Recently, I’ve been looking at re-bodying my Forty Winks girl Quinn as I wanted a younger look for her. I was thinking of putting her on a Licca body (which I will do a tutorial for soon) but while I was at it, I thought I would show you the difference between three of the most popular Blythe bodies: the Standard Takara, the Pure Neemo S and the Licca.
<Warning! Dolly Nudity! Everywhere in this post!>
When Blythe was first taken up by Takara, they gave her the same body as one of their most popular dolls, the Licca. Licca is like Barbie in Japan. She has a bit of a bendy-spaghetti body, that isn’t really articulate. She’s similar-ish in size to the Blythe standard Takara body, but has more slender and cute arms. Her shoulders also arch inwards a bit.
Pure Neemo is a company that make a lot of wonderful dolls in their own right, but have also become very popular because of their articulated bodies. Extremely posable with exchangeable hands, the body is extremely popular amongst the Blythe community. I’ll be showing you the “S” size, which matches quite well. Blythe can also fit on the “XS” size, but I find balancing her giant head on that one a bit precarious.
Our model for today is Quinn, my Forty Winks. She’ll be getting the Licca body in a few pictures’ time ;). From the left, you can see the Pure Neemo, Licca, and Standard Takara (now just called Takara). Quinn is sitting on the Takara at the moment. At first glance, you can see that the neck peg for the Pure Neemo is a bit bigger- just big enough to require a little bit of modding when you install her so her head doesn’t flop around. The Licca, being very close to the Takara, I found went on with minimal intervention.
The back view. You can see that the Pure Neemo is naturally a bit bow-legged – and has a LOT of joints. The Pure Neemo has a narrow top and wider bottom. This does mean some difficulty in fitting into Blythe clothes. The Pure Neemo feet are also a lot bigger, making it difficult to share boots with the stock Blythe’s as well.
The Licca is more slender than Blythe, and I believe more child-like. It naturally sits a with the legs further apart, with the arms pointed inwards. The takara body has her legs naturally closer together, with the palms of her hands pointed slightly outwards.
Here we can see the difference that all those joints make. The Pure Neemo happily contorts itself into different shapes. It can bend at the elbow, rotate the hands, move the feet, which both the Takara and the Licca do not. All 3 bodies do twist at the waist. The Takara body has 3 clicks in the knee and can keep 4 leg positions (straight, slightly bending, a bit more bending, almost 90 degrees). The Licca body does not have any knee joints and is wired like spaghetti, where you bend and the whole leg kind of does an arc. In my humble opinion, I like the knees on the Takara the most.
For the rest of today’s experiments, I will be dressing the bodies in these cute dresses by Petite CreAyations, which fit nicely on all 3 bodies! (Nori was already dressed in a blue and pink variation of the black ensemble though).
Here are the three getting ready to rock-and roll. On the left is Quinn on the Licca (I think she looks adorable in it), Curly Blue Babe Minji in the stock body (Takara) and Nori in her Pure Neemo. The sun came out from behind wherever it has been hiding these past months and blinded my camera.
Here are the bodies standing. The Licca stands quite well, as does the Takara. They are all leaning on the paling there. The Pure Neemo does buckle under Nori’s weight, and this is improved when I give her more practical shoes (like flats… it’s like real life). However, this has always been a constant problem on the Neemo – the joints are just not made for such gigantic heads!
Here they are sitting! You can see that Quinn has slightly apart legs, Minji’s legs are closer together, and Nori’s… well you can do whatever on earth you want! Note that I’ve also got Nori’s feet posed differently – an impossibility with the other two bodies. I don’t know if you can tell, but Nori’s legs are also kind of muscular, with articulation of her shin muscles.
Now here are some close up’s of the leg bending situation.
Here are the spaghetti legs. Notice how it curls a lot. Also how there’s not much difference between her thighs and her shins (ah, youth!)
Minji’s legs look super nice… nice knees, good bending, nice shins. Honestly, before I took these photos I never looked at doll legs this closely before and now I kind of feel weird.
The pure neemo legs! So much bending! But also, lots of jointing. So much pros in posing, so many cons in staying vertical.
Next up was the “can I hold things” test. For this we borrowed Nori’s Totoro Plushie by Knotted things.
The Licca body was like, yes, I can sort of hold this… If you balance it perfectly in my arms.
Takara Body was like, pffffft, you wanted me to hold something? I think she’s more ready for hugs than holding things. She could probably hold giant light things. Like clouds.
Nori didn’t know why the other two were struggling too much and totally showed off when she was hugging her Totoro. Note her legs buckling a bit!
Hands in the air like you just don’t care!
The bodies here perform quite entertainingly due to the size of Blythe’s head. When Quinn put her hands up, her Licca arms nearly took out her eyeballs. Minji with her Blythe Arms was basically screaming “Tadaaaa” with her palms to the sky. Nori was kind of just making an oval shape around her head.
I then did the hands on the hips thing but then I laughed as I remembered only one of them had elbows.
Here’s the leg bending again! Note the articulation and knees.
I hope this has helped you a bit in picking your next body for your Blythe! I enjoy having all different bodies, as I feel that each one has it’s own benefit, especially for the overall look of the girl. I think that the Forty Winks girls look adorable on a Licca, and some girls look best on the natural Blythe. Some girls need lots more articulation so you can pose them a certain way.
Do you have a favourite?
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