This article is reproduced from the discontinued, but much loved Mainichi Waiwai column by Ryann Connell. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Though it’s been a tough slug for the past decade or so, Noughties Japan still leads the world when it comes to such technological wonders as supertankers, cars, household electronics, audio-visual equipment and, especially, life-sized figurines.

Fever Dolls are sold only over the Internet, but with 300 of the life-sized mannequins having been bought in recent months, they are, according to Weekly Playboy (7/30), something of a surprise hit.

“It’s not like the Fever Dolls have got big breasts and their waists aren’t particularly thin, either. What’s more, they’ve all got fat asses,” a spokesman from Maniacs, the company that produces the dolls in sleepy Tokushima, tells Weekly Playboy. “Our concept is to make a doll that resembles the type of girl you’d find anywhere.”

Weekly Playboy notes that the Fever Dolls have an incredibly realistic feel to their skin, muscle tone and proportions. Surely they must have been made based on a real woman, the weekly muses?

“Not at all,” the Maniacs spokesman tells Weekly Playboy. “All we did was make our designs three dimensional. These girls are objects created entirely from the designer’s imagination. We also have customized models, giving customers a doll where they can choose their favorite hair color and style or skin tone.”

Indeed, buyers can choose a Fever Doll with natural black hair or even blonde locks that come in myriad cuts and styles. Fever Dolls can also be purchased with a full body tan, the honey-colored skin of most Asians, a body replete with tan lines, a pure white form, or the tanned, panda-faced look popular with Yamanba girls in the late ’90s. And the mannequins are even equipped with realistic nipples and pubic hair that, like that in Japanese pornographic magazines, can be erased in seconds with an airbrush.

But, beware. Fever Dolls aren’t produced for any carnal purposes. The only screwing anybody can do with a Fever Doll is attaching or removing the arms (or right leg in the case of one model) when changing the mannequin’s outfit. Maniacs employees state that most buyers of Fever Dolls use them only to dress up and the company sells costumes for them that include a motor racing model’s swimsuit, a miniskirt, schoolgirl’s uniform or the replica kit of Italy’s Juventus soccer team.

Fever Dolls come in two basic models, the latest model Nineteen, which is made to look like a woman around 20 years of age, and Sixteen, which was produced with the average Japanese schoolgirl in mind.

“About 20 percent of all our customers have purchased the complete range of Fever Dolls,” the Maniacs mouthpiece tells Weekly Playboy. “Some time down the track, we hope to produce a wife doll, a man doll and an elementary school pupil so that we can have something for all the family.”

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(The Mainichi Waiwai column ran online from April 19, 2001 – June 21, 2008. It was a much loved form of entertainment amongst foreigner in and outside of Japan. To any reader it was obviously not serious news, but it was a set of articles that portrayed quite well how the Japanese tabloids actually write about their own country. In 2008, a small number of Japanese people bought it to the attention of rival news groups that Mainichi was running an anti-Japan column on its website. With the bad publicity, Mainichi was forced to shut the page down, and take punitive measures against the journalists that were working on it, claiming that it was receiving opinions that were critical of the column, such as “its contents are too vulgar” and “the stories could cause Japanese people to be misunderstood abroad”. A perfect example of how Japanese consider what they write in their own script to be an acceptable secret code, that the rest of the world cant understand. When that same tabloid rubbish gets inconveniently translated to English to make light of some aspects of the Japanese people, it gets canned. Stippy.com finds this unacceptable, and will reproduce as much of the Waiwai content as possible in order to bring it once again to our computer screens for a good laugh. Of course we claim no credit for this content, and attribute it to it’s writers who were former Mainichi employees. Waiwai in its true and glorious form has been discontinued, but it’s legacy will live on at stippy.com for all to enjoy.)