mine will be... batch-mates? Lot-mates? I have two ordered - they're from the same story so I always planned to get them together. (Maybe now I'll actually _write_ the story they're from? *Looks at 10 years worth of notes* ...nah.)

I'm pretty optimistic about the new style, because I think they've been great so far and Makie Labs know what they're doing. I wonder if there was this kind of rush-buying when they switched from V1 to V2 - did they announce that in the same way?

I do hope it won't look too weird. It's injection moulded which limits the plastics they can use right?

My two went to print too.

Now, regarding the snagging of bodies. I've been pretty rough dressing mine in delicate tights/stockings and tulle fabrics with no snagging issues. The bigger culprit for damage is those pointy pointy fingers if you don't take the hands off hahah. Or the seams popping because you're trying to put something a bit too tight on em. *whistles*

and oh gosh, writing things? Don't even... I have so many things i'm slacking on writing hahah.

Any other Americans Makies showing to be $78.02 when put into a cart, or should I ask the lab?

They're supposed to be £49:99 now right? which is about $78 according to my  currency converter...  but that's not what Jen was quoting so.. uh...
Any americans?

I know a few people had problems with it quoting the lower price and then adding tax on top when it shouldn't, so do be vigilant of that just in case.

Yeah, I payed $78.02 (from America). Thought it was some sort of euro tax or something, but my Makie went to print this morning so I don't think I can ask any questions now lol

My Morel checked out at $78.02 also. I assumed it was a glitch or some new weird tax I didn't know about, but I haven't bothered to contact them about it yet.

Yeah, I've currently got four (!!) in my cart and so I've emailed the lab before I move forward. Especially since I want like eight white Makies. Spoiler alert: I won't be buying eight.

I emailed them about it yesterday because mine were at 81.76 USD a piece! Jen replied saying something about their software applying a currency exchange formula but that they should have fixed the price. It's showing up for 74.99 again in my computer so it should be ok now for everyone in the U.S.?

I too, seriously doubt that the price drop is enough to stop some people from whining about the price. I worked at a thrift shop for a number of years and it didn't matter how inexpensive something was, people always wanted it to be cheaper and there were always people who felt like they were entitled to steal from us.
I go to an open-source computing conference every spring, it's mostly about software but it also features robotics, 3D printing, makerspaces, and actively promotes STEM education in the schools. I was planning to take Sage to show her off to some parents I know who would love to buy one for their daughters and maybe their sons too. I'm positive they will love her but I'm now concerned that they will fall in love with something they can no longer have.

and oh man, forest, I once encountered a guy trying to haggle in a charity shop, I was disgusted. Like, he was trying to buy something that was already only a couple of quid and moaning about the price? in a charity shop? for sick and dying children? DUDE! scumbag, seriously.

Following up on the $78.02 price of Makies for my fellow Americans, I've heard word from the lab that they found the mistake and are working to correct it so that the cost is $74.99. I'm not sure what this means for those of you who have already bought Makies, though.

free accessories? lol.

Thanks for the update jupi! I only ordered one, and they have been quite generous with me in the past. I'm not going to bother trying to recover $3ish this time. If I had ordered multiples though, that adds up.

Really, I'm still sorta down about the change.

I think a lot of people are, it's a big change, much like when they retired classic face level of change. If not more because it's changing the very structure of the doll, so it's quite natural a lot of us fans will be scared about such a major shift.
On one hand, I want Makies to succeed but on the other, I feel like it's the end of an era and that's upsetting. I think everyone is really fearing the worst and i'm not sure that's really fair but it is normal.
change is scary, and uncertainty is terrifying.

We'll get through it, hopefully we'll get a sneak peak of this new body soon.

I feel like you've sort of summed up how I feel. I'm feeling sort of unsure about the new body, but I have had to admit to myself that I think they will do a good job. BUT, I'd been making some big dye plans, so that will have to be something I shell out for now.

And I'm having to ask myself, just how much do I want 3D printed bodies. Enough to make a GIANT order??? I'm not sure. I've been considering ordering a lot of Makies, but I really don't want to detract from each one by ordering a ton of them. I don't like having them all come to me at once.

I know what you mean, I rather like the slow steady trickle. I've ordered at least a Makie a month on average since last November hahah. I've gone a few months without this time around and it's been painful, but I was saving up and had a huge overspend in July so I had to be good.
But now i'm like "rarghhh" and wanting to make up for lost time.
Problem is that 2 week wait, by then end of week one that itch is begging to be scratched again lol.

I'm umming and ahhing because on one hand, I already ordered the two that HAD to be dyed and thus on 3dp bodies and I decided to turn my other white one brown (which looks great btw). So now i'm left with a load that are human skin tones and won't be impacted by the body change quite so much. Which is a relief in a way, it makes the temptation a little less... or it SHOULD... but of course i'm still feeling that "need more Makies" itch anyway. ARGH

Yeah, I've settled on five... for now. I've also done some skin color swapping too, since I felt my priorities needed to be different. I really wanted a white Makie who is going to stay white. And all the dying!

I may grab another one or two, but I need to check myself first! Before I wreck my bank account!

We need a support group - you reach for your debit/credit card and a forum member drops from the ceiling to go "No! Wait! Do you really need that Makie?" Though honestly I think we're more likely to encourage each other...

I did dither about a Cocoa Bean Makie, because there's one character... but to be honest, that's just me wanting one because they look great. I'm going to keep that as my incentive for actually doing some writing and if she's different, she's different.

Thankfully my support group is called parental power that limit how much I spend on stuff haha.

I've been following this thread closely for the past few days, and finally decided last night to order another Makie before the new IM bodies are implemented. I opted for a girl with the ice frosting skin tone in case the Lab decides to discontinue it (and because I decided about a month ago my next Makie would be ice frosting)... Now I'm slightly panicking that I ordered too late and my new girl won't have a 3DP body (anyone else in this boat?)  ;~;  Also, I can't see any conversations on the Makies facebook page about the new IM bodies - have they been removed?

I think it's just waaaay down the page.

I think if you order ice frosting, it's safe to say you'll get a 3dp body as the implication was that they'll discontinue that as soon as they switch (IE they didn't bother to make white IM bodies anyway)

Will tomorrow be a good day to order?

I REALLY want the 3d bodies darn it, and if I get the new ones... it'll be my parents fault.