Madeline and Malachi Dressel met in high school and immediately bonded over their love of all things vintage. One thing led to another and the pair married and got down to business starting a family.
A doll family, that is.
30 plastic children…and counting
The pair are very vocal and proud of their plastic children and have a popular Instagram page, all.my.plastic.children highlighting some of their kooky adventures. And, yes, it does get a little bit creepy, but that’s how the couple like it!
The pair’s love for plastic children all started in a vintage shop in 2016 when they found a child-sized doll and felt an instant connection to it. Madeline admits she’s always loved dolls but Malachi only discovered this new passion when they brought their first doll home.
Since then, the pair have collected over 200 ‘plastic children’ and have 30 life-sized dolls living with them in their home in South Carolina.
So. Many. Doll. Children.
While they dress, feed, and play with the dolls as if they are actual children, bringing them on outings on their Insta page, they are not meant to replace actual children.
Instead, the pair use their dolls as a creative outlet and as a cheeky way to parody some of the ‘Insta-families’ out there with their picture-perfect family shots littering social media.
And we have to admit that, satirically, they have NAILED IT.
Their page is flowing with family photos and lots of staged ‘Halloween-themed” photoshoots but there are plenty of everyday family shots too. Pics that perfectly take the piss in a lighthearted way.
There are baby pics of their littlest munchkins, eating snacks, and playing in their baby bouncers.
There are pics of their toddlers being cheeky, birthday cake snaps and pictures of the chaos on Christmas morning.
It all looks so familiar. Yet eerily different. And that’s how it’s meant to look.
It’s a doll’s life
Of course, Madeline and Malachi are constantly trolled and asked when they are going to have real children. The pair are refreshingly cool about it too.
They write,
If we had a doll for every time a concerned troll (and I paraphrase here since this a family-friendly account) tells us “to ‘reproduce’ and have a kid already”….we’d have a lot more dolls.”
They are also very loving and caring towards their plastic kids.
Some of the dolls are over 50 years old, so they pamper them with ‘spa days’ where they spend hours cleaning and restoring them.”
Sure, it’s a bit strange. But, they have embraced their kooky lifestyle, ignored the trolls who call them “creepy” and “disturbed” and are enjoying their plastic children who don’t scream the house down because you gave them the wrong colour of cup.
Well played, guys. Well played.
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