[sorry for the quick hijack]
The Natick what??? Please, please don’t tell me they’ve renamed the Natick Mall. I grew up there. I remember when the mall wasn’t there at all. Then it was small. And I know it’s grown bigger since but it can’t be a “collection”. That’s just plain silly.
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My oldest (now 21) had to have one when she was maybe 7 or 8. Maybe a bit older, can’t remember. I had a hugely difficult time justifying the expense (they were $100 at that time, too, so at least they haven’t gone up). She asked two years in a row and I found out that her best friend was finally getting one and I caved. We’d already been through the “my size Barbie” fiasco when Best Friend got one for Christmas and my daughter didn’t. Santa can be so cruel, you know.
Anyway, we got Addie (the african-american doll from Civil War period). And it was a good quality doll at that time, with a well-made period costume. I didn’t go nuts with accessories, though there were a few I would have loved to have. Some of the period furniture for the different dolls was really cool! They sent a book with it that was the start of Addie’s story and I’ll be danged if it wasn’t well-written and very interesting. So much so that we ended up getting the whole series of six books detailing Addie’s flight to freedom and my daughter and I read them together every night for months. All in all, I wasn’t disappointed despite the cost.
But my second daughter, 5 years younger, never picked up the spark and it seems like they went out of fashion for awhile. If Mattel has just picked up the line, that would explain the resurgence and the marketing and the diminished quality. It’s too bad.
I definitely agree with you there. It was great coming back to Transformers fifteen years later and finding out how far the engineering has come since I was a kid.
Yep, it’s now the Natick Collection. They just finished a big expansion, with a Nordstrom, a Nieman Marcus, and, believe it or not, condos. Who wants to live at a shopping mall?
And the new name sounds a bit silly to me. It’ll probably be a huge success.
That’s what you get by getting sucked into the conspicuous consumption crap. I hope I have the fortitude to resist my daughter. It’s a form of child abuse to give into these whims IMO. My friends let their daughter harangue them into buying crap. If my daughter harangues me that ensures that she WON’T get it. She has to charm me. Lately when I get mad at her for something she throws her arms wide and shouts, ‘Hugs, hugs!’ That one is hard to resist. But I don’t buy her tons of toys, not even for Christmas and birthday.
Dolls never did much for me as a child, but I’ve purchased AG stuff for my niece – the little white dog (Coconut) and some of his accessories. I thought he’d be bigger, like the size of a soccer ball, but he’s more like a racquetball because he’s scaled for the dolls (duh).
This means I now get the catalog regularly in the mail, which is always hilarious because of the shit-eating, high-as-a-kite grin on BittyBear. He’s like popping out of drawers and shit, or sitting on a picnic blanket, and you know he totally talks like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. Seriously, check him out.
He maketh me to lie down on non-pink sheets
he leadeth me beside the golf clubs and science books
He restoreth my manliness: he leadeth me in the
paths of testosterone for sanity’s sake
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
scary dolls; I will fear no Coconut: for thou
art with me; thy fishing rod and thy man-staff they
comfort me
When my folks were in town last summer we went to the Chicago store to pick up a doll for my niece. I was chatting up one of the salespeople and she said she had seen girls cry and pass out upon coming into the store, overwhelmed with joy. When I learned that they had a hair salon for the dolls and a restaurant where the waitstaff would serve your doll, it made me think of TGI McScratchy’s (where it’s constantly New Year’s Eve!) and the waiter begging for death.
As my dad and I sat and made fun of the whole thing (“How come Tiffany isn’t doll of the year this year, did she develop a drug habit?”), I asked him if Cabbage Patch Dolls had even come close to this level of insanity, and he remembered that whole fad being pretty nutty and expensive as well.
Your father, on the other hand, should thank God on his knees every day of his life that you didn’t.
Bitter? You think you’re bitter? Talk to the man who always got the Barbie with one arm! And Francie! And Sparkle Beach Barbie and Malibu Barbie drove off to the beach in Barbie’s pink Corvette while my daughter made us stay home and clean the Dream House[sup]TM[/sup]. Sure - my daughter would say “don’t worry, Daddy, you can come to the beach next time.” But did “next time” ever come? NOOO! “Next time” did NOT come! Next time I had to stand guard over the fort we built from the sofa cushions, and ward off Ninja Turtle attacks, because I was too big to fit in the fort!
Does that sound like Bitter to you?
Shodan, Regards back at ya, and I feel your pain. Both of my daughters were producer/director/scriptwriter/dictator every time we played.
Ok, Mommy, you be Ken. No, not that Ken. That Ken. Now, dress him. No, not in that, in this. Ok, I’m Barbie and I’m going to the store.
“Ken, I’m going to the store.”
“Ok, Barbie”
NO, MOMMY, Ken doesn’t say that. Ken says, “Barbie, while you’re there can you get some milk”.
“Barbie, while you’re there get some milk”.
NO, MOMMY. He doesn’t say it like that.
Round and round til I wanted to toss that bitch Barbie and tell her to get her own fucking milk.
Of course all that would be get me would be ‘No Mommy, that’s not how Ken would say it.’
You know, as much as American Girls are a bit of a racket not to mention a force of nature as far as marketing goes, they are a heck of lot more wholesome in my opinion than similar things marketed to girls with equal intensity like being a “Disney Princess.”
I still remember getting my AG doll for Christmas one year, I was about seven or eight, Addy, the Civil War girl. I think eventually through the bounty of Christmases and birthdays for the next four years I amassed all her clothes. And I loved that doll. Lord, I loved that doll. I played with her and her clothes incessantly. Read all the books. Thought of my own stories. If imagination was a doll, I would have worn it out playing with her.
Now the doll is safely packed away at my folks’ house and I’m going for my Master’s in history. I place the blame solely on the steady diet of historical books I took out from the library as a kid, the AG doll experience, and all the museums and restored homes and whatnot my parents trundled me around to on our vacations. Stuff like this as a kid opened my eyes to what I really, really, really loved and wanted to do with my life–earn my Ph.D in history and spend my life learning more about it.
The AG dolls were wonderful for my daughters. They “glorified” being a girl, as contrasted with a pre-teen or teenager. We read the books. We studied the history. We dressed the dolls for each season. We had tea parties and discussed manners “then” and “now.” We sewed and knitted clothing for them. I credit the education vision of the AG founder for helping my daughters stay age-appropriate. My daughters enjoyed their teens more because they enjoyed their girlhood more. The dolls are treasured possessions–not unlike the tinker toys or legos or lincoln logs.
Expensive? Yes. Expensive when divided by the hours of enjoyment and the life skills they helped them develop–absolutely not.
Oh, yeah - it’s tucked away safely at my parent’s house, along with all my AG books. Even as a kid I had an idea as to how cool that was to have. (And Samantha was my second favorite. Someday when I’m rich [never], I’m gonna find her on ebay.)
Hah. Part of the reason my parents started getting me the books was because they were worried I was reading age-inappropriate history stuff and all the adult books I was reading about WWII was going to scar me for life. Serves them right for bringing me up on PBS and trips to old Philadelphia and Gettysburg and the various Smithsonian museums and such. (Man, I totally remembering staging the D-Day invasion with my Ninja Turtles action figures. That is a little weird.)
When I was obsessed with the books, there was only Kirsten, Samantha and Molly. I never cared about the dolls, but OH man did I want some of the life-size clothes. I never got any because I had the meanest mom in the world. Now I realize she was smart, as white fur muffs for your hands and big petticoats aren’t exactly practical for Texas summers. I just looked on that site and the only real size historical clothes they have are like sleeping gowns. I guess nobody’s mom bought them those old pioneer clothes that were ridiculously over priced!