The Doll Forum

I purchased a 164f and a 174g last year
I just purchased a 160a
All tan
Holy cow they are different colors
So much for swapping old heads with new

Same brand of doll from same vendor? If so, then perhaps a variance in the dye pigment used to color the TPE would be my guess.

Yup I've encountered this a lot with WM/YL. It's very annoying.

The reason I'm told is because the colour is mixed by hand so variations happen from day to day.

Not much good to us tho if we expect tan and get something closer to light tan

Yep. Same brand, same vender.
WM and Annie's
I like the newer color

Yeah, color varies one pour to the next. Kind of like yarn. At least with yarn they give the dye lot number. With TPE it's cross your fingers and hope for the best. I ordered a custom skin tone for my WM. Nothing drastic just a shade in between those offered at the time. They did a great job, but I don't have a prayer of matching it again.

I can relate: I ordered another (identical) head from WM for Erik. It arrived a week ago. His body is the fair skin tone, so that's what I ordered for the head. But it doesn't match up: the head has a more pink tone to it than his body. My guess is that the amount of TPE and pigment aren't measured before they're mixed and it's done by estimation - which leads to a slightly different skin tone each time.

Ben There wrote: ↑Fri Nov 10, 2023 3:31 pm I purchased a 164f and a 174g last year
I just purchased a 160a
All tan
Holy cow they are different colors
So much for swapping old heads with new

Hi, Dear Ben There

Because the color of TPE material is manually mixed, it is almost difficult to maintain a completely consistent color during mixing. So there will be a slight color difference.

Best regards,

WM DOLLS

WM should look into making color mixing more consistent instead of manual mixing. Maybe there are techniques which can be borrowed from other industries who face the same issue. For example when buying paint, the user can pick from swatch of colors and the paint mixing machine can mix approximately the same color.

shyted wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:38 pm WM should look into making color mixing more consistent instead of manual mixing. Maybe there are techniques which can be borrowed from other industries who face the same issue. For example when buying paint, the user can pick from swatch of colors and the paint mixing machine can mix approximately the same color.

Heck it doesn't just approximate it, it will be exactly the same. They're designed to give you the same colour time after time.

That said, I'm not sure it'll work on dolls because I'm guessing the volume of TPE is harder to control than a tin of paint. Paint is always a fixed volume so it's easy to mix in the precise amount of colour needed. Not sure that's the case with TPE.

You can't tell me there isn't a machine that can add the exact right amount of dye to a TPE mixture. This shouldn't happen in 2023. Especially in this business.

Mamilla wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 3:30 am You can't tell me there isn't a machine that can add the exact right amount of dye to a TPE mixture. This shouldn't happen in 2023. Especially in this business.