I used the Dollzmania site. My bestfriend and I would spend HOURS making a huge doll families. We would give them names and personalities. Ah, the nostalgia.
the early internet was absolutely off its rocker but dollz was such a nice little pocket of it. i also miss the wacky stylization of blogs and webpages with every fiber of my being. the formatting and UI rules weren't written or standardized yet and sites were free to greet you with a pixel dragon hit counter, an animated background and a midi player playing the sailor moon theme. the guest books, adoptables, sparkle cursors - i could honestly gush about it for forever haha. i feel like myspace was the last little piece of the internet where creating a nauseatingly over-coded page to express yourself was acceptable and ever since things have been a little more grey and glum. tumblr hung in there for awhile but i think most people just suffer through the mobile version of it now, too. i'll probably always be subconsciously searching for a place where my tacky little heart can use the basic understanding of html cultivated from creating a neopets shop page and myspace profile to be creative and unhinged, but enough time has passed for me to be fairly certain that companies don't prioritize allowing their users self-expression. we get an icon and a name - one that likely doesn't allow special characters. a banner, if we're lucky. life goes on i suppose. the internet will always continue to change and shift. god i really didn't mean to write an entire rant, but you know? it's not every day i get to reminisce about the early internet.
I agree 1000%!! Sad that myspace started to die out and people moved on to boring bland facebook around 2008-10. Myspace was so customizable, fun, and expressive. In general, creativity, fashion, etc has been in a decline in these recent years (at least in my opinion)
As a kid I was really into stardoll. I made an account after catching my older brother on it and I noticed he avoided playing it when other people were around so I thought it must be a really cool site that only older kids were allowed on 😂😂 turns out we were both doll maker fans 😂
@@georginalouise95 Yes!! Idk if anyone has been on in the past 5 years or so, but I still log in from time to time. The paper doll aspect has totally evolved with their Hair Studio and other features, but unfortunately it’s super expensive to play nowadays.
Seeing Doll Divine, a website I use almost daily, actually featured in a video gave me such whiplash. I vaguely remember playing with Dollz as a kid, though my gateway was the south Korean dress up dolls from Roiworld which as a non Korean kid seemed totally ahead of the curve fashion wise. Girls Go Games was like virtual cocaine for 8 year old me and my friends lol
I was just going to leave a comment about the Roiworld Korean dress up games!! I played with those way later than I probably should have mostly because like you said the fashion choices just seemed so much cooler than anything I had access to in real life! Really cool to see someone else mention those dolls! 😊✌🏼
GGG was my childhood! It was so heart breaking to see how devoid of personality it became when I visited it one last time before flash was discontinued. I wonder if it's still up...? Still, I miss those old girl mascots. :(
I remember being like 12/13 and feeling so cool cause I learned how to animate those dolls to flash different colors. I was kinda a big deal in the chatrooms for it :'D I miss The Doll Palace. Such a nostalgic part of my childhood.
Rinmaru was a big one for me! They had these "manga page creators" or a name similar to that, and I loved to make anime styled couples in them! It's also worth mentioning that though the big boom of Picrew didn't happen until I was in college, it's still been a lot of fun for me to use and explore different fashion and gender expression with them. It's been nice to see Picrews develop too, because while there are a lot more diverse ones now in terms of skin tone and body type, it definitely wasn't always that way, and there are still many new ones that are limited in those regards.
Rinmaru was still active until Flash was murdered by Adobe. DollDivine for the most part has died too the new makers just don’t have the same level of creativity.
I tried to get into the page creators but then my brain started to fall out my butt and I had to draw everything and then forget about it and get onto rinmaru again
yes, i was super sad when rinmaru is closed :( so, i get into piccrew and maiker.io, they're still active, but sadly dolldivine is dead too..his makers are same and bored now (sorry for my poor english)
I remember I played one of those dress-up flash games on my dad's computer and posting it to his Facebook... ...poor dude, all of his friends made jokes about him dressing up cute girls lmao
This is hilarious. His friends probably just couldn't get the image of your dad dressing up his cute virtual girl and posting it to get their opinion on it LOL
I also just wanted to say that I genuinely appreciate this style of internet archeology / historical work you're doing. I feel like there's so many interesting aspects about early internet culture that are being lost to time just because nobody thinks they're important enough to document. We're going to be thanking people like you who can see the value in these early "novelties" of the internet years from now when this stuff becomes an awesome glimpse into our lives at a very pivotal moment between a pre and post internet world. Highlighting stuff like Dollz also gives us a perspective from a category of people who don't usually get their perspective written down in history (namely younger girls). Your videos take a topic that seems like just a silly novelty at first, but goes so thoroughly into their history and origin that it ends up giving some truly great historical insight. On top of that, the pacing and editing is just remarkably well done. Thanks for everything you're doing!
The nostalgia from this video hit me like an eighteen wheeler using no brakes to reach the bottom of a steeply graded hill. I need a time machine IMMEDIATELY 😫
Wow this just brought me back! I used to spend HOURS playing with these! I also remember the devastation when the sites became unusable. The items still were there, but the drag and drop function was broken. Thanks for this video!
OOOF this took me back to being ten and not understanding why I really loved making these prep dolls without tops on but spending HOURS essentially making “harems” of dolls.
I was OBSESSED with making candy bar dolls, I think they added it to thedollpalace or maybe it was through dollzmania but it was absolutely DIVINE. If I could just do that again my life would be complete. The amount of nostalgia I experience just looking at pictures of those candy bar dolls is incredible. I loved when they generated a pretty name for your doll at the end.
Oh! I was a doller from 2004-2012 (or so)! There was definitely a really big dolling scene outside of dollmakers. The standard was that artists would make bases, which were available for dollers to use (with credit, of course), and then you would draw your own art on the base. There were a lot of contests, and it was a really community-focused hobby. Also, because it wasn't the kind of thing that was drawing in new people, the art and standards REALLY changed over the years, because it was the same people improving over time. There's still a fairly small dolling community, but it's much less organized than it used to be back in the forum days. I run a fb group, and I think there are a couple forums still hanging on, but it really isn't what it used to be, which is a real shame.
Oh that's so cool! I was "moondust pixels" back then. It was such a cool community. It set me on the path of game and animation that I'm working with now as an adult
I was a doller too! I was known as Lush (Dollz by Lush) then I rebranded into Pixelated Pixelations & Tuts and Lines when I branched out more from just Dollz. I mainly hung out in the forum called Realm of the Forbidden and the forum that had Eden in it's name I can't remember what it was called!
i used to make a TON of ocs in candybar dollmakers and some site called the doll emporium? i think it was that, it was related to the doll palace but a lot of the games had a list and load type of setup, and they were bigger dolls because the smaller ones didnt rlly attract me, my first experience with dressups was a team rocket dressup that came in an old anime magazine cd called Dokan (it was from spain and they always had tons of stuff) , i could also say it was my first experience with gender noncomformity as i was allowed to dress James in a variety of dresses on it from the show as well , really fun memories
Yes!! Was waiting for someone to talk about Candybars! I would make them, print them out, then cut them out individually and write what I thought their name should be on the back 😂
Oh wow I'm so happy someone is talking about it! Personnally I didn't use Doll Palace or others famous websites like that, but I knew they existed. I prefered doing my own dollz with a base (basically a doll without any clothes or hair) and drawing them pixel by pixel. I was kinda good, I even had a website with a good friend just about dollz :) We attempted to do our own bases too but I was better to use bases from other dollz websites, they were more talented eheh Unfortunately, most of those websites aren't online anymore... Mine can still be seen on the internet data base but almost everything is gone. I went to an old portable driver to search for mine and I didn't find anything except one that I didn't love that much lol I'm kinda sad, I did so many cool dollz! I'll keep searching I guess!
Very interesting! I'm sixty-five yrs. old and this is all new to me, especially since I just got into the Internet in the past couple of years. I'm an artist, clothing designer/tailor, and doll collector. Growing up, as well as sewing for people and actual dolls, I use to make paper dolls with countless outfits all the time. I loved it! Sadly, I don't have one single paper doll from my past.
Me, as an intense wave of nostalgia deeply rooted within the recesses of my brain washes over me upon seeing the thumbnail for this video: what DID ever happen to dollz???!!!
This is fascinating because I am brazilian and I was fully involved in the Dollz community as a kid/tween and had no idea there was a whole side to it in English. I eventually grew tired of the drag and drop doll makers and started doing my own pixel art dolls on MS paint, usually just getting doll bases and color palettes from other doll artists but fully making them my own when I was a little older, and I remember spending hours doing it, learning how to do pixel shading and fixing poses and features on my own.
I remember there used to be websites where you could "adopt" these dollz. Basically, you'd download them to your computer, upload them to Photobucket (or some similar photo sharing site), generate an html code to add them to your website, and link back to the source.
i used cartoon doll emporium religiously as a kid! their forums and sailor moon dolls were a gateway to my current internet obsession. and the way they let you customize your page similar to myspace... this really took me back!!
I used to download KiSS doll all the time ! IT'S GIVING ME THE BRAIN FUZZ to have someone talk about this! I ended up making dolls myself 🤣 was my entry into pixel art obsession. I am thinking I might drum up the old hobby again
Hi, I was a pixel doll maker back in the day. Made my own bases, clothing, poses, styles, etc. It was a huge thing. I also made blinkies (animated block text found on Gaia & doll sites) for free (wtf ha) and this vid gave me some amazing memories. xoxo
23:21 I realized I was trans in middle school, in 2011. A lot of these sites were still functional and I got SO MUCH use out of them figuring out my ideal self
I clicked so fast when I saw this thumbnail. The doll palace was a site I frequented so often as a young kid I would play all afternoon when I got home from school, and then keep myself awake at night til I knew my mom was asleep and I could use her computer to make even more!!! My first real OCs were born there, and, as you pointed out so perfectly, was an incredible place to safely experiment as well. I had no idea what the origins were since I got into them right at the tail end of their popularity, so I really appreciate you making this!! (and thanks algorithm for somehow knowing about this long-buried interest of mine)
dollzmania was my SHIT and I think about it all the time. also, anyone else use elouai? it still mostly works, including the candybar dollmakers! I would spend forever on that site, and also cartoondollemporium. I used that one up until high school. thank you for doing this vid, I had no clue there's been a revival of drag and drop dollz, i gotta check out that subreddit
The Candybar ones and really anything found on eLouai were what I remember having a lasting effect. I still have a few outfit combinations I made there saved to my computer.
I remember playing Dollz on our old dial-up computer with my cousins for hours. We'd always try to scroll to the part with princess outfits when our parents would walk in the room because they thought the more gothic outfits were "too dark" :p I also remember accidentally stumbling across NSFW Dollz sometimes and quickly shutting off the computer in panic Thank you for talking about these! I love the new serge of creators covering the history of "girl games" and kids stuff from internet's past
God, so many fond memories of the Sailor Moon KISS dolls, especially since I couldn't draw to visualize my many, many, MANY fan senshi. In fact, the only way I COULD do art was using "bases" usable with credit to draw my own designs for hair/clothes/etc on them using PaintShopPro, which I started doing because the drag & drops didn't have as many options as I wanted. Pretty sure 90% of the sites where I found my favorite bases are long, long dead by now.
This was SO in depth. I was born in 2001 so this era of internet was a bit before my time, but i still remember spending hours on third party websites decorating dolls and printing out my outfits for my bedroom wall 😭 I had no idea this type of content had such a deep history
Haha, dude, hilarious, when I made my own palace in 2001, I named it The Shit. Still remember learning pixel art and shading and 3d lettering, wallpaper / background making and learning obscure code (iptscrae wasn't it?) all due to the Palace. Super fond nostalgic memories. Damn I miss chat rooms.
Omg kisekae and pixel dolls were such a huge part of my childhood!! This unlocked so many memories - I remember spending hours salivating over the Otaku World dolls you had to pay for and trying to follow pixel art tutorials on Xandorra’s Place
I'm so happy this video was in my recommended! I frequented the Avatar Palace and would spend hours upon hours in the editing rooms everyday with other dollers. We formed clans and would have contests and I made a ton of friends that I've lost touch with over the years. If anyone reading this remembers a user by the name of Kween, hit me up because I would love to catch up!
I spent whole summer breaks on there. I was a top doll designer and ran the designer/shuni pageant scene from 2002-2005. I now play Pocket Styler but it's not the same
I don't remember you but I have the same memories. There was a girl on there I would play with and one of us named ourself Sugar and the other was Spice and we would hop from room to room together talking to people. It's hard to explain these games and websites to anyone who wasn't partaking but it was so exciting the simple technology seemed like big stuff to us and I had so many laughs.
I remember Dollz Palace!!! HOURS were lost in the goth and rave ones. I use to load everything because then i could put stuff aside while i told a story in my head. I wanted to buy or make so many things. I was gonna print it out and copy it and sew it. Lol i had no idea how sewing worked clearly but i have... just some really, really special memories of those dollz. Legit some of my softest childhood memories are of Dollz Palace. Thank you for keeping the memory alive! Im gettin teary just thinking back goodness.
I was on doll websites from around 2001-2006 so my whole early adolescence (age 11-16). I remember spending hours making dolls, saving them on my family's old pc. But I also got into pixel art/and doll bases and even trying my hand at making websites since so many doll website owners were my age. It was such a unique experience growing up alongside many young girls my age who were carving their place on the early web. I remember joining cute forums and message boards to bond with other young folks. So much is lost because the drag and drop script for java is now defunct so I wonder if we can make an archive of them somehow and revive the nostalgia?
This is so awesome. I used to spend hours making my own poses and bodies, I hated how preps looked so I would take the minis and create my own hair and outfits and fix wonky poses. I remember I made a destiny’s child avi and someone cloned it after I spent hours clicking pixel by pixel. I cried. And there were so few cute brown girl dollz so I spent hours recoloring skins so they would look like me and girls like me and I would drop tons of them all over palace. I probably made hundreds of props. My favorites are so hard to find, I would totally do anything to get my hands on some and start making them again. It was therapeutic. Anyway, love this video, palace popped in my head and I found this, lovely trip down memory lane.
WOW this unlocked a memory from my childhood I forgot about. I remember playing the fairy makers for HOURS making tons of them. The different wings especially really hit the nostalgia button HARD. Ugh, what a nice little throwback to my childhood. Thanks for making this video!
Oh the Unis and Shunis... Shuni pag ONLY LMAO! I spent so many hours on this game as a kid, with dial up. The palace was my LIFE. I was always a sk8er goth with the double buns, anyone remember that? I spent hours pixel by pixel, remember only being able to put 9 items on your av? I was always xxDeathFlowsxx and Kakyaku-Tora omg this took me baaaaaaack!
Dollz were such a huge part of my childhood. I even remember learning the HTML for drag and drop creators so I could make my own custom ones. I was 10 years old! I would also create dollz and painstakingly edit them in Paint to make them look exactly like the characters from my favourite series The Tribe, which I'd post to an online blog with zero followers. Another huge thing I was obsessed with was 'dollz adoption' blogs. You'd adopt a doll, get some fake digital currency and get her a job and buy things for her.
When I realised in my mid teens that I was bisexual and liked girls, a lot of things from my younger years kind of clicked into place like a puzzle and made a lot more sense. Remembering just now how long I used to spend on DollzMania putting lingerie on the prep doll base is a puzzle piece that just clicked neatly into place lmao
I loved Dollz! Wonderkins were always my favorite. I remember pasting my dollz into MS paint and meticulously coloring them pixel by pixel to change the colors of their outfits and hair and maybe their facial expressions 😂
This was so interesting to watch! Though I never played with Dollz in particular because I was more a flash dress up sort of girl, to see these early roots is so fun. Remembering chat rooms, that we were all probably wayyyy too young to be in, glitter text.... gosh it really takes me back. I think my favorite thing to toy with at the time were early IMVU and Zwinky. Girls Go Games was probably my most visited site back then along with myspace and those little animals you could care for when you put them on your profile. Good times...
I think about The Palace at least once a month and is the reason I started doing graphic design. The little people were actually the cooler choice if you couldn't upload your own photo which took more technical skill and possibly downloading additional programs. The prep dollz were like an obligatory get that were widely available in various servers. The little people were not interchangeable in clothing so they were harder to find because no one wanted the same avatar as others.
God this brings back so much nostalgia for me…the pixel dolls, The Palace, doll makers, all of it. I did it all. I found The Palace through my love of pixel dolls and ate up every doll maker I could find, which lead me to start making my own custom dolls pixel by pixel for my friends…I spent so much time and had so many rewritable CDs full of all my dolls. I even did a project for school with them when I was in middle school. Thanks so much for posting this and bringing back so many memories of eating quakes and drinking Snapple peach tea while playing with pixel dolls.
I also remember using Sailor Moon Kiss dolls. My favorite one was one of Sailor Iron Mouse, but there was also one were you could make your own Sailor Senshi I used alot I also got banned from the Doll Palace forums because made a request for a doll and the artist didn't follow my directions and I asked for a new one and the mod blocked me for "using inappropriate language" dispite not using any inappropriate language. That mod was just mad with power.
I was a doller. I got started with the Doll Palace makers in Jr. High, then expanded out to all the various bases you could find out there on different doller sites and deviant art. Man, I really miss making these!
WOW THE NOSTALGIA. I remember seeing Dollz everywhere in the quote and icon formats, but I never knew where they came from. I definitely was a flash doll kid - I used to spend HOURS on GirlsGoGames in the fashion game/dollmaker category, and then later on DollDivine. I also used to spend a lot of time on this one website that I for the life of me cannot remember the name of, but it was really interesting bc it was kind of like two websites in one? Like there was the main site that was based on being just a catalogue of dollmakers and fashion games, but then there were forums too, and those forums were basically like a whole other website in an entirely different format and there were forums for basically ANY topic at all, and there was a huge RP community there. I started out on the main site and then got completely addicted to the forums soon after I discovered them. God, I wish I could remember the name of that site.
I used to go on a Palace client only for teens called DollieDen and then it shut down so I went on the main Palace client, and have vivid memories of entering rooms in my prep avatar (I loved the Shunis but I struggle to find them now) and people in the room using Silents (?I THINK that's what they were) would literally be like GTFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and kick me LOL in retrospect they were probably 30 and I was maybe 10.
I was probably like 5 or 6 when I was allowed to use a computer so 06/07 and dress up games were some of my favorites, so my older sister showed me drag & drop doll makers and all of the doll sites and I loved them. As I got older around 13, I couldn’t remember the names of any of the sites anymore & I would be so sad. These were some great memories!
Omg. I just can't believe such a nostalgically fulfilling video exists. I swear, every bit of this video, we must've had the SAME CHILDHOOD!! Instantly subscribed, you literally raised the bar for me when it comes to judging YT videos now hahha
Oh, the doll palace! What a huge part of my middle school years. Our internet was so slow I would have to walk away for like 30 min to wait for all the images to load every time. The silents were always my favorite, too, I feel you.
zwinky, thedollpalace, meez, moviestarplanet, ourworld, these are all games i am/was obsessed with and they are all either dead, or dying. i would love a video not only on the doll aspect, but the chat aspect as well. the virtual rooms/worlds we all connected with people around the world in, using our virtual profiles and avi's.
YOU SHOULD DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE STYLE SAVVY SERIES I ONLY LIKE GOT INTO IT LAST YEAR BUT OMG ITS SO GOOD N NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT!! im very surprised there hasn't been a company trying to benefit from the "aesthetic " boom over the last 6 years or so it seems so obvious!
i went on Doll Palace, Dollzmania, and elouai. i called them Preps because of myspace, but i was a gigantic fan of the Bonita and Raver dollz. as a child on AOL, i would use up my whole internet time limit to search obsessively pre-Google for old obscure dollmakers because my favorite style wasn't as popular. eventually, i got really into pixel art animation!
I can't get over how with every video you hit on another hobby of my childhood. Like, Neopets, Petz, Dollz, and Gaia were HUGE parts of my life. I moved on to Stardoll and a now defunct Japanese site called Poupee Girl where you posted pictures of real life clothing items you had to gain in game currency. The art style was wonderful. I also used a lot of Korean doll makers like Candybar dolls. If you happened to play GoPets at any point, I'd absolutely love a video on it. That was another one of my faves until it shut down.
Does anyone else remember Elouai? I don’t know if anyone else knew of it. It was a nice website, that had links to kisekae, doll makers, room makers, etc. while also hosting its own (though they don’t work since flash is down)
I miss making these dolls so much. I especially loved styledollz. It's too bad nobody wants to update the script to something modern so we can all do that again. It was a great way to relax and take your mind off things.
Omg so many wonderful memories unlocked!!! 😩 I saw someone post pictures of dollz -prep on a 90s Facebook group and it unlocked all these memories I haven’t thought of in 20 years! I was like 12 when I was making these!
I used to go onto these drag and drop sites, individually copy every single item on there and then paste it into my Preps powerpoint presentation (I didn't know they went by Dolls). I spent hours doing this and then making my own Preps with all the combined items. I totally forgot until I came across this video!
man... i love everything you listed! i just recently got more serious about love nikki, but i've been an avid style savvy/gaia/everskies/flash dressup/imvu/recolor.me fan for forever. thank you for making such fun nostalgic content and bringing people together! :)
I spent hours and hours playing with these. It was so fun to make your little characters with your friends. I used to take them into paint and change colors one pixel at a time haha
I think I played with Dollz once or twice, but the art is still cemented in my head. Sites like that, and Neopets, which lead me to Subeta, are why I create characters and stories in my 30's. Doll creation, avatars, characters, they really all are a way to express yourself, and I love it
I was part of the custom pixel doll art crew! The first online community I joined was a bunch of people who used doll bases to draw their own stuff on top of. I was a die hard MSPaint doller myself.
I really liked the Prepz offshoot Uniquez. I felt like they were more detailed. Later I stumbled across Candybar dolls on eLouai and those really resonated with me. I used to spend hours creating my OCs using the Candybar maker. I'd make Sailor Moon characters too.
I am SO happy someone took the time to not only really dig into the history of these, but to have organized & prepared a pretty good cohesive video of the subject for the purpose of sharing for the masses, is something i am so thankful for you to have taken your time and efforts to do! I remember watching my older sister on prep doll makers for HOURS (wishing it was my turn to use the computer already 😅). I really REALLY hope these can somehow be properly saved and archived and revamped to work again at their former glory 😢 the nostalgia HIT so HARD 💔🥹 Honestly though, with the resurgence of 2000s fashion and the entire y2k aesthetic, from the tech to the music to the way in which we enjoyed our entertainment, all making a comeback in todays mainstream - these dolls could be only one viral video or tiktok away from having a MASSIVE comeback in interest and interaction with a whole new generation! There is NOTHING more 2000s than a personalized sparkly gif'd up webpage like xanga full of Preps 😂❤
THANK YOU. I remember playing with these dolls with my sisters and friends for hours, and now when I talk about them to people I get confused looks. It's heartbreaking.
this was my first venture on the internet as a kid. my tata simon was a highschool teacher, and during summer school he watched me while teaching. I would just sit at his computer looking up pixel and glitter dollz. this is soooo nostalgic!!!!!!!!!!!!
i can't believe someone finally mentioned palace chat! everyone always talks about these dolls and no one ever seemed to know where they originated from. i used to play on the palace all the time, i even edited belly button rings and tattoos onto dollz for people. i grew out of it for a while but then in 2005/6 found eLouai's dollmaker and had a lot of fun playing with that!
ahhhh KiSS dolls!!!! i had all the ones that you showed! i spent hours and hours and HOURS on these. especially this one that was a hogwarts dorm background and had room decor and AH i need to get these again, WHY
I had completely forgotten about the existence of doll makers until this video! I used to spend hours and hours on places like "Dress Up Games dot com" creating characters and decorating little pixel houses. I even looked up the site to check it was still live and it looks like the original creators have been running it for 10+ years at this point, which was a very pleasant surprise. I remember being obsessed with these doll makers and have a very prominent memory of going to work with my mum in the early 2000s and creating and printing off screenshots of dolls I'd made of her and her coworkers. Thank you so much for the huge nostalgia bomb of a video, loved every single second!
So THAT'S why they were called Palace dolls! I was around in the early Gaia era, and I played around with Palace dolls (and oh god I remember w a i t i n g for an entire page of Palace doll parts to load), but I was clearly post-Palace (as in the website). And yeah, I was also never a 'girly girl' but I loved these dang things
I appreciate that there are also attempts to make these dress-up apps more complex and more than just drag-and-drops in the current era. The aforementioned Love Nikki, with its lore and story, is a great example, but one that I use frequently and I feel is often overlooked is Pinky Girl. There are always really cool events and contests going on there, as well as things like a Love-Nikki-like story mode, chat rooms, and Gacha mechanics
The one thing I hated about some of them though was that they had literally HUNDREDS (possibly thousands??) of options in EVERY section, and it was overwhelming for me because I like to see all the options on dress-up dolls before picking my favorite- this was literally impossible with these super-huge virtual wardrobes that you had to click through, page after page after page after page after page….
I used to screen shot the dolls, open up Paint on the computer, blow up the image until the pixels were a good size to see and then change the details I wanted changed...pixel by pixel. It was time consuming and fun. I learned about shading and highlights and varying the color pixels vs just using one straight color. It was useless and creative and gave me an outlet when I was bored or couldn't sleep. ANDDDD now I know why I like the Pixelated coloring app my 6yo son and I play on lol. Omg time flies.
Avatar Palace was my escape, omg I loved that place. I was def way too young to be hanging out in there, but I loved talking to all the random people and moving through the rooms to find the one I wanted to hang out in. Picking out and saving my favourite avatars. Thank you for the nostalgia
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I used the Dollzmania site. My bestfriend and I would spend HOURS making a huge doll families. We would give them names and personalities. Ah, the nostalgia.
Ugh I remember dollzmania! I loved that website so much, I was devastated when it was taken down.
Me too! I would spend hours making rooms and outfits and stories
Omfg I remember that site!
i spent so long trying to find that again :(
i miss early internet. it was kinda kitschy and ugly, but charming.
This should be top comment. 😹💗
I cry at the ever deteriorating state of the internet it used to be so cool man i miss it so much
Does anyone remember Tokkida and Misuya
🥺👉👈
Yeah, i couldn’t agree more ✨
I love the tacky graphics and backgrounds so much. It gives me so much nostalgia. 🥹
the early internet was absolutely off its rocker but dollz was such a nice little pocket of it. i also miss the wacky stylization of blogs and webpages with every fiber of my being. the formatting and UI rules weren't written or standardized yet and sites were free to greet you with a pixel dragon hit counter, an animated background and a midi player playing the sailor moon theme. the guest books, adoptables, sparkle cursors - i could honestly gush about it for forever haha. i feel like myspace was the last little piece of the internet where creating a nauseatingly over-coded page to express yourself was acceptable and ever since things have been a little more grey and glum. tumblr hung in there for awhile but i think most people just suffer through the mobile version of it now, too. i'll probably always be subconsciously searching for a place where my tacky little heart can use the basic understanding of html cultivated from creating a neopets shop page and myspace profile to be creative and unhinged, but enough time has passed for me to be fairly certain that companies don't prioritize allowing their users self-expression. we get an icon and a name - one that likely doesn't allow special characters. a banner, if we're lucky. life goes on i suppose. the internet will always continue to change and shift.
god i really didn't mean to write an entire rant, but you know? it's not every day i get to reminisce about the early internet.
I miss those days so much.
I agree 1000%!! Sad that myspace started to die out and people moved on to boring bland facebook around 2008-10. Myspace was so customizable, fun, and expressive. In general, creativity, fashion, etc has been in a decline in these recent years (at least in my opinion)
Everything in the Internet is grey, boring and soulless nowadays!
This. Exactly my sentiment
It was a good read tho!
As a kid I was really into stardoll. I made an account after catching my older brother on it and I noticed he avoided playing it when other people were around so I thought it must be a really cool site that only older kids were allowed on 😂😂 turns out we were both doll maker fans 😂
THIS🥺😫😭
Does anyone remember when it was called paperdoll heaven? I started playing when I read about it in Shout magazine 🤣 god I feel old now
@@georginalouise95 Yes!! Idk if anyone has been on in the past 5 years or so, but I still log in from time to time. The paper doll aspect has totally evolved with their Hair Studio and other features, but unfortunately it’s super expensive to play nowadays.
I remember not only these, but also the little room-makers? those were so fun! Love your videos!
I should have looked for those, I'm sure the 2000s teen room aesthetic would have energized me.
YESSSSSSSS they had houses, bedrooms, parks, MALLS they were so fucking fun i cant find any of my favs online anymore T.T
THE MALLLLSSS omg I LOVED those so muchh
I have a vague memory of one website that had a bunch of those and I've been trying to remember what it was called for years!
@@defiantturtle8284 was it eLouai :) ?
The nostalgia hit me like a train
Seeing Doll Divine, a website I use almost daily, actually featured in a video gave me such whiplash. I vaguely remember playing with Dollz as a kid, though my gateway was the south Korean dress up dolls from Roiworld which as a non Korean kid seemed totally ahead of the curve fashion wise. Girls Go Games was like virtual cocaine for 8 year old me and my friends lol
I was just going to leave a comment about the Roiworld Korean dress up games!! I played with those way later than I probably should have mostly because like you said the fashion choices just seemed so much cooler than anything I had access to in real life! Really cool to see someone else mention those dolls! 😊✌🏼
Omg, GGG, i remember this soooo vividly
GGG was my childhood! It was so heart breaking to see how devoid of personality it became when I visited it one last time before flash was discontinued. I wonder if it's still up...? Still, I miss those old girl mascots. :(
Someone finally acknowledged Roiworld! That was my favorite dress up site as a kid.
Omg Roiworld!!!! I lovedddd those dolls
"The Venn diagram of 30 year old metal dudes and people who created pixel dollz" oh god it's me, I am the overlap
I remember being like 12/13 and feeling so cool cause I learned how to animate those dolls to flash different colors. I was kinda a big deal in the chatrooms for it :'D
I miss The Doll Palace. Such a nostalgic part of my childhood.
Rinmaru was a big one for me! They had these "manga page creators" or a name similar to that, and I loved to make anime styled couples in them! It's also worth mentioning that though the big boom of Picrew didn't happen until I was in college, it's still been a lot of fun for me to use and explore different fashion and gender expression with them. It's been nice to see Picrews develop too, because while there are a lot more diverse ones now in terms of skin tone and body type, it definitely wasn't always that way, and there are still many new ones that are limited in those regards.
Rinmaru was still active until Flash was murdered by Adobe. DollDivine for the most part has died too the new makers just don’t have the same level of creativity.
I tried to get into the page creators but then my brain started to fall out my butt and I had to draw everything and then forget about it and get onto rinmaru again
It made me so sad when I came back to the website (right after flash got removed) and saw the goodbye message :(
i was obsessed with rinmaru when i was younger :D
yes, i was super sad when rinmaru is closed :( so, i get into piccrew and maiker.io, they're still active, but sadly dolldivine is dead too..his makers are same and bored now
(sorry for my poor english)
I remember I played one of those dress-up flash games on my dad's computer and posting it to his Facebook...
...poor dude, all of his friends made jokes about him dressing up cute girls lmao
This is hilarious. His friends probably just couldn't get the image of your dad dressing up his cute virtual girl and posting it to get their opinion on it LOL
that's actually cute as fuck lmao
I made my dads facebook profile picture a picture of cadence the dj from club penguin because id play flash games on his account 💀💀
I also just wanted to say that I genuinely appreciate this style of internet archeology / historical work you're doing. I feel like there's so many interesting aspects about early internet culture that are being lost to time just because nobody thinks they're important enough to document. We're going to be thanking people like you who can see the value in these early "novelties" of the internet years from now when this stuff becomes an awesome glimpse into our lives at a very pivotal moment between a pre and post internet world. Highlighting stuff like Dollz also gives us a perspective from a category of people who don't usually get their perspective written down in history (namely younger girls). Your videos take a topic that seems like just a silly novelty at first, but goes so thoroughly into their history and origin that it ends up giving some truly great historical insight. On top of that, the pacing and editing is just remarkably well done. Thanks for everything you're doing!
The nostalgia from this video hit me like an eighteen wheeler using no brakes to reach the bottom of a steeply graded hill. I need a time machine IMMEDIATELY 😫
Wow this just brought me back! I used to spend HOURS playing with these! I also remember the devastation when the sites became unusable. The items still were there, but the drag and drop function was broken. Thanks for this video!
I know, it was totally heartbreaking!
I spent hours on dollzmania! The palace was my absolute favorite! I loved “working” in the shops and editing clothes for people
Omg same
"Imagine liking eminem and also liking that cutesy aesthetic"
😶😳me lmao
same
Does anyone else remember eLouai? I practically lived on that site in middle school!
As far as looks, the site still seems to work! At least the candy bar doll maker does. Idk about the others.
site still works i use it frequently
elouai. my god. I have no idea how I found that site, but it was one of the urls I could remember on command
YESSS! That’s the site that made me get gaiaonline!
I didn't remember it at first, but when I read your comment it unlocked a memory from at least... 14 years ago! It was great!
OOOF this took me back to being ten and not understanding why I really loved making these prep dolls without tops on but spending HOURS essentially making “harems” of dolls.
Good to know that wasn’t just me then
I was OBSESSED with making candy bar dolls, I think they added it to thedollpalace or maybe it was through dollzmania but it was absolutely DIVINE. If I could just do that again my life would be complete. The amount of nostalgia I experience just looking at pictures of those candy bar dolls is incredible. I loved when they generated a pretty name for your doll at the end.
Oh! I was a doller from 2004-2012 (or so)! There was definitely a really big dolling scene outside of dollmakers. The standard was that artists would make bases, which were available for dollers to use (with credit, of course), and then you would draw your own art on the base. There were a lot of contests, and it was a really community-focused hobby.
Also, because it wasn't the kind of thing that was drawing in new people, the art and standards REALLY changed over the years, because it was the same people improving over time.
There's still a fairly small dolling community, but it's much less organized than it used to be back in the forum days. I run a fb group, and I think there are a couple forums still hanging on, but it really isn't what it used to be, which is a real shame.
What’s the fb group?
@@annier1873 dolling undead-- msg me your old username
Oh that's so cool! I was "moondust pixels" back then. It was such a cool community. It set me on the path of game and animation that I'm working with now as an adult
I was a doller too! I was known as Lush (Dollz by Lush) then I rebranded into Pixelated Pixelations & Tuts and Lines when I branched out more from just Dollz. I mainly hung out in the forum called Realm of the Forbidden and the forum that had Eden in it's name I can't remember what it was called!
@@creativetidbits753 Eden Enchanted!
i used to make a TON of ocs in candybar dollmakers and some site called the doll emporium? i think it was that, it was related to the doll palace but a lot of the games had a list and load type of setup, and they were bigger dolls because the smaller ones didnt rlly attract me, my first experience with dressups was a team rocket dressup that came in an old anime magazine cd called Dokan (it was from spain and they always had tons of stuff) , i could also say it was my first experience with gender noncomformity as i was allowed to dress James in a variety of dresses on it from the show as well , really fun memories
Oh the doll emporium!!!! I remember that site
Yes! I think they were the site that had the eLouai doll maker. I loved that one so much
Yes!! Was waiting for someone to talk about Candybars! I would make them, print them out, then cut them out individually and write what I thought their name should be on the back 😂
@@alexandraseabrook9242 I thought I was the only one did that!
Oh wow I'm so happy someone is talking about it! Personnally I didn't use Doll Palace or others famous websites like that, but I knew they existed. I prefered doing my own dollz with a base (basically a doll without any clothes or hair) and drawing them pixel by pixel. I was kinda good, I even had a website with a good friend just about dollz :) We attempted to do our own bases too but I was better to use bases from other dollz websites, they were more talented eheh Unfortunately, most of those websites aren't online anymore... Mine can still be seen on the internet data base but almost everything is gone. I went to an old portable driver to search for mine and I didn't find anything except one that I didn't love that much lol I'm kinda sad, I did so many cool dollz! I'll keep searching I guess!
Very interesting! I'm sixty-five yrs. old and this is all new to me, especially since I just got into the Internet in the past couple of years. I'm an artist, clothing designer/tailor, and doll collector. Growing up, as well as sewing for people and actual dolls, I use to make paper dolls with countless outfits all the time. I loved it! Sadly, I don't have one single paper doll from my past.
Me, as an intense wave of nostalgia deeply rooted within the recesses of my brain washes over me upon seeing the thumbnail for this video: what DID ever happen to dollz???!!!
This is fascinating because I am brazilian and I was fully involved in the Dollz community as a kid/tween and had no idea there was a whole side to it in English. I eventually grew tired of the drag and drop doll makers and started doing my own pixel art dolls on MS paint, usually just getting doll bases and color palettes from other doll artists but fully making them my own when I was a little older, and I remember spending hours doing it, learning how to do pixel shading and fixing poses and features on my own.
YESSS THISSS! I loved changing things on paint lol
I was born in 2003 so I missed stuff like Gaia online but I remember I used to (and still do) frequent dolldivine so much that it was my homepage
OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THE PALACE UNTIL TODAY, I REMEMBERED DOLLZ BUT NOT THE PALACE. I'M SO EXCITED.
I remember there used to be websites where you could "adopt" these dollz. Basically, you'd download them to your computer, upload them to Photobucket (or some similar photo sharing site), generate an html code to add them to your website, and link back to the source.
i used cartoon doll emporium religiously as a kid! their forums and sailor moon dolls were a gateway to my current internet obsession. and the way they let you customize your page similar to myspace... this really took me back!!
I used to download KiSS doll all the time ! IT'S GIVING ME THE BRAIN FUZZ to have someone talk about this!
I ended up making dolls myself 🤣 was my entry into pixel art obsession.
I am thinking I might drum up the old hobby again
Hi, I was a pixel doll maker back in the day. Made my own bases, clothing, poses, styles, etc. It was a huge thing. I also made blinkies (animated block text found on Gaia & doll sites) for free (wtf ha) and this vid gave me some amazing memories. xoxo
I had forgotten about these and the hours I spent in MS paint carefully coloring in pixels to create dollz with clothes from Delia's.
23:21 I realized I was trans in middle school, in 2011. A lot of these sites were still functional and I got SO MUCH use out of them figuring out my ideal self
@YaguarRosado how the hell is this unbelievable
Oh my god. This is the first reference to Palace Chat since the Palace Chat
I clicked so fast when I saw this thumbnail. The doll palace was a site I frequented so often as a young kid I would play all afternoon when I got home from school, and then keep myself awake at night til I knew my mom was asleep and I could use her computer to make even more!!! My first real OCs were born there, and, as you pointed out so perfectly, was an incredible place to safely experiment as well. I had no idea what the origins were since I got into them right at the tail end of their popularity, so I really appreciate you making this!! (and thanks algorithm for somehow knowing about this long-buried interest of mine)
dollzmania was my SHIT and I think about it all the time. also, anyone else use elouai? it still mostly works, including the candybar dollmakers! I would spend forever on that site, and also cartoondollemporium. I used that one up until high school. thank you for doing this vid, I had no clue there's been a revival of drag and drop dollz, i gotta check out that subreddit
eLouai’s Candybar Doll Maker was my absolute favorite! It was a Korean based doll maker that I found on Neopets!
The Candybar ones and really anything found on eLouai were what I remember having a lasting effect. I still have a few outfit combinations I made there saved to my computer.
SAME IT WAS THE ABSOLUTE BEST
@@NjDuchess I want to play it so badly.
I remember playing Dollz on our old dial-up computer with my cousins for hours. We'd always try to scroll to the part with princess outfits when our parents would walk in the room because they thought the more gothic outfits were "too dark" :p I also remember accidentally stumbling across NSFW Dollz sometimes and quickly shutting off the computer in panic
Thank you for talking about these! I love the new serge of creators covering the history of "girl games" and kids stuff from internet's past
God, so many fond memories of the Sailor Moon KISS dolls, especially since I couldn't draw to visualize my many, many, MANY fan senshi. In fact, the only way I COULD do art was using "bases" usable with credit to draw my own designs for hair/clothes/etc on them using PaintShopPro, which I started doing because the drag & drops didn't have as many options as I wanted. Pretty sure 90% of the sites where I found my favorite bases are long, long dead by now.
This was SO in depth. I was born in 2001 so this era of internet was a bit before my time, but i still remember spending hours on third party websites decorating dolls and printing out my outfits for my bedroom wall 😭 I had no idea this type of content had such a deep history
Haha, dude, hilarious, when I made my own palace in 2001, I named it The Shit. Still remember learning pixel art and shading and 3d lettering, wallpaper / background making and learning obscure code (iptscrae wasn't it?) all due to the Palace. Super fond nostalgic memories. Damn I miss chat rooms.
Omg kisekae and pixel dolls were such a huge part of my childhood!! This unlocked so many memories - I remember spending hours salivating over the Otaku World dolls you had to pay for and trying to follow pixel art tutorials on Xandorra’s Place
the little celebrity squares with the flashing text, wow that took me back!
I'm so happy this video was in my recommended! I frequented the Avatar Palace and would spend hours upon hours in the editing rooms everyday with other dollers. We formed clans and would have contests and I made a ton of friends that I've lost touch with over the years. If anyone reading this remembers a user by the name of Kween, hit me up because I would love to catch up!
I spent whole summer breaks on there. I was a top doll designer and ran the designer/shuni pageant scene from 2002-2005.
I now play Pocket Styler but it's not the same
I think my name was Viva La Bethany
I don't remember you but I have the same memories. There was a girl on there I would play with and one of us named ourself Sugar and the other was Spice and we would hop from room to room together talking to people. It's hard to explain these games and websites to anyone who wasn't partaking but it was so exciting the simple technology seemed like big stuff to us and I had so many laughs.
I remember Dollz Palace!!! HOURS were lost in the goth and rave ones. I use to load everything because then i could put stuff aside while i told a story in my head. I wanted to buy or make so many things. I was gonna print it out and copy it and sew it. Lol i had no idea how sewing worked clearly but i have... just some really, really special memories of those dollz. Legit some of my softest childhood memories are of Dollz Palace. Thank you for keeping the memory alive! Im gettin teary just thinking back goodness.
I was on doll websites from around 2001-2006 so my whole early adolescence (age 11-16). I remember spending hours making dolls, saving them on my family's old pc. But I also got into pixel art/and doll bases and even trying my hand at making websites since so many doll website owners were my age. It was such a unique experience growing up alongside many young girls my age who were carving their place on the early web. I remember joining cute forums and message boards to bond with other young folks. So much is lost because the drag and drop script for java is now defunct so I wonder if we can make an archive of them somehow and revive the nostalgia?
This is so awesome. I used to spend hours making my own poses and bodies, I hated how preps looked so I would take the minis and create my own hair and outfits and fix wonky poses. I remember I made a destiny’s child avi and someone cloned it after I spent hours clicking pixel by pixel. I cried. And there were so few cute brown girl dollz so I spent hours recoloring skins so they would look like me and girls like me and I would drop tons of them all over palace. I probably made hundreds of props. My favorites are so hard to find, I would totally do anything to get my hands on some and start making them again. It was therapeutic. Anyway, love this video, palace popped in my head and I found this, lovely trip down memory lane.
WOW this unlocked a memory from my childhood I forgot about. I remember playing the fairy makers for HOURS making tons of them. The different wings especially really hit the nostalgia button HARD. Ugh, what a nice little throwback to my childhood. Thanks for making this video!
Oh the Unis and Shunis... Shuni pag ONLY LMAO! I spent so many hours on this game as a kid, with dial up. The palace was my LIFE. I was always a sk8er goth with the double buns, anyone remember that? I spent hours pixel by pixel, remember only being able to put 9 items on your av? I was always xxDeathFlowsxx and Kakyaku-Tora omg this took me baaaaaaack!
Dollz were such a huge part of my childhood. I even remember learning the HTML for drag and drop creators so I could make my own custom ones. I was 10 years old! I would also create dollz and painstakingly edit them in Paint to make them look exactly like the characters from my favourite series The Tribe, which I'd post to an online blog with zero followers. Another huge thing I was obsessed with was 'dollz adoption' blogs. You'd adopt a doll, get some fake digital currency and get her a job and buy things for her.
I'd spend hours on Dollzmania that's what I'd use all my internet time on omfg
When I realised in my mid teens that I was bisexual and liked girls, a lot of things from my younger years kind of clicked into place like a puzzle and made a lot more sense. Remembering just now how long I used to spend on DollzMania putting lingerie on the prep doll base is a puzzle piece that just clicked neatly into place lmao
Omg this was me !!!
I loved Dollz! Wonderkins were always my favorite. I remember pasting my dollz into MS paint and meticulously coloring them pixel by pixel to change the colors of their outfits and hair and maybe their facial expressions 😂
This was so interesting to watch! Though I never played with Dollz in particular because I was more a flash dress up sort of girl, to see these early roots is so fun. Remembering chat rooms, that we were all probably wayyyy too young to be in, glitter text.... gosh it really takes me back. I think my favorite thing to toy with at the time were early IMVU and Zwinky. Girls Go Games was probably my most visited site back then along with myspace and those little animals you could care for when you put them on your profile. Good times...
ZWINKY man that's a name I haven't heard in years
I think about The Palace at least once a month and is the reason I started doing graphic design. The little people were actually the cooler choice if you couldn't upload your own photo which took more technical skill and possibly downloading additional programs. The prep dollz were like an obligatory get that were widely available in various servers. The little people were not interchangeable in clothing so they were harder to find because no one wanted the same avatar as others.
That Barbie Girl MIDI injected nostalgia straight into my ears
Hell yeah, so many hours of my pre teen self spent playing around with Dollz. Blinkies were life
God this brings back so much nostalgia for me…the pixel dolls, The Palace, doll makers, all of it. I did it all. I found The Palace through my love of pixel dolls and ate up every doll maker I could find, which lead me to start making my own custom dolls pixel by pixel for my friends…I spent so much time and had so many rewritable CDs full of all my dolls. I even did a project for school with them when I was in middle school. Thanks so much for posting this and bringing back so many memories of eating quakes and drinking Snapple peach tea while playing with pixel dolls.
The wildest thing is that I somehow found my way to all these things as a clueless 9-year old and taught myself English in the process.
I also remember using Sailor Moon Kiss dolls. My favorite one was one of Sailor Iron Mouse, but there was also one were you could make your own Sailor Senshi I used alot
I also got banned from the Doll Palace forums because made a request for a doll and the artist didn't follow my directions and I asked for a new one and the mod blocked me for "using inappropriate language" dispite not using any inappropriate language. That mod was just mad with power.
Yeeeeeah! I love dollzmania, I used to go onto the chat room and annoy the moderators. Then I went onto Palace chat.. Ah, memories.
I was a doller. I got started with the Doll Palace makers in Jr. High, then expanded out to all the various bases you could find out there on different doller sites and deviant art. Man, I really miss making these!
WOW THE NOSTALGIA. I remember seeing Dollz everywhere in the quote and icon formats, but I never knew where they came from. I definitely was a flash doll kid - I used to spend HOURS on GirlsGoGames in the fashion game/dollmaker category, and then later on DollDivine. I also used to spend a lot of time on this one website that I for the life of me cannot remember the name of, but it was really interesting bc it was kind of like two websites in one? Like there was the main site that was based on being just a catalogue of dollmakers and fashion games, but then there were forums too, and those forums were basically like a whole other website in an entirely different format and there were forums for basically ANY topic at all, and there was a huge RP community there. I started out on the main site and then got completely addicted to the forums soon after I discovered them. God, I wish I could remember the name of that site.
I used to go on a Palace client only for teens called DollieDen and then it shut down so I went on the main Palace client, and have vivid memories of entering rooms in my prep avatar (I loved the Shunis but I struggle to find them now) and people in the room using Silents (?I THINK that's what they were) would literally be like GTFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and kick me LOL in retrospect they were probably 30 and I was maybe 10.
I LOVED the silents... Omg if I could just find my old Gateway Computer...😂
I was probably like 5 or 6 when I was allowed to use a computer so 06/07 and dress up games were some of my favorites, so my older sister showed me drag & drop doll makers and all of the doll sites and I loved them. As I got older around 13, I couldn’t remember the names of any of the sites anymore & I would be so sad. These were some great memories!
I love how much social media gets me - how did RUclips know I used to play dollsmania for hours??? Idk but I’m glad it suggested this video
Omg. I just can't believe such a nostalgically fulfilling video exists. I swear, every bit of this video, we must've had the SAME CHILDHOOD!! Instantly subscribed, you literally raised the bar for me when it comes to judging YT videos now hahha
My Geocities page was COVERED in these little things. I love that people are reviving them for nostalgia's sake.
Oh, the doll palace! What a huge part of my middle school years. Our internet was so slow I would have to walk away for like 30 min to wait for all the images to load every time.
The silents were always my favorite, too, I feel you.
zwinky, thedollpalace, meez, moviestarplanet, ourworld, these are all games i am/was obsessed with and they are all either dead, or dying. i would love a video not only on the doll aspect, but the chat aspect as well. the virtual rooms/worlds we all connected with people around the world in, using our virtual profiles and avi's.
YOU SHOULD DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE STYLE SAVVY SERIES I ONLY LIKE GOT INTO IT LAST YEAR BUT OMG ITS SO GOOD N NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT!! im very surprised there hasn't been a company trying to benefit from the "aesthetic " boom over the last 6 years or so it seems so obvious!
Awww this is awesome, I played on girlscene, Cartoon Doll Emporium, Shop Like Anna, aaah….
i went on Doll Palace, Dollzmania, and elouai. i called them Preps because of myspace, but i was a gigantic fan of the Bonita and Raver dollz. as a child on AOL, i would use up my whole internet time limit to search obsessively pre-Google for old obscure dollmakers because my favorite style wasn't as popular.
eventually, i got really into pixel art animation!
I used to always play with these omg, those were the days after school going to these sites endlessly.
I can't get over how with every video you hit on another hobby of my childhood. Like, Neopets, Petz, Dollz, and Gaia were HUGE parts of my life. I moved on to Stardoll and a now defunct Japanese site called Poupee Girl where you posted pictures of real life clothing items you had to gain in game currency. The art style was wonderful. I also used a lot of Korean doll makers like Candybar dolls.
If you happened to play GoPets at any point, I'd absolutely love a video on it. That was another one of my faves until it shut down.
Does anyone else remember Elouai? I don’t know if anyone else knew of it. It was a nice website, that had links to kisekae, doll makers, room makers, etc. while also hosting its own (though they don’t work since flash is down)
This LAUNCHED me back to my childhood
Yes!!! Someone remembers KISS Dolls! I loved these and had one to create your own sailor senshi, I made so many!
I miss making these dolls so much. I especially loved styledollz. It's too bad nobody wants to update the script to something modern so we can all do that again. It was a great way to relax and take your mind off things.
Omg so many wonderful memories unlocked!!! 😩
I saw someone post pictures of dollz -prep on a 90s Facebook group and it unlocked all these memories I haven’t thought of in 20 years! I was like 12 when I was making these!
I used to go onto these drag and drop sites, individually copy every single item on there and then paste it into my Preps powerpoint presentation (I didn't know they went by Dolls). I spent hours doing this and then making my own Preps with all the combined items. I totally forgot until I came across this video!
man... i love everything you listed! i just recently got more serious about love nikki, but i've been an avid style savvy/gaia/everskies/flash dressup/imvu/recolor.me fan for forever. thank you for making such fun nostalgic content and bringing people together! :)
I spent hours and hours playing with these. It was so fun to make your little characters with your friends. I used to take them into paint and change colors one pixel at a time haha
I think I played with Dollz once or twice, but the art is still cemented in my head. Sites like that, and Neopets, which lead me to Subeta, are why I create characters and stories in my 30's. Doll creation, avatars, characters, they really all are a way to express yourself, and I love it
I was part of the custom pixel doll art crew! The first online community I joined was a bunch of people who used doll bases to draw their own stuff on top of. I was a die hard MSPaint doller myself.
So cool! I tried it a few times, but I was never hardcore enough to use Paint.
I really liked the Prepz offshoot Uniquez. I felt like they were more detailed. Later I stumbled across Candybar dolls on eLouai and those really resonated with me. I used to spend hours creating my OCs using the Candybar maker. I'd make Sailor Moon characters too.
I am SO happy someone took the time to not only really dig into the history of these, but to have organized & prepared a pretty good cohesive video of the subject for the purpose of sharing for the masses, is something i am so thankful for you to have taken your time and efforts to do!
I remember watching my older sister on prep doll makers for HOURS (wishing it was my turn to use the computer already 😅).
I really REALLY hope these can somehow be properly saved and archived and revamped to work again at their former glory 😢 the nostalgia HIT so HARD 💔🥹
Honestly though, with the resurgence of 2000s fashion and the entire y2k aesthetic, from the tech to the music to the way in which we enjoyed our entertainment, all making a comeback in todays mainstream - these dolls could be only one viral video or tiktok away from having a MASSIVE comeback in interest and interaction with a whole new generation!
There is NOTHING more 2000s than a personalized sparkly gif'd up webpage like xanga full of Preps 😂❤
God Doll Palace was my jam when I was younger I miss it so much!
THANK YOU. I remember playing with these dolls with my sisters and friends for hours, and now when I talk about them to people I get confused looks. It's heartbreaking.
this was my first venture on the internet as a kid. my tata simon was a highschool teacher, and during summer school he watched me while teaching. I would just sit at his computer looking up pixel and glitter dollz. this is soooo nostalgic!!!!!!!!!!!!
i can't believe someone finally mentioned palace chat! everyone always talks about these dolls and no one ever seemed to know where they originated from. i used to play on the palace all the time, i even edited belly button rings and tattoos onto dollz for people. i grew out of it for a while but then in 2005/6 found eLouai's dollmaker and had a lot of fun playing with that!
ahhhh KiSS dolls!!!! i had all the ones that you showed! i spent hours and hours and HOURS on these. especially this one that was a hogwarts dorm background and had room decor and AH i need to get these again, WHY
I had completely forgotten about the existence of doll makers until this video! I used to spend hours and hours on places like "Dress Up Games dot com" creating characters and decorating little pixel houses. I even looked up the site to check it was still live and it looks like the original creators have been running it for 10+ years at this point, which was a very pleasant surprise. I remember being obsessed with these doll makers and have a very prominent memory of going to work with my mum in the early 2000s and creating and printing off screenshots of dolls I'd made of her and her coworkers. Thank you so much for the huge nostalgia bomb of a video, loved every single second!
I didn't use internet dress up/doll stuff much, but I love the Style Savvy series. I really hope they make a new one for the Switch.
Me too! I'm always hoping for an announcement during Directs lol
So THAT'S why they were called Palace dolls! I was around in the early Gaia era, and I played around with Palace dolls (and oh god I remember w a i t i n g for an entire page of Palace doll parts to load), but I was clearly post-Palace (as in the website).
And yeah, I was also never a 'girly girl' but I loved these dang things
I appreciate that there are also attempts to make these dress-up apps more complex and more than just drag-and-drops in the current era. The aforementioned Love Nikki, with its lore and story, is a great example, but one that I use frequently and I feel is often overlooked is Pinky Girl. There are always really cool events and contests going on there, as well as things like a Love-Nikki-like story mode, chat rooms, and Gacha mechanics
The one thing I hated about some of them though was that they had literally HUNDREDS (possibly thousands??) of options in EVERY section, and it was overwhelming for me because I like to see all the options on dress-up dolls before picking my favorite- this was literally impossible with these super-huge virtual wardrobes that you had to click through, page after page after page after page after page….
I DIDNT KNOW I NEEDED THIS I used to spend hours on thedollpalace bring it baCk
I used to screen shot the dolls, open up Paint on the computer, blow up the image until the pixels were a good size to see and then change the details I wanted changed...pixel by pixel. It was time consuming and fun. I learned about shading and highlights and varying the color pixels vs just using one straight color. It was useless and creative and gave me an outlet when I was bored or couldn't sleep. ANDDDD now I know why I like the Pixelated coloring app my 6yo son and I play on lol. Omg time flies.
Avatar Palace was my escape, omg I loved that place. I was def way too young to be hanging out in there, but I loved talking to all the random people and moving through the rooms to find the one I wanted to hang out in. Picking out and saving my favourite avatars. Thank you for the nostalgia