Bobby and Amanda Henry

When a person is young, they usually have big lofty dreams. I wanted to be science fiction writer and build miniature models for movies; Stories and movie models that help transport people to a place of fantasy, where the constraints of your own situation may not bind you. In high school I wrote stories with my own original characters, on my mind daily as I worked on their back stories. I thought, maybe one day, I might fulfill my dream of getting my characters into a book, or maybe even a screenplay. Seeing them come to life, sharing their stories, that was the dream.


As I grew older, life happens and those dreams get much quieter. Responsibility and situational roadblocks (very self-imposed at times) had led me to give up on building movie models, but I still had the characters on my mind. Years continued to grind on, professional careers mature, and suddenly I found myself simply accepting that this dream was not going to happen. It’s a dark drive to work the day you realize something you hold dear may be going to the grave with you, and you need only look into a mirror to see who is responsible.

Now this is where the hero, a second-hand Milk Journey Alternate, comes into the story. My wife, Amanda, had been talking about Smart Dolls for a long time and Christmas 2019 was approaching. She learned about them while on a military deployment and had also seen photos of Smart Dolls on Instagram. Not knowing anything about them, I simply found one on an eBay auction (I had no idea how to buy one) and bought it for her. She opened it, dressed it and sat it on the dinner table. I remember staring at Journey for a while and asking Amanda what her back story was. She simply said “I haven’t thought of one. Why don’t you think of one, I know you like the sci-fi stuff I’m sure you’ve got something you could whip up for her.”

I remember staring at Journey for a long time and just thinking who she could be. Over the next few days I bounced back stories by Amanda and she liked it. Suddenly, I found myself expanding her story. I based Journey’s story off a character I had long thought of, one I thought was a good fit for where we wanted to go. Next thing we knew, there were more dolls, and they had back-stories. We interwove the dolls with the characters, and then we started taking photos of them. Soon we built our first diorama room for the dolls, and that’s when the train really took off down the track. Together we would talk about builds, weekends were spent digging through industrial waste bins to up-cycle things into dioramas or backdrops for photo shoots. We were and are still trying to build a tiny universe where the dolls play out the stories we made.

That’s also when we started the IG page and started to get plugged into the online doll community. We saw amazing builds and custom work, awesome doll photography and were definitely influenced to improve our craft as well. We bought lights, camera equipment and expanded our builds. Our interactions within the Smart Doll community helped shape where our craft has gone. Neither of us knew anything about photography, 3d printing or much sewing, but we are learning as we go. Within a few years we began to see our photos and dolls builds improve and above all else, I began to see my stories come to life. Now our doll’s stories aren’t everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to fashion dolls, but the people who vibe with it, I think really dig it. We also did an Aliens tribute story as that series is one of our favorites and a big inspiration.

We also started to custom build things for the dolls. There were things we wanted, but simply didn’t exist, so we made it or at least tried to. I started with the leather gunfighter holsters. Our girls live in a noir sci-fi world and the Underworld is a dangerous place, a girls got be protected. Each one is cut and stamped by hand, and custom fit and molded. I’m not very good at face-ups, but I’ve been getting good at light custom mods to the girls bodies, so that’s been fun also. It’s prefect timing too as the cyber girls are starting to be added to our crew, and they are super fun to build stories around. When the cyber girls started to come around, we invested in 3d printing, and are able to print things to improve the look of our characters along with newer cyberpunk-style weapons. Learning these new skills and applying it to the next builds has also been really full-filling for the both of us. Building bigger sets, finding new places to shoot and now building our first vehicles, it all just adds to the fun!

Smart Doll is so much more than just dolls to us. It’s been a community to be a part of, a place to express and heal ourselves and a place to be inspired by. Sometimes its hard to explain to people because I can’t really quantify it with a simple explanation. People just see beautiful dolls in our photos, we see ourselves bleeding though them. Not in a literal sense, but in actuality through our builds and work, the feeling we want to convey in that moment, and the stories we want to tell. Getting to share that with others is what we really love. Smart Doll also helped show me your dreams don’t have to die. They just might be on a different timetable than you expected.

Thanks for everything,

Bobby and Amanda Henry

https://www.instagram.com/the_baker3.6/