Real Dolls mix with real life

By Joe Brown

Friday, Jan. 11, 2008 | 1:42 p.m.

There are a million stories at the 2008 AVN Adult Expo˜most of them unprintable, even on a blog (read today's Sun story on the Expo.)

Out of the more than 400 companies representing erotic products and technologies at the 10-year-old sex industry showcase, perhaps the most mesmerizing˜and repellent˜is the slick booth for an 11-year-old California company called Real Doll.

Real Doll manufactures “the world’s finest love doll,” says Blake Bailey, 37, one of the sculptors who custom-designs and hand-paints the lifelike sexual surrogates. The base price for a “starter kit,” a model without the expensive options, is $6,500. “We have 10 different bodies, 16 different faces that are all interchangeable,” says Bailey, standing before a ghastly wall display of female faces. “Actually, it’s 33 faces, with expressions from smiling to puckers to more sultry.”

Real Dolls have been featured in the recent film “Lars and the Real Girl” and the TV show “Nip/Tuck.” The company’s Web site says they use “Hollywood special effects technology to produce the most realistic love doll in the world. Our dolls feature completely articulated skeletons which allow for anatomically correct positioning, an exclusive blend of the best silicone rubbers for an ultra flesh-like feel.”

At AVN, several lingerie-clad female dolls were imprisoned together in a glass case; male dolls were also on display.

Bailey says that if you have the money, you can even recreate a doll in the likeness of a specific person -- with their permission and cooperation. “You would bring them in, we mold their face, take a bunch of pictures, then we sculpt it and give you exactly what you want.” More than 30,000 were expected to visit the AVN expo, which continues through Saturday at the Sands Expo Center.