While the head and hands will be vinyl - you have a choice of two different types of body - one is referred to as Cortex and the other as Vinyl. Both body types are pre-built.An Update on Porcelain White and Milk
What’s Happening
We’re making an adjustment to how Porcelain White is priced as it returns to its original limited-edition price point.
- Porcelain White (Classic) will be priced at 72,000 JPY (the original limited-edition price point)
- Milk (Classic) will remain at 52,000 JPY (a price we’ve held for classic bodies since 2017)
Why It’s Happening
Behind the scenes, we currently manage multiple skin tones across several body types, which adds up to 28 separate production lines (each combination requiring its own setup, inventory, and quality control).
While that variety is something we’re proud to offer, it also creates significant complexity for a small production team of 8 people dedicated to production. We try to balance offering choice with keeping things sustainable for the team, rather than pushing for scale at the expense of quality or wellbeing.
Porcelain White, in particular, comes with additional challenges:
- It uses a full soft body to ensure parts age and yellow at the same rate, reducing long-term color mismatch
- We currently only have one mold for the peach body torso, which limits production efficiency - as all classic soft bodies, including Porcelain White, use this same torso to keep production consistent and avoid confusion at the factory
- Blemishes are much more visible on white, leading to a higher rejection rate during production
All of this combined increases cost, reduces yield, and adds pressure to both inventory and production.
Milk was originally intended to be a limited skin tone at a higher price, but we chose to keep it as a standard option and absorb the additional cost to keep pricing consistent with our other human skin tones.
This helps us continue offering Porcelain White in a more sustainable way.
We’re always looking for ways to improve efficiency, and if we’re able to reduce costs in the future, we’ll reflect that in the price - as we’ve done previously with limited skin tones like Green.
A Few Notes on Porcelain White
- All Porcelain White bodies use the soft-grade Peach Body. Due to the grippy nature of soft vinyl, some outfits may be more difficult to put on.
- Lighter skin tones, especially in soft-grade sofubi, may have a higher likelihood of staining depending on the fabric and how long it is left on.
- Porcelain White will not be continuously available in the same way as previous limited skin tones, and will instead be released in batches.
- Some characters may have a small ready-made batch, but most will be produced based on pre-orders.
- Similar to how some folks have found darker skin tones like Cocoa more challenging to photograph, Porcelain White can also be tricky - highlights may blow out easily, and depending on lighting conditions, photos can take on a slight blue hue
- Blemishes are more visible on white. These include surface characteristics such as small air bubbles, birthmarks, and slight indentations from the molding process. While we reject parts that don’t meet our standards, minor variations that are considered acceptable in sofubi may be more noticeable on lighter tones. If this is something that may concern you, Porcelain White may not be the best choice.
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