Part One: What?

I hear you, reader who may or may not be familiar with DOA memes, going 'what the hell is a tintin?'

Well.

I personally first discovered the term on the aforementioned forums, and the earliest mention I could find the term in the non-archived General forum was in October 2024, in the Things about this hobby that you find hilarious? thread. Tintin is referenced there as a reference to male doll...accessories, let's say. And it's popped up sporadically from there. Because, you see, boy dolls sometimes have parts sold separately. Or jointed separately. And the variety of what's sold can vary greatly from an anatomically correct model of a phallus to...


Yeah.

RingDoll seems to specialize in the truly crazy ones (the bird, snakes, etc.), while others do stuff that's closer to realism (depending), but the important parts: they're optional, they're detachable, and they're inherently funny. Because clearly the manufacturers are having a fun time playing with the options available. But one thing that keeps coming up when describing these optional pieces of anatomy is the phrase 'tintin'.


No, not...not that one.

I had accepted this as a silly meme, a bit of running gag on DOA, but with the announced of DOA's impending closure (at this writing, in late May 2026) I realized that I was looking down a shrinking window of time in which I could try to figure out the origins of using this particular bit of terminology in the Western portion of the hobby. So I had to move. I had to start looking things up. For the historical record.

For the tintins.

Part Two: Gross Anatomy

So to first understand why dettachable anatomy is a thing, one must first take into account the limitations of both resin and dolls. Dolls, of most sizes, usually wear some clothing at least some of time. It may not all be from the same set, it may be a mere shoe and a a tanktop (if dressed by a child) or a sock sweater dress (by a brand new member of the hobby), but generally, clothes of some form occur.

This can be a bit of a problem when working with the human anatomy that doll tend to emulate.

While flesh can squish and compress, resin has no such ability; it's solid and rather than compress under fabric, either the fabric will give and tear, or just refuse to enclose the offending piece of body. This can already be a problem with male BJDs, who, unlike pop icon (and actively sold to children doll) Ken, tend to have something sculpted in the groin region, even if it's smooth and fairly featureless, as this can cause fit issues. For anyone who would like something more detailed on their already detailed, specialty hobby doll, this presents a problem. Even moreso if you'd like to display your doll in the nude and potentially in different states (so to speak), either for purposes of photgraphy or just because it amuses you. Enter: the detachable phallus! By having this part of the anatomy be connected by small magnets to the rest of the body, this allows a doll collector to both display their doll in the pants of their choice, with no concern about damaging the clothing, and in the nude and not looking strange, or like their male doll has has a terrible accident. And BJD manufacturers, seeing an opportunity to upsell, proceeded to make options for both the state of the said anatomy, or more fanciful offerings.

Now, as far as as its introduction to the western BJD hobby...

As stated above, the first mention in the current General forum that I could find dated to October 2024. Trying to search in the archived General forum didn't bring up any successful hits. Digging back into other archives, I found a reference in 2019, where 'tintin' was clearly meant in reference to a newly sculpted genitalia design, rather than an introduction of the term. When I asked on the linked thread, I received the following information from Aihre:

Darkness Fatale added the following in reference to a subspecies of the deattachable phallus: the strung option, which allows for...well. See quote:

And yes, for those curious and unfamiliar: some companies do offer a two in-one set of genitalia for dolls, IE Raccoondolls. It's a wild world out there for dolls, and they're highly customizable in all portions of their anatomy.

Now, looping back to the origin of the term: as Aihre stated, this first appeared in ad copy from an undetermined Chinese maufacturer. This is important, as this gives us our origin point for the slang 'tintin', as well as the term 'jj' that was also referenced in that post. A Google search of 'tintin Chinese slang' brought back a summary for me, aggregated from Google's web trawls:

So there you go, straight from the AI's potentially hallucinating mouth.

Part Three: But Why Male Tintins?

Part Four: Conclusion

So, in summary: ‘tintin’ is Chinese slang that caught on for western BJD collectors on DOA because it showed up in ad copy, and spread, as memes are wont to do. Some things transcend language boundaries, and ‘that’s a funny thing to call a phallus, I’m gonna use that’ is one of them.’