September 21, 2023 – American Girl Dolls

Happy Throwback Thursday! Today we’re featuring the year 1986, the year American Girl dolls were released! The dolls portrayed 8 to 14-year-old girls of various ethnicities, faiths, and social classes from different time periods in history. They are sold with accompanying books, which originally focused on various periods of American history, but have been expanded to include characters and stories from contemporary life.
The dolls were the brainchild of Pleasant Rowland, a textbook author, TV reporter, and teacher. She came up with the idea after returning from a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, where she realized there was a void in the toy market for an alternative to baby and adult dolls. Rowland met with toy and department store buyers, who told her that at $82, the dolls were too expensive to stock. So American Girl dolls were originally mail order only, with 500,000 catalogs sent out across the country. By Christmas that year, the company had sales of $1 million.
The company grew rapidly, with more dolls, books, and accessories being added. They also opened up stores in major cities. By its 3rd year in business in 1989, sales topped $30 million. Today, there are American Girl movies, an American Girl podcast network, and popular YouTube accounts with stop-motion videos of the dolls.
Mattel purchased the company in 1998 for $700 million. More than 36 million dolls have been sold since 1986, and American Girl Dolls were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2021. Learn more here.