ok so now that i’m thinking straighter here’s my points:
The refocus on contemporary lines hurts the brand overall; the historical dolls and the detail and love put into their stories and collections is what made American Girl stand out from the other doll brands. While a lot of the Contemporary dolls are good, putting too much focus on them and away from the Historicals makes AG seem more like every other doll brand
The Girls of the Year aren’t being retired anymore, and we know it’s bc they wanted to cover their asses after the Contemp Line failure, but they need to stop. The reason GOTY were special was because of their limited edition-ness; and this also adds into the above point, it makes AG just seem like a contemporary doll brand that shells out books about modern girls to sell cute dresses for
If you want your dolls to sell, give them a collection. I don’t think they understand how depressed I get when I go on the website and see three pages of contemporary doll collections, and literally nothing for Addy, Josefina, etc. Because I don’t know about y'all, but when I was a kid- and this is also true for every AG kid I’ve talked to- the collections were the best part. We wanted a doll we could get stuff for, and the thrill of going into the American Girl store and seeing the exact dress Felicity was illustrated with or the oven we saw in Josefina’s book! was a high we’ll never achieve again. Your dolls will sell if you give them things to buy with them.
The abridged books are hurting the brand. I don’t think “combine six books into two” was a horrible idea- with some effort, it could work, and would make buying the books less of a hassle- but they fucked up in removing the illustrations, and then “abridging” the books when we demanded they be put back in. Like, AG…. we know you used to sell collections of all six books and illustrations in one. We know you can do this. You have no excuse to abridge your books- especially in cases like Kaya and Addy, where literally every book in their story matters to their overall arc.
While the Contemporaries get to stick around forever, AG is trigger-happy with retiring everything else. They retired all the best friends in one fell swoop, including MG and Cecile, who’d been released relatively recently, and then have been super chill about “cubing” Historicals, aka shoving them to the side and removing their collection (see point three) so we “can’t complain that they retired them.” AG has just retired Courtney’s jeans- an article of clothing that’s been on sale for less than four months.
Y'all have heard me complain about the diversity before so I’ll save it for now but just know. There are too many blondes.
This is pretty much just restating point one but I can’t emphasize how much it meant the American Girl historical stories meant, and still mean, to little girls. We got to see that we had a place in history, that girls in the past were just like us, and learn through the stories. I made a joke to my sister just the other day that I’ve never understood Molly more than since we’ve been “living through major historical events but only caring about what we’re doing for dinner.” One of my friends says that she found intense comfort in Felicity’s stories about a divided nation due to our current political landscape. It showed that if they could do it back then, we can, too.
AND WE GOT TO LEARN STUFF TOO! Which was all our parents needed, really. If you want parents to buy shit for their kids, educational worked out amazing. My parents wouldn’t let me get a doll til I read all her books, so now I have intense knowledge about 1820s Mexico ranchos, the Nimiipuu tribe, women’s suffrage, etc. How many kids have said they first learned about the horrors of slavery and racism from Addy’s books?
ASK ANYONE ABOUT AMERICAN GIRL AND LIKELY THE FIRST THING THEY’LL REMEMBER IS FELICITY STEALING A GODDAMN HORSE.
The refocus on contemporary doesn’t work, because the stories cannot be about our literal problems. Each doll has to be planned two years in advance, and the repercussions of that can be seen with this year- COVID had to hastily be written into Kira’s story, Joss’s became completely outdated in just three months, etc. This wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t so heavily focused on. If Covid happened when Chrissa was GOTY, we wouldn’t have cared much, because while she was cool and we love her, the focus of the franchise was on the past.
Instead we’re here with 3-4 contemporary characters selling, while half the historicals don’t even have nightgowns
…i’m rambling now, but im just gonna. be thinking about how much marie-grace and cecile’s plague stories would mean to girls living through covid right now
