AG Complaint Department: I'm a Mattel, I'm a PC Part 1

Marisol's a "Mattel", Josefina's a "PC". I don't care.

If you're part of the AG Fandom--and honestly, 90% of the people reading this blog are part of the AG fandom, it's a niche topic I'm talking on here--then you've probably had to deal with a lot of Pleasant Company nostalgia on message boards and among collectors. To paraphrase Douglas Adams and make a long story very short, "In 1998 Mattel bought American Girl from Pleasant T. Rowland, Founder of American Girl, for seven hundred million dollars. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded by nostalgia goggle collectors as a bad move."

Spend any time around some boards and you'll pick up the vibe. Pleasant Company love and Mattel Hate is everywhere. Many collectors will talk wistfully of  the days when Addy's Meet Accessories came with authentic gourds and Felicity's eyes were a soothing green and Samantha's hair was apparently so fresh and curly you could just fluff it all day. Many people will pay more to have a PC doll or accessory set rather than get a Mattel one. There are multiple posts around the internet telling you how to tell a PC doll from a Mattel in the same way people try to tell authentic coins, stamps, or vintage items. Some people say that PC stuff is automatically worth more than anything Mattel made. In fact, many people call dolls and items made before Mattel purchased the company PM--or "Pre-Mattel", as if the ownership by Mattel has tainted our precious 18 inch semi-historical dolls.

If a person prefers PC stuff, that's one thing. I'm not going to bitch too hard about that. But many of them shit all over Mattel's releases and turn their nose up towards anything not PC, and in the process come off wholly, willfully ignorant. I recently came across a post on a blog (I won't link) that stated the following without a hint of irony:

Let's face it, anything Pleasant Company is better quality. Those of us who collect PC can see the difference. Kit's candy making set would have had a metal not a plastic double boiler with plastic candy molds. And Kit would not wear a PINK dress, still they insisted on giving her a pink polyester chiffon dress. 

I find this hilariously stupid for the big glaring reason that Kit, released in 2000, was released wholly by Mattel. Yes, random blogger, I'm sure that the Historical Character that was never released by PC would have totes released her stuff the way you're saying.

Not everything PC has released has been better. I don't deny that Mattel has done a lot of weird, unusual, badly planned, and altogether shitty things since they got the company. But so did Pleasant Company and Pleasant Rowland in the twelve years before Mattel stepped in, and I'm not about to let the early years of the company off the hook for their actions.

This is going to be a side series--basically, I'll just go into four to five things about Pleasant Company I don't like with each post, because there's no way I can get this in one post.