I'm not as clued into the American Girl Fandom as I used to be, but I have to ask: do folks know about the existence of AG TV?
At some point in the mid to late 90s, American Girl Developed a pitch for a TV Show, which never made it to air. The only signs of it's existence comes from Buzzco Associates Inc, a New York animation based studio, who still include the bumpers made for the pitch in their portfolio.
My own theory is that this pitch was developed around 1996, either just before or just after it. One of the bumpers refers to the American girl website, which did not go live until at least March/April 1996, and the credits below still refers to Pleasant Rowland as being around, and she would sell the company to Mattel circa 1998, and retire in 2000.
As I suspect this project isn't very well known by the fandom and there's always a risk of Buzzco's portfolio disappearing, I wanted to compose all the clips Buzzco shared into one video to post on Youtube. This video is intended purely for preservation and informative purposes. Outside of the opening and closer, it's not clear what order the bumpers were intended to go in, so do not take the sequence of bumpers here as accurate to the original pitch.
🐝You can view the Buzzco page regarding the project here
⭐⭐⭐
The text below is copied and pasted from the Buzzco website:
When American Girl Magazine, the folks that brought new meaning to dolls, wanted to make the jump to TV they got Buzzco to help. Norm Bendell, the humorous illustrator with whom we've worked extensively in the past (including the recent Ciba/Program Campaign which won two Effie Awards), designed the opening, closing and bumpers. The eight pieces feature a dog and six girls of various ethnic backgrounds and act as the "glue" to hold this magazine format television show together.
⭐⭐⭐
Norm Bendell was always the ultimate professional to work with and these illustrations were spot on! We were asked to make the open and glue for this tween TV pitch. Animation is preferable because real tween girls change physically so much that the cast members would age out quickly-- animated girls don't have to mature. For Buzzco's part-- this was the LAST commissioned work we shot on film. And that went counter to all my instincts because I understood that re-shooting would be a nightmare, especially in the "we work" section. That background (and cels of the girls) was about 36 inches long, panning the whole time. The other thing was that this was shot on film, but transferred to videotape. At the time, everything was SD (standard definition-- 640x480)-- the 3x4 frame ratio on normal broadcast TV's at the time. Unlike today (HD is 1920x1080, 4K is 4096x2160), color wasn't that specific or picky. When I was asked to have more than 3 skin tones, I told them they wouldn't be able to tell the difference on TV. They insisted. Back then, dark skin tones would turn to black easily and it would be impossible to see the thin black lines describing facial features. Light skin tones wouldn't be different from each other with pinkish, peach-ish, and pale skin all looking the same. I chose my usual dark brown for African American skin tone then an additional 4 other tones. You could see the African American girl's features, the Latino skin tone, but the rest just all looked the same. It was a shame it never made it to TV, but Norm went on to illustrate many of the books American Girl created to answer concerns of maturing girls with great sensitivity and style.
⭐⭐⭐
🐝🐝🐝Credits (Courtesy of the Buzzco Website)🐝🐝🐝
The Pleasant Company Founder/President: Pleasant Rowland
American Girl Productions Executive Producer: Elizabeth Richter
Creative Director: Shelley Spencer
Buzzco Associates, inc.
Directors: Candy Kugel & Vincent Cafarelli [Passed away in 2012]
Designer: Norm Bendell
He would later do a number of illustrations for American Girl, including the original edition of the puberty book The Care and Keeping of You
Animators: Vincent Cafarelli [Passed away in 2012] & Vincent Bell [Passed away in 2021]
Producer: Marilyn Kraemer
🌟🌟🌟
