Tattoos for Toys

It’s been years since any of us here at Inked played with dolls, but not for the reasons you might expect. It’s not that we have grown out of them—the lightsaber on my desk is one of countless toys in the office—it’s just that dolls can be so boring. Dolls don’t look like real people, they don’t have jetpacks or robot arms, and the majority of dolls don’t transform into dinosaurs. But our real question is where are the damn tattoos? How can Barbie and her ilk go all these years without getting a single bit of ink? Now that has changed thanks to Lammily Marks.

In marketing their dolls Lammily wanted to create some diversity that the children’s doll industry has rarely seen over the years. While the original doll is as perfect as you would expect that can be changed by adding some of their Lammily Marks—removable stickers of blemishes, acne, bruises, freckles and tattoos.

When little kids think of what the ideal is for an adult they will think of their parents. So when mommy and daddy have a bunch of tattoos it’ll make the child wonder why their dolls don’t, this has probably led to a lot of awkward conversations. The natural thing for kids to do in the past was to just take a pen and draw all over their dolls. This would often create a mess and a child who wanted a new doll to start over. Sure, it’s nice to see a future tattooist working on their craft at the age of five but it can get expensive. Thankfully, these tattoos and other marks are removable, which is helpful given the whims of small children.

We definitely think it’s sick that a doll can be rocking a tattoo these days but we’re not overly impressed with the art. Look at the colors on that butterfly—they aren’t realistic and the shading is totally off. Maybe we should take the doll to an artist like Elvin Yong to get a piece like this one. Just kidding, that would be a bit crazy.

Lammily is definitely on the right track with their attempt to start introducing a little diversity to the doll industry. May we suggest an artist collaboration or maybe some black and gray tattoos when Lammily Marks 2.0 comes out?