Beginner’s Guide to Doll Stands

There are an endless amount of dolls that need stands and an endless amount of third party stands to use. All of these choices can be a bit intimidating, so I’m sharing the ones I use in the hopes of making it easier to pick the stands that fit your needs! This is aimed at collectors in the US and any included links will be to the American Amazon store. These are NOT affiliate links and no money will be earned by using them.

The Generic Stand

The type of doll stand I use for most of my 1/6th scale fashion dolls is: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PDNNZ44/

Pros: Affordable, easy to acquire, easy to assemble
Cons: Lower quality, only comes in clear plastic

First up is a generic doll stand. There are a bunch of listings for these on Amazon from various storefronts so I’m just referring to these as “the Generic Stand”. These stands are excellent for a wide variety of fashion doll lines. I use them for 90% of my G3 Monster Highs, all of my Disney ily 4evers, Bratzillaz, and more. For less than the cost of one doll you can get enough stands for 20 dolls! 

These come in large packs and will arrive in disassembled. Each stand is made up of three parts (clips, posts, and bases) and is easy to put together.

Image: Three parts of the “Generic Stand”

Image: Fully assembled Generic Stand

While these are my go-to stands I’ve certainly had problems with them. In one order, I was shipped a mismatched number of clips, posts, and bases, so I couldn’t actually assemble 20 stands. The posts can also deform in shipment leading to a stand that bends backwards or tends to lean oddly. To fix this issue you can carefully bend back into place, but it can be really irritating. 

These stands will cover most standard fashion ~12” dolls that don’t come with their own stands already.

Image: Comparing Sashabella Paws on a Bratzillaz Stand with a Generic Stand

The Kaiser

The doll stand I use for 1/6th dolls when The Generic Stand just doesn’t cut it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IW9NDB8/

Pros: accommodates bigger doll bodies, little to no assembly, comes in both black or white
Cons: bends easily, expensive per unit

Next up are Kaiser stands. Kaiser is just the brand I’ve grabbed, but there are a ton that have the same style everywhere on the internet. These stands are made of metal instead of plastic, are more expensive per unit price, and are characterized by an expandable waist holder.

Image: Kaiser stand

I use these doll stands for my Monster High G3 boys after Deuce Gorgon broke my Generic Stand clip, as well as dolls with thicker bodies like Abbey Bominable or dolls with a lot of fabric in the back, like Monster Ball Draculaura. My Kaiser stands feel a bit more stable than the Generic Stand as well. Due to the price point I tend to use them sparingly. 

Image: Abbey Bominable on a Kaiser stand; front (left) and back (right)

Like the plastic stands, these stands can deform in transit and arrive bent out of shape. As above, please be careful when bending them back into place.

The Mini

Last, but certainly not least, I’ll go over what I use for mini dolls! As a disclaimer, I’m not a huge mini doll collector, but I recently got some of the Magic Mixies Pixlings. They come with small stands for their feet and I could NOT get those to work well for me. They weren’t very stable and my Pixlings kept faceplanting, or backplanting, or just in general having a difficult time.

To solve the stand problem, I did some digging on Amazon and decided to try them out: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B5N31ZS5/

Pros: customizable construction, good quality, stable base
Cons: expensive per unit, takes some effort to assemble, wide base can make displaying them in confined areas difficult

These ended up being a GREAT choice for Pixlings, and should work pretty well for any similar sized dolls. Pixlings have some complications that make getting a single stand solution tricky. Some dolls have wings, some have big skirts, some have wings AND big skirts! I really like the stands I found because while assembling them you can pick and choose which parts to include. 

Image: Unia, Deerlee, Flitta, and Marena perched on these stands

Image: Showing the mini stand from a head-on view (left) and a side profile using a Bring Arts Action Figure (left)

That being said, I really need to emphasize that these stands require some level of manual dexterity to put together. There are teeny tiny screws and nuts. If you have impaired hand function, I would not recommend these stands.

Image: Instructions for the mini doll stand displaying the many parts and small screws

To Conclude…

This only scratches the tip of the iceberg for doll stand types. I’ve only gone over the types I use in my collection, so don’t be afraid to go experiment. That’s all I’ve got for now, thanks for reading!

Edit 9-29-23: Cleaned up the amazon links!