American Girl Dolls

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puzzleannie

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Got oldest granddaughter an American Girl doll for her 7th birthday, she does not play with it much because she does not go in for girlie things, spends most of her time with sports, but it is the big thing especially for Girl Scouts where they live for girls to have the dolls, and do joint gal-doll activities like tea parties, campouts etc. Got another one for her sister B-day in May, she loves it, found a storybook doll Kit that looks just like her. She and her friends play with AG like my sisters and my daughters played with Barbies. I think it is vey healthy that AG seems to be replacing Barbie (which I have always hated, tho girls received them from relatives and I couldn’t combat it).

what is experience of younger families here with AG dolls?
 
I loved the American Girls Collection! I read all of the Felicity, Addie, Kirsten, and Molly books. I still have them and won’t let my mom get rid of them because I when I have daughters I want them to read the books. I learned so much about history from their stories, they probably propelled me into my degree too! (Which is in History.) I never had the dolls though, my mom couldn’t afford them. 😦
 
I loved them all, read all the books, and many of my friends had them… However, they were too expensive, so I never got one myself. She will grow out of the tom-boy ways… trust me. My little sister and I both did!
 
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puzzleannie:
Got oldest granddaughter an American Girl doll for her 7th birthday, she does not play with it much because she does not go in for girlie things, spends most of her time with sports, but it is the big thing especially for Girl Scouts where they live for girls to have the dolls, and do joint gal-doll activities like tea parties, campouts etc. Got another one for her sister B-day in May, she loves it, found a storybook doll Kit that looks just like her. She and her friends play with AG like my sisters and my daughters played with Barbies. I think it is vey healthy that AG seems to be replacing Barbie (which I have always hated, tho girls received them from relatives and I couldn’t combat it).

what is experience of younger families here with AG dolls?
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I’m not all that young – my daughter is now 23 – but when she was 9, my husband and I had the best Christmas of our lives building doll furniture, painting it in Bavarian folk style, making clothes and such for Kirsten. I wrote and illustrated a story with all the “Kirsten” characters in it to tell how Kirsten acquired a beautiful Bavarian bed. We bound it as a little book . . . My daughter made her first little quilt for that bed.

Just last fall, I passed the furniture and clothing along to another family, who will return it when they outgrow it – to be passed along, hopefully, one day to my grandchildren.
 
My granddaughter just loves her AG dolls! I’ve given her 4…
and all the stuff that goes w/ them! Sometimes… I even play dolls w/ her…😃 I didn’t have much when I was a little girl and loved my “Betsy Wetsy”:love: … My grandmother used to crochet clothes for her… Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought about having a doll that would maybe look like me…never mind have similar clothes, etc, etc,!🙂
 
I was going to suggest that you all check out the Magic Attic Club dolls but when I went on-line to do a search I found out that they stopped making them last year 😦

My daughter’s loved these dolls as they were a great affordable alternative to the American Girl Dolls. Like someone else, we spent some time making furniture for these dolls too. My youngest (almost 19 yo) also spent a lot of time designing and making clothes for hers and as a teen in high school she designed the costumes for her high school play (this school did their plays as professional or more so than community theatre so it was no small feat for her to do this with only my help). She is still interested in keeping her hand in live theatre (not musicals though).

Any way, American Girl Dolls and the similar ones that Target sells (also a much more affordable way to go) are fun and encourage the girls to be girls and do things appropraite to their age.

BTW, I had Barbie’s and I am just fine as far as my weight, my self worth etc. Barbie is supposed to have been a 16 yo girl but we always played with her and her firends as if they were adults with good adult relationships. You see my sister and I had a ton of Barbies and again, we spent as much time designing and making clothes for them than we did actually playing with them (my sister did more designing and sewing than I did and now she designs clothes as a hobby).

We also had baby dolls too, so we could paly house.
Brenda V.
 
AG clothes: My daughter went to a school where several of the girls lent their dolls to an exhibit which featured AG dolls in school uniforms dating back to the Nineteenth Century.

Lower school girls have been seen carrying their AG classmates in their little grey jumpers and red-and-white checked pinafores to school . . . (Cute, cute, cute!)
 
My daughter is not a girlie girl either. She would rather play board games or other “puzzle” activities. But she has always enjoyed the “baby” dolls more than the larger girl dolls.

I loved the larger girl dolls though, and couldn’t resist getting her the cheaper Target brand girl dolls and a few accessories. I also made several outfits for the doll. That lasted about a month, and now the doll is in the box. 😦

Cabbage Patch released their dolls in the last year or two and I got her one of those. It is a nice mix between baby and girl doll.

I love the American Girl Dolls, and would recommend them to anyone who had a young girl who liked the doll. They are so well made and so lovely- I am sure they are “lifetime” dolls. IOW, dolls that can be passed on to younger generations as our mothers and grandmothers did with china dolls.
 
My 10 year old daughter was given the Kristen book series a couple years ago. I never let her know that there were dolls too, since they were so expensive. But she recently discovered the American Girl magazine which she subscribed to with her own money. It seems to be a really wholesome magazine for young girls and I approved of its purchase. Then she found the website!! The girl and I are now fighting over Internet time!! Its a really cool site, really geared to the pre teen set, but very wholesome.
 
My third daughter, now 21, collected them all through elementary school. She read all the books and had AG overnights with her friends. It was wholesome. Aftter she quit playing with them she left them out for display for most of high school. When she put them away I was sad really. I am sure she will bring them out again when she has children.

It was long after we bought them that the AG store opened here in Chicago and they run tea parties and you can bring your doll to get a shampoo and set too. I have never been, but younger women tell me it is a nice mother/daughter day out.
 
I have been to the Chicago store and it is quite the place. Lots of fun.

My 2 youngest daughters loved American Girl dolls and especially the books that went along with them.

My baby will be 18 next week, but when she was a bit younger, we bought the Am. Girl Hula Birthday party…it was neat…they provided grass skirts, party bags with trinkets, plates, cups, party decorations, games, etc. for 8 girls…I liked it because I’m not crafty and would never think up such cute things. And the girls LOVED it.
 
My daughter has received 3 AG dolls as gifts and believe me, she knows that they are expensive and that no she can’t have every acessory that goes with. She has read most of the books and while not totally academic, I think they are good, clean innocent fun. If your hasn’t seen the Samantha movie, it was very cute. My daughter is 8 and really enjoys everything AG. Check out the website too, there are some fun activities. I am glad she’s more into AG than the “Hoochie Mama” Bratz dolls!
 
Joseph Bilodeau:
very expen$ive.
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But also very well-made. This is a hand-on doll, for a girl who takes care of her things.

If a girl is going to learn to sew by making doll clothes, I’d go with the American Girl-type dolls. First of all, Barbie’s shape keeps changing with the politics, so who knows what shape she’ll have in a generation. Secondly, the bigger doll is just going to allow an easier time to get a nice result.

I have made Barbie clothes and even small-Troll clothes. I think the AG would give the best results.

(Older girls do still use their dolls to learn to sew, don’t they?)
 
I think AG dolls are very well made, innocent, modest dolls. Nothing like those horrible Bratz dolls. I would buy them if I could afford them for my girls.
 
My daughter is now 20. But she loved the American Girls books. We couldn’t afford the dolls. So we got her the paper dolls instead. She loved them too.
 
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BLB_Oregon:
But I have made Barbie clothes and even small-Troll clothes. I think the AG would give the best results.

(Older girls do still use their dolls to learn to sew, don’t they?)
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Barbie was before my time but my girlfriends and I spent more time sewing clothes for our Betsy Wetsy, Betsy McCall & other dolls than actually playing with them, certainly how I learned to sew.

My grandmother gave me a Madame Alexander doll for every birthday, and my brothers trashed them. I told DD if she lets the other kids destroy the girls’ AG dolls after I spent all that money there will be dire consequences. They do a pretty good job taking care of things. Older GD also gets storybook dolls from “other Grandma” which she likes to look at, not play with.

They have the dollhouse my dad made for me when I was 5, which received strenuous use from all my sibs (including staged fires and tornadoes) and from my own kids. DD has repainted, re-wallpapered and decorated. They play with it a lot, but usually as a fort, castle, pirate ship or other location, sometimes as Hogwarts, but seldom as a house.
 
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StratusRose:
I never had the dolls though, my mom couldn’t afford them. 😦
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Maybe you can get one on e-bay! My oldest dd (now 19) has several dolls and most of the books. She bought a doll or 2 and her grandmas chipped in for others. She adored them. My dad even built accessories-r- wardrobe, chest, bed. She also loved all the books. My 14 yr old has one doll and a few books. She’s not a doll person and not a big reader. For us they were wonderful.
—KCT
 
Having a 4yr old boy and an almost2 girl, my only experience with these have been thru the neighbor kids – they all tell you FROM THE GET-GO how much their AG doll cost…before they even tell you “her” name…are they really $100 or are these kids just making up a “big” number b/c their parents told them they’re expensive? Either way, I think the true meaning of the gift was lost somewhere on the school bus or something…lol. If they are $100, my kid will either be losing a lot of teeth, or playing with her friends dolls – sorry, but if I had a spare $100 to spend on my kid, it would go towards her education (I guess that makes me a mean mommy? C’est la vie…I survived just fine without a cabbage patch doll, so it can’t be all that horrific)
 
Oh, goodness, I loved AG stories, I read all the books. (Although they have some new girls now I think that weren’t around when I was younger.) My favorite was either Kirsten or Samantha. I begged my parents for a doll but they cost $85 back in '93, '94 when I was crazy for 'em and there was no way they could afford to spend that much on a toy for just one of us. If you can though, I think it would be great. The stories are really cute and so are the dolls. A lot better than most of what’s out there. (Bratz…shudder)
 
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