Originally Posted by
lizzywednesday
When the company started, as Pleasant Company, in Wisconsin in 1986, it was:
(1) Founded by a female CEO
(2) Painstakingly researched to give the 3 dolls (Kirsten - 1854; Samantha - 1904; Molly - 1944) a "world" ... it wasn't about having their accessories, but hearing their stories
(3) Designed with girls who were old enough to want to know more about our country's history, but young enough to still want to play
For example, the Kirsten doll's dresses all had "grow stripes" a real feature of pioneer girls' dresses to extend the life of a dress as a girl grew taller. She was a pioneer in many ways besides the "sunbonnet and long skirts" vision - her family were immigrants from a famine-ravaged Sweden, making their way to the US to make a new, hopefully better, life for themselves. Before she left, her grandmother gave her an amber heart necklace as a reminder to always "have heart" even when things were difficult.
Samantha's Victoriana was replicated in many ways, not the least of which in the finer fabrics and attention to detail in many of her things.
Molly's story included aspects of living life on the home front during WWII - rationing, "Victory Gardens", refugee children from England, etc. - as well as fun ideas on how to stretch your mind to recycle, reuse and make things from scratch. In her "Meet Molly" story, for example, Molly and her best friends dream of dressing as fairy tale princesses but they understand that buying the fabric to make those costumes (and getting one of their working moms to sew it!) would be very difficult, so they're encouraged to do something else, which ends up being a great homemade project with materials they could find around their homes.
In 1995, the held a contest through their catalogues asking for customer/reader input on what the "American Girl of Today" would be and released a special doll & story within that year.
Mattel bought the company in 1998 and things really changed from there on out - the "Girl of the Year" dolls, the "Just Like You" dolls (now they have an interactive online character, like WebKinz and so on...)
Honestly, as someone who saved for her two historical dolls, I really feel like the Mattel takeover has ignored the things that made my dolls so precious and special - all of the historical information, like the partnership with Colonial Williamsburg that they showcased so proudly with the Felicity doll, or the attention to detail about Kirsten's "spoon bag" accessory, or the miniature abridged version of 'The Wizard of Oz' that you could purchase as part of Samantha's Christmas collection, really seemed to take a back-seat to "STUFF" ... it's sad, really.
That said, I've had my dolls since 1988 and 1989. They are both in excellent condition (OK, I was 10 and 11 when I got them) and are on par with the Gotz dolls at PBK. Sadly, the newer dolls don't impress me much.