And I thought Cabbage Patch Dolls were expensive...

I do love a good fad, but occasionally even I'm weirded out by the things people find themselves liking.  Take, for example, the trend of women buying lifelike dolls and then treating them like real babies?  Seriously, this is a real thing.  They're called Reborn Dolls and the artists that make them try to get them as lifelike as possible.  I have to admit, some of them are pretty spooky.  If you didn't  know, you'd think you were looking at a photo of a real baby.

Women buy these dolls, dress them up, and then whack them in a pram and take them with them wherever they go.  They give them names, build nurseries for them, and pretty much treat them like they're real kids.

Can anyone else say textbook attention seeking behaviour?

I remember watching a documentary about it once where one of the women admitted that she got her doll because she missed the attention she used to get when her kids were babies.  But by getting herself one of these Reborn Dolls she got all sorts of people coming up to ooh and aah over her little plastic bundle of joy.

Huh, well that sounds ... disturbing.

I'm all for doing whatever makes you happy (provided you're not hurting anyone), but there's just something about this that screams psychologically unhealthy.  I know that people anthropomorphize things all the time (hell, I have a cactus named Pedro, I can't talk), but this just seems a bit extreme.

But this woman has taken it a step further and decided that if people can have lifelike dolls that they treat like real babies, she can have zombie or vampire babies.  She gives them wee little fangs and dripping blood, or clouded eyes and pallid skin.  And I have to admit (under protest), they're cute in a weird way.

Is it wrong that I kind of want a vampire one?  Not to treat like a child or anything ... but there's a small but insistent part of me that thinks it would be hilarious to wander around with one in a stroller and then secretly record people's reactions when they lean over to coo at the little darling and clap eyes on the fangs and the red eyes.

But at around a thousand dollars each, I don't think I'd buy one just for the sake of a practical joke.

Shame though, I could have called him Vladimir and told everyone I met his father while I was travelling in Eastern Europe.  Oh Nosferatu, we'll always have Transylvania.