value | Trying to Mom

My daughter just brought home her 3rd American Girl doll today. She now owns Caroline (bought with her birthday money in November), McKenna (lucky raffle ticket winners), and Saige (doll bought with Xmas money from grandparents – all other outfits courtesy of daddy being a push over). These dolls were $105 each, with Saige ringing in 2013 with a universal price increase of $5 per doll. A lot of people are not shy to freak out and cackle, “how can you buy these things?” (or let her “waste” her money on them).

Yes, yes, I fully understand that these are just toys, and they may well sit in a closet someday, never seeing the light of day. My mom certainly doesn’t seem to understand the value of American Girl versus the Target, Walmart, or Toys R’ Us brand of 18″ dolls (and in some areas/items, I agree as well) but here are some reasons why I like the American Girl line:

1) It has a history. Literally! The Historic dolls (ie, the ones with 6+ books in their series, who lived in a specific time frame) open up the past and let children experience history through stories that still feel relevant and relatable to them. The company is also roughly as old as I am, and gaining significant new ground with their stores, so I see no reason to assume the American Girl line will go under any time soon (R.I.P. Magic Attic Club…).

I can remember going to Sam’s Club in the mid-1990s and seeing Felicity, Addy, Samantha, and Kirsten books (Molly apparently existed back then too, but I never recall seeing her). While these were never dolls I owned as a child, reading the books from the library is still a memory that I have and can transfer forward to my daughter. Except, this time around, my daughter owns a few of the book sets herself. My local library still has American Girl on the shelves, but rarely a “Meet” book that is the first in the series. So, when my daughter wanted Caroline, I paid to upgrade to the set with her complete book series as well.

2) There is an amazing online community fro American Girl on YouTube. This happens a lot and for a lot of different topics, but I have seen my five-year-old click away on YouTube watching fan made video after video, and now she’s motivated to make her own. They don’t always make sense, and they aren’t the most polished creations, but they’re hers, and they’re getting her creativity flowing. And, as a vlogger, I know the generalized world of haters and trolls, but I have rarely seen this happen within the American Girl community. They are mostly young girls (some adult women as well) who enjoy their dolls and support each other, and that makes my daughter smile when I read her a comment someone left on her video. Yes, there could have been something else that my daughter connected with via YouTube, but the bottom line is that she did not (she also loves My Little Pony, but the brony community online has a lot of adults who make videos with vulgarity or other themes that are at a college or higher age level). She makes American Girl fan videos because she enjoys watching them herself.

3) I get to have that time to sit down and read the stories with her. Aside from the Girl Scout Journey books, we don’t have many titles that take more than one sitting to read. The stories are for older girls, but it also helps develop my five year old’s cognitive, logic, and reasoning skills as she has to pay attention and retain the stories from one night to the next. We also break frequently to discuss what happened, why she thinks it happened, and what she thinks will go on next. I did this with my son and he reads at a fifth grade level as a second grader now.

4) McKenna saved my sanity. Alright, let me paint this picture: five-year-old terrorist in gymnastics class, won’t listen, won’t cooperate, they’re ready to throw her out. We started reading McKenna’s books, watched her movie, and a flip seemed to switch in her head. She went from “I can never do that so why even bother,” to “McKenna struggled and got better and so can I!” (well, not in so many words, but it’s there in her attitude!). So far, so good, and she always talks about McKenna – sometimes spacing out and calling her “the gymnastics girl” – when she does well in class. For those of you who say a doll, book, and movie cannot do this, I can only respond with: you’d be surprised. The week my daughter saw McKenna’s movie, she got her first ribbon for being the best student in a class of fifteen girls and had no complaints about her behavior for the first time in her four months of lessons. Will an American Girl offer the same types of change in your own daughter? That I cannot say for certain, but I am impressed.

5) The My American Girl dolls (the ones with no official story lines, but many options to “twin” out your daughter) have some really sweet options to them. Whereas, once, you could only get ears pierced on your doll, now you can have hearing aids installed. They even have a newer option to make your doll bald so that even those little girls fighting cancer can have a twin. I can’t say the photos I see posted online of little girls with hearing aids or no hair holding their matching dolls don’t make me cry.

6) The value seems to retain well, even for dolls in less than pristine condition. This can always change in the future (*cough* Beanie Babies *cough*), and American Girl is very “hot” right now, but I’ve consistently noticed that used dolls and new dolls hold a very similar price, even after years of play time. There are also lots of stories about moms giving daughters their old dolls, so obviously, the dolls are not designed to fall apart in an hour, like many other toys seem to be these days.

7) Maybe this should be #1, but the quality and attention to detail for the dolls are very impressive. When my mom talks about just buying the Walmart off brand clothes, I cringe a little. Yes, I certainly see that a $35 outfit for a doll is more than I’ve spent on myself in clothes in the past two years, but, if I could find a dress from 1812 that had that much quality and attention to detail for $100, I would probably covet it as well for myself. The difference being that I can afford the doll fashion more. And whereas an off brand would have flat, shinny, dull, or generally cheap fabric and bad stitching, American Girl uses high quality material. Even their accessories, like hats and pianos and pets, have amazing attention to detail. Compare Kit’s Preserves kit to an off brand doll food set at Toys R Us – it doesn’t compare at all! Now, having said this, I am a fan of the Target version of the bathtub, wooden dresser, kitchen, and horses, and they are significantly cheaper when you can find the items in the store. But as far as outfits and the actual dolls, I don’t see any competition for American Girl’s production in the near future.

My only major negatives with American Girl is that the items are costly and large, with lots of things always coming out and retiring. I wanted to get my daughter a cupcake set and was somewhat horrified to find out that I could only get the cupcakes if I bought the $85 table (that I had nowhere to store). I also thought that Saige’s Hot Air Balloon was interesting, until I saw it was roughly 50″ tall! There are also no real dollhouses for 18-inch-ers, so storage can become tricky if you enjoy owning the furniture.

Another complaint that I see constantly, but do not have myself, is that the dolls are not made in America. People, stay with me here, but what in the world is made in the US anymore? First, a US factory might say “made in America” on the tag, but who would the workers be? Illegal immigrants are the most likely candidate, and I for one would rather support an entire community in China than pay illegals to make our country a little bit worse. I couldn’t imagine how much the dolls would cost if you paid an American factory with US citizens to produce the toys. In the beginning, the dolls were made in West Germany, so no jobs have been lost for Americans. Matel bought the company years ago and moved production to China. In China, an average factory worker makes roughly $50 US Dollars a YEAR. Tell me a person in American that would accept that same salary. Not even illegal immigrant workers would take that little. In the US, we want $2-4,000 a month in salary, plus health care and other benefits. Our economy has priced our own people out of the market, so seeing a doll called American Girl does not mean she was made in America. She was designed in America, written about in America, goes to the doll hospital in America, and has employed at least several hundred US citizens to work for her in stores and customer services. What else do you want? Go see how many people are complaining about the dolls price going from $105 in 2012 to $110 in 2013 and tell me, realistically, that American Girl could survive paying all US salaries.

But, in short, if you don’t think the dolls are worth it, don’t buy them. It’s up to you to decide how many, if any, your child gets, and most of the dolls (aside from the Girl of the Year that retires once she sells out) are always available, making them a motivational tool that parents can use to prompt their children to experience budgeting and saving techniques. That way, you turn a potential, bank-breaking negative into a positive learning experience, and you might get someone else to sweep and vacuum to boot.