What's your opinion on the GOTY Raquel?
Does she have a cool collection? For the most part, I think they managed to balance the idea of "New Hobby/Concepts" and what sells consistently pretty well where it isn't just "Previous GOTY collection but new color scheme".
Is she a pretty doll? Absolutely. Meet Outfit I'm admittedly 50/50 on but I'm also not always a fan of meet outfits.
Do I like her story and her in general? Well...no.
I don't hate the idea of trying to tie in the Historical Line with the GOTY Line and trying to give people a reason to at least notice the historicals, but AG definitely half-assed it. It gives me the vibes of they wanted to do this connection but didn't want to risk pissing people off *too* much so they didn't go all in, but they also don't trust Raquel to sell well enough on her own so they "had" to tie her into Samantha to make sure she sold (which I totally get is me assuming the intent of AG execs vs the impact so take with a grain of salt).
I'm also curious about the behind the scenes about why Nellie is MIA in general, cause with Raquel there's hardly a mention, The Re-Release of Samantha did not include her Meet Book and her only outfit released was one where Nellie was not included, and it isn't a total secret that Pleasant had beef with some of Samantha's authors that led to the weird canon Sam has pre-Raquel, but you would've figured that within the 40 years AG has been around that it would've been worked out by now. I do hope that it is just a red tape contract shenangians and not something more intentionally malicious regarding Nellie.
So overall those are my Raquel thoughts; I may get her if she goes on sale but I won't be heartbroken if I don't.
[Though there will be words if the Adult Samantha Novel does anything with Eddie beyond "oh hey he exists I guess". I do not trust AG not to pull some bullshit, especially given the blurb we got already]
