While
I love my custom Pullips dearly, only one of them had the correct eye
color. Rapunzel, while beautiful, had big brown eyes instead of big
green eyes. Merida’s eyes were flat green instead of blue, and
Howl’s eyes were grey-brown instead of flat green.
So,
after consulting with one of my more knowledgeable Pullip-collecting
friends, I went off to CoolCat, the leading online store for Pullip
eyechips. CoolCat has an enormous selection of chips – flat colors,
matte colors, double-colored, you name it – and most are only
$3.50.
I
was a bit leery of ordering at first – they’re based in Taiwan,
and the last time I did an overseas transaction (my very first eBay
auction, poor newbie who didn’t know about the AG grey market), it
never arrived. But CoolCat was great at communication, shipping was
only $3.00, and the package arrived safely and well within the
estimated time.
Now,
I had some experience opening up Pullip heads and poking around.
Merida’s head had been opened when I installed her Obitsu body, and
Rapunzel had some eye problems from the start. Whatever had crushed
her box and smushed her nose had also damaged her eye mechanism. One
eye had been jammed closed, the other wouldn’t close, and the lever
that controlled her eye direction had a broken piece. The night I
bought her, I spent a fair amount of my evening bent over my
worktable, painstakingly repairing the eye damage. I spent a lot of
time not breathing, and mentally repeating “I only spent $40, if
this goes pear-shaped, it was only $40.” The good part is that
Pullip eye mechs are pretty self-explanatory, so it was easy to tell
where things were supposed to go.
Just
as a note – Pullip eyemechs, when out of the head? SUPER CREEPY.
Like, these two huge staring lidless eyeballs attached to this
hellish plastic contraption. I have a pretty high tolerance toward
creepy doll stuff, but I did my best not to look at those eyes until
they were reinstalled.
