Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Out With the Old, In With the Tru(ly Me)

AG but not Seattle.

Another new release of AG stuff, this past Thursday. Tiny in items--only about ten or so overall--but big in impact. Not to mention two other big BeForever Announcements that came through but, since I don't do short dinky posts I'll just bring them up here. Blog smarter, not harder.

Normally, I would haul buns to AG Seattle and take copious pictures of everything, and then blog crazy about it with said pictures. But I actually happen to be out of town, so I can't go to my local AG place. So I had to do the next best thing: go to AG Houston. I've been there a fair few times since it opened in 2012 since my mom and sister live nearby. So when I take my yearly trip to visit them, I go out there. My mom likes AG, and it's a nice trip for us. I went and took pictures, got a few things, and am ready to add my own opinions since y'all are here for that and I'm pretty good at it.

Jump below the cuts for hellos, good byes, and buttercream bookie goodness.¹

AG Complaint Department: The Ten-Year Rise and Fall of the Best Friend Line

So long, girls. The Era ends with you.

Have you been living under a rock for a few months in the AG community? I haven't, even if I have no need to post something every day on this blog. This is not Tumblr¹ and I'm not a news blog cause I don't need to be. I've got stuff coming up that y'all will like--the gang is up to another girl--and tons of reviews and shit. But I'd like to address the end of the Best Friends line before the launch of BeForever at the end of this month, so that on occasion my articles can seem timely.

If you've had a pulse on the AG community for any time since about January to March, you'll have heard whispers of both Samantha's return and the retirement of Marie-Grace and Cécile. Many people saw the end coming through whispers, catalog scans that didn't include the others, and jabber from personal shoppers. Finally in May, AG officially stepped up and said that Marie-Grace, Ruthie, Ivy, and Cécile are going into the Archives. This is in preparation for the launch of BeForever--a rebranding of the Historical characters to focus on the main AG characters and appeal to girls again. This includes new clothes, the return of the emphasis on girls being the same in essence through history, using new ways to appeal to old ones--aw yiss, apps and nets--and rumors that include removing illustrations from the books to appeal to older children.² This does not include their best friends or the NOLA Girls. There's several articles that have been published on news sites and around discussing how this removes the only black character that hasn't been a slave and the only Asian-American character in the lineup. I'm not going to knock them in any way. They're right in saying that with Ivy getting booted, we don't have a Asian American character represented in history anymore--and that Cécile is the only well to do pretty princess we've had that was black. But neither girl really got a chance to hold down the fort herself, and the best Friends Line was a poor way to put both of them in. 

For the most part, the Best Friends Line did not do much for AG's bottom line or their appeal to the historical characters, and the one time it touched the moddies it tanked hard. While the Best Friend Line had its appearances of successes, it also had its problems--lots of them. I do kind of like the idea of best friends and two girls sharing an era, and a lot of my historicals have theirs. Edith has Dorothy, Kimmy has Tyanna, Addy has Sarah, and Felicity has pretty brunette Elizabeth. I'm even debating finally creating Charlotte's stepsister/close friend from Caroline.³ And the most technical sense, I have several of the Best Friends: Nellie, Cécile (though she's not a best friend, she's a split collection--more on that later), Kimmy ("Ivy"), and Sonali. A lot of people will talk about the good of the line. But I feel like the AG community and the purchasing population at large didn't really feel the Best Friends Line, and that it going down is going to overall be a good thing.

If you haven't clicked onto this, this is all my perception. I'm not a marketing mogul, I've never worked for AG in my life, and I majored in English. These are just my opinions as someone who came into AG at the small start of the Best Friends Line, and saw how things came--and now, how they're going, along with things one of the members of the forums has observed and I'm alright with passing along. You're not here for numbers. You're here for my opinions, education, snark, and to learn better about the kyriarchy and how to tear it down. 

Let's start the same way AG did: with Samantha and Nellie.

AG Complaint Department: Archival is Not Character Death

Good-Bye, Molly--you have served us well.

So as many people in the American Girl fandom know, by this holiday season--if not sooner--Molly McIntire and her English girl, Emily Bennett, will be packing up their items in Molly's plaid suitcase, waving a fond farewell, and tap dancing into the American Girl Character Vault¹. They'll be joining the "kicked upstairs" ranks of Samantha (1986-2009), Nellie (2004-2009), Kirsten (1986-2010), Felicity (1991-2011) and Elizabeth (2005-2011), and you will never ever ever see her again. Ever. Ever. Ring the bells, rent the clothing, ashes and sack cloth and lamentations.

Awk, I hit the Sarcasm Lock button. *unstick*

But on the serious, the wails are everywhere. Molly is the last of the Original Three releases, and with her retirement nothing that Saint Pleasant Rowland started the line with remains. (More on that in another post.) Miss McIntire's loss (along with Miss Bennett) is yet another line-up on the chopping block of Mattel's evil path to making money hand over fist and appealing to the fly by night dabbling of this dim generation of children and vapid parents, all in a nefarious plan to turn American Girl into 18 inches of Barbie. Thus continues the evil path of retiring every historical, never teaching about history ever, and pushing the horrors of gardening, gymnastics, and art loss in public schools while we teach to the test. (But my standing up for the issues faced by the GotY is another post.)

I shall continue on my happy path of being the voice of dissent. While I'm not exactly delighted that Historical Character Archival is a thing, I'm also not going to call this the death of American Girl Historicals nationwide anymore than I did when we lost the others. Lamenting that Historical retirement and archival means the death of history is melodramatic, and acting like children can't learn about history without the dolls and the little items is really laying the whining on thicker than the chocolate frosting on Molly's birthday cake. I refuse to think that retiring the Historicals--any of them--means that Mattel is dismantling history character by character, or that children will never be able to learn about history without holding Molly to their bosoms and dressing her in her holiday dress with its little silk ribbons. The dolls are not the only facet of American Girl, much less history.

Below the cut lies my reasons why. Read them and be educated, or read them and rebut them, or read them and be annoyed, or read them and stomp off in a corner. I'm just one person on the net here, I don't know what you want.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Molly Out The Door, A Bunch of New Things, and Dolly Weave

It's been real, girls. Welcome to Archival.

So of course the first thing that happens a week and some after I get back in town is that AG releases new shit and announces they're kicking Molly and Emily upstairs. Great, at this rate June is a total wash for doing posts I want to do. July, I hope, will be markedly improved so I can take pictures of magazines, doll clothes, and complain about people calling me weird in the mall and talk about my mom. Yeah, this month wasn't very productive. 

Anyways, consider this post as my yarping about the New Shit, the Retirement of the Girl From World War II, and Doll Weave. I shall call these kinds of half reviews and mini-posts Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness.

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