American Girl

History

American Girl, also known as The American Girls Collection, is an American doll line first released by Pleasant Company in 1986. The dolls originally depict nine to eleven-year old girls from various eras in American history (collectively known as the Historical Characters, but was rebranded in 2014 as BeForever), but was expanded in 1995 to include characters in modern settings.

The original dolls were manufactured by Götz during the 1980s to late 1990s, starting when Pleasant Rowland, an American educator and entrepreneur, bought the remaining stock of “Romina” dolls by the German doll firm to be rebadged as Edwardian-era character Samantha Parkington, complete with books detailing her story and various accessories.^[1] Two other characters were released by the Pleasant Company in 1986 alongside Parkington – Kirsten Larson, a Swedish immigrant from the 1850s, and Molly McIntire, a Scottish-American daughter of a World War II army doctor, and in the 1990s the company introduced Felicity Merriman, Addy Walker, and a line of dolls representing the modern era.^[2]

Mattel now heads the company as Rowland sold the line to the toy giant in 1998 for $700 million.

Online Presence

Stop-Motion videos (AGSM/AGMV)

AG Stop-Motions and AG Music Videos, often abbreviated as AGSM or AGMV, are a series of user-created stop-motion videos made by fans, depicting the dolls in various stories and settings, and/or recreating popular music videos with their dolls.^[3]

Photoshoots

Photoshoots are also a common pastime among fans, where they model their dolls in various poses or settings, using either point-and-shoot cameras or even DSLRs, which are uploaded on various social networking sites such as Youtube and/or Instagram.^[4]

Impact

Due to its educational nature, the company and its toy line has earned praise from parents and schoolteachers alike, mostly as it is viewed as a “wholesome” and less-objectified alternative to Mattel’s Barbie dolls, and as a result has won numerous awards.^[5]

On the other hand it has also drawn criticism from some for the expense of the dolls^[6] and their accessories, as well as for their depiction of the characters, like with Samantha being marketed as Victorian (even if she would be more accurately portrayed as an Edwardian-era girl), and more recently with American Girl giving less emphasis on the historicals in favour of the My American Girl/Girl of the Year line, to which My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series creator Lauren Faust pointed out in a Twitter post.^[7]

The company’s popularity has spawned numerous parodies and homages, notably in The D’oh-cial Network episode of The Simpsons, Conan^[8], the MAD animated series^[9], where Kit Kittredge has a daughter named Kitty who participated in a parody of Toddlers and Tiaras, and in an episode of Saturday Night Live, poking fun of Miley Cyrus’ stage persona and drug references in her songs by giving her a Molly doll, alluding to the psychedelic drug MDMA.