Mirodoll & XM box opening and review

I just received the 3rd parcel of dolls from Mirodoll to for me to customize and photograph for their website. This time it contained the 72cm boy Hector and the Apollo head, a dark chocolate 60cm Mika and the XM doll William.

The box had suffered some on the way. It looked squashed as if the postal workers had sat on top of it. I was worried the goods would be damaged, so I took care to take lots of photos of the packaging before opening it. Luckily everything was intact and since the camera was there, I proceeded to do a little box opening at the same go. Here’s how the box looked on the outside and the bubble wrap mummies were in good condition inside. XM William as inside one of Miro’s signature green padded bags, but other others were just bubble wrapped.

Here’s the whole lot:

I dug out first the heads of Apollo and Hector. They are very large, much larger than any of my other 70+ scale dolls. The circumference of the head is 25cm, whereas my Impldoll Idol boys for example have 23,5cm. Hector and Apollo’s features like their noses and eyes are also considerably bigger and wider apart.

The sculpts of Hector and Apollo in themselves would be really quite inspiring to me, manly and rugged, and it’ll be easy enough to make a nice face-up for them. It’s the size of them that will make customizing/photographing them a bit challenging for me. With the head being so large, the 72cm body is reduced to looking like a small man’s frame with tiny hands and feet, instead of the big burly guy he’s probably intended to be. I immediately googled for make-up tips for reducing the size of a face and how make nose appear smaller and such. Hehe! I found some good tips too, but not sure if even they will give enough of an advantage here. I hope in the future Mirodoll will produce some heads for the 72cm body that would closer in size to Iplehouse EID/Granado Evol/Soom Idealian/Spiritdoll Herculean/Impldoll Idol and such and they might just have a competitive product in their hands. Hector and Apollo, as nice as the sculpts are as such, do not quite give the right impression to the BJD buyers, when we’re used seeing a more realistic different body-head proportion for this scale of a doll.

The posing of the 72cm body is not that bad at all. I like the look of it a lot, as I’m partial to guys with long backs and narrow hips as it is. The hands and feet could be a little bit bigger for my taste considering the mass of the rest of the body. It’s heavy, but stands well and has a relaxed posture with it’s slanting shoulders. Unfortunately the upper torso joint does not really work. It’s about as good as not being there. The legs are nicely sculpted too, not as woody, shapeless or thick ankled as some of the other 70+ muscle boys out there. They have a bit of a bow legged shape to them however and one of the knees has a slight looseness problem, but it still holds well enough when in standing poses.

The dark chocolate 60cm Mika came to me in a very very dusty shape. Mirodoll did warn me about this, that it’s a doll they had not been able to send to their customer, because of the patchiness in her resin finish and presumably the excess resin dust from sanding. There’s a particularly clear faulty patch on her one shoulder. The sanding marks were really quite visible all over. I took a couple of test shots of her and came to the conclusion that there’s no way I could get decent photos of her without doing something about the condition of her resin. The camera is merciless and will show every little discrepancy. I ventured immediately to hire someone to polish the entire doll, because I did not know how to go about it myself. They did it right away to my great relief and results are pretty awesome! Turns out they used wool to get a really nice and even finish - no grey patches or crazy scratch marks or resin dust anywhere. She’s very shiny now, but that’s easy enough to fix with a couple of layers of MSC.

Here's her polished head:

I restrung Mika then after she had been polished with added s-hooks at the wrists and ankles . She will be as right as rain, a very inspiring girl for me to work on and photograph! Her sculpt is awesome. I like it so much in fact that I would like to buy one for myself in a light tan with the 70cm girl body sometime later this year! I also restrung the 72cm boy body, because it was strung very lose and I don’t like the ends of the strings protruding from the head. I used a thicker 4,5mm string for both Mika and the 72cm body, which made them really sturdy and they now pose and stand really quite well without any sueding. I might wire the arms of the 72cm body yet though, they’re a bit poor at holding poses.

XM doll William was the greatest surprise in this lot. I had thought I’d only be working on Miro’s own dolls, but they seem to want new promo photos of the XM dolls as well. They said William has been largely ignored by their customers and they feel like he would deserve some more attention. Now after inspecting the boy, I could not agree more. This is one darn fine boy! He is finished to perfection, perfect smooth resin and no imperfections anywhere.

He was strung brilliantly and the body design of this 60cm boy is pretty innovative. While single jointed at elbows and knees with an old school body style, the joints work well. The feet had an interesting toe joint, which allows him to lift up his toes! Very cool! His ankles have a much greater range of pose-ability than any BJD I’ve ever encountered before. He can extend his ankles like a ballet dancer even. The upper thigh has two separate slots for the string to go through, on in the front and one on the side for extra range as well. I very much like the sweet classic sculpt of William as well. It reminds me of Little Monica Demetri a bit. His head has superior range of rotation on the neck! He can look up and down in all directions and the head holds so well in any position. This is going to make him a very expressive boy and fun to photograph! I can’t wait to start working on him! I tried a 1/3 DZ Mo2 head on the XM body as well with the same results. Great match, great range! Too bad I forgot to take photos of it.

After having studied and worked on the lot extensively, I did some hybriding experiments and comparisons. I brought out one of my floating Impldoll Idol boy heads, a pink skin Marcus, that has not had a body that would match him in my collection. I tried him on the Miro 72cm body and hail Mary, we have a match! He looks pretty darn good on the Miro body. I like wide shoulders and narrow hips. The Miro body is not that different from the Idol body in proportion (for comparison I brought out my Impldoll Idol Gnaeus in real skin) and this is definitely an option for the 70+ muscle boy heads. Miro normal skin and Impl pink resin match is about 97% in my estimation. The Idol head stand a tad high on the neck, but I like my dolls with long neck, so that layers or clothing with look good on them without neck disappearing. The square shape of the neck results in jerky movements of the idol head, but with a bit of modding, sueding or a pleather donut, I’m confident I can fix this little problem.

We have crazy -20 degree Celsius weather here at the moment, so I’m not daring to start on the face-ups yet, because I spray the sealant outdoors. I need to wait for milder weather. I will be able to take the blank head and body photos for Miro already though. Yesterday I did a little hybrid photo shoot then with Impl Idol Marcus on the 72cm body. I thought I’d share that too, considering many people buy bodies from Miro for their floating heads. I’m liking this combination a lot!!