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How to Identify Reborn Dolls

Vinyl baby dolls remade to look like real human babies, known as reborns, have gained popularity steadily since their debut in 1990. The majority of reborn dolls are bought by collectors, but they're also favored by older women who look at the dolls as a type of substitute for having a baby or young child in the house, or by women who have suffered a miscarriage or lost a child. Due to their intensely realistic features, many people mistake reborn dolls for real babies, and this has caused confusion and resulted in police action in some cases. While many doll artists produce reborns, they all have similar characteristics.

Instructions

- 1
  Look at the doll's skin tone. While regular vinyl dolls have an evenly distributed flesh color throughout the body, reborns have a purplish undertone to the skin, much like a real infant. The doll artist strips the paint from a manufactured doll and redoes the skin with a thin palette of colors to form the uneven tone of human flesh, complete with blemishes, birthmarks and a slight hint of purple veins under the skin.
- 2
  Feel the doll's hair. Reborners handroot real human hair, mohair, silk or other soft, natural materials to replace the manufactured dolls' synthetic wigs. A reborn's hair resembles the spotty growth of a newborn and matches the baby doll's skin tone in a realistic fashion.
- 3
  Lift the doll. Reborn doll artists often "weight" the doll by filling it with white sand or poly pellets or fiberfill to make the doll weigh a few pounds just like a newborn. This soft filling makes it easier for the doll's owner to pose it in lifelike positions in a crib or stroller.
- 4
  Check the doll's eyes. Reborn dolls artists may use glass eyes that accentuate the iris and cornea of the doll more than generic types, which may be made of ceramic or even painted on to the doll. Eyebrows can be painstaking detailed and are created using watercolor paints or drawing pencils.
- 5
  Identify unusual features. Some reborn dolls have a beating heart, courtesy of an electronic chip in the chest cavity, while others have fake tears painted on their face. The doll may also be dressed in real infant clothes and come with a baby's pacifier or bottle.

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