Hello everyone! Over a year ago
I wrote a post about where I thought the historical collection was headed. Since then, we have witnessed the rebirth of the Historical Characters as Beforever, My American Girl's transformation into Truly Me, and a packaging update for the Girl of the Year. In short, a complete facelift of the American Girl brand. So I thought I would go over these changes and talk about how I feel about them, and contrast my predictions with what actually happened.
Okay, first of all let's make a little timeline...
1986: Pleasant Company was founded and American Girl started with just the Historical Characters
1995: American Girl of Today was launched (now known as Truly Me)
1996: American Girl of Today changed to American Girl Today
1998: Mattel bought Pleasant Company and all marketing began to use the nomiker American Girl packaging colors were changed, etc.
2006: Modern line renamed "Just Like You"
2010: Modern Line renamed "My American Girl"
August 2014: Beforever Launched
January 2015: Packaging for GOTY changed
May 2015: My American Girl line changed to "Truly Me"
So, in just the past twelve months, we have seen American Girl completely revamp their entire line. That's a lot of change in very little time. But not all change is bad, right?
I guess the main thing that I struggle with is how much I wanted to see American Girl focus more on their Historical Characters. I wrote this back in February 2014, when we first heard Samantha was coming back:
The Ideal
This is what I really want to happen. I want AG to shift their focus back on the historical characters and their stories, and bring back the uniformity where each character had a birthday story, a christmas story, a winter story, etc. Unfortunately I don't think this is going to happen.
The funny thing is that that did happen. The uniformity the Historical Line had is returning. In the June 25th 2015 release, each character got a revamped bed and pajama set, along with bedtime accessories. There are now clear "key" items that each character is going to have, key collection points. The color schemes have also been homogenized. Addy is blues, Julie yellowy pinks, Rebecca is purply pink (magenta?), Samantha is pastel pinks and greens, Josefina is South Western Oranges, Blues, and Reds, Kit is bright green, orange, and pink. This makes boundaries between collections clear.
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| A job well done? Look at those prices... |
And yet, I'm not satisfied. Probably because what I dreaded also happened:
The Worst Possible Outcome
AG changes the historical line so that it's non-existent? Okay, that's highly improbable, but they might consolidate what they have and perhaps redo the meet outfits of the characters to make them more pink. That's been a recent trend. Don't get me wrong, I love pink (ask Honey) but it's nice to see diversity and both Caroline and Marie-Grace had pink dresses.
This prediction was pretty spot on.
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| Is it just me, or is everything looking pinker? |
At least Kaya's outfit doesn't have any pink on it. Yikes. And my guess about consolidation was right too. Remember the consolidated books? We now have two instead of six (plus a choose your own adventure book that I don't really count). So yeah. Here we are.
I have always been a huge fan of the Historical Line. It was pretty much the only thing I cared about. And now... I don't really care at all. I've bought a single Beforever outfit. At my last trip to the AG Place in LA, I didn't buy ANY historical clothing. It might be because Marie~Grace's collection was retired so I can't get any clothes for my doll. I mean, I'd like to get Addy's pajamas.. Or it could be because this line is losing its appeal to me. In any case, I'll probably be scouring ebay to finish my NOLA collection.
One last quote from my February 2014 post...
The Middle Ground
To be honest, I'm unsure about what this one would be, despite that it has the most likelihood. Maybe AG will redo the formating of how they market the historical line and add some new catch phrases? Who knows...
It's funny to me that the "Middle Ground" ended up being a combination of the best and the worst. So while in theory, I love the focus being on the Historical Line, this doesn't cut it and my wallet will speak for me.
