Kidults and Instagram: An American Girl Story
- Bailey Casey
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
One of the titans of young girls’ childhoods was born in 1986. Pleasant Rowland created the American Girl Doll after her growing frustration with the current girls’ toys on the market. Barbie encouraged girls to grow up too fast, to look forward to womanhood instead of enjoying childhood, and baby dolls taught girls to be mothers and little else. As The Tufts Daily stated, “There were no dolls that taught girls how to be girls.”
So Rowland began to develop an idea. As an ex-history teacher and journalist, Rowland wanted adoll that taught young girls history and promoted literacy while they followed stories of strong and spirited girls the same age as them. She fleshed out the stories alongside other historians, and with the help of the German toy company Götz, Rowland released her first three dolls under The Pleasant Company. Each doll came with a book detailing facts of their historical era and personal story, dressed in a unique historically accurate outfit called their “meet outfit” and a small handful of accessories. There was Kirsten Larson, a Swedish immigrant settling in early Minnesota with her family in 1854, Samantha Parkington, a well-to-do orphan living with her grandmother in New York City in 1904 and Molly McIntire, an all-American on the home front of World War II in 1944 whose father is a soldier. These dolls were purchasable from mail catalogs for roughly $67 to $68 depending on the cover material of the book.
These dolls were an immediate hit. From the fall of 1986 to the end of that year, Pleasant Company generated $1.7 million in revenue. This success led to more books for each character, new outfits and play-sets, and new dolls. Felicity Merriman, a revolutionary separatist, was added in 1991, Addy Walker, an escaped slave, was added in 1993 and Josefina Montoya, a Spanish-speaking girl living in what would be Santa Fe, New Mexico but in the year 1824 was occupied by Mexico, was added in 1997.
Riding off the success of the historical doll line, in 1995, The Pleasant Company released The American Girl of Today line, which would be rebranded many different times with names like “Just like Me” and “Truly Me” to name a few. These dolls came in countless different hair styles and textures, skin tones, face molds and features. Their meet outfits and accessories were based on young girl fashion trends of the time. They were a blank slate, an unwritten story for girls to create themselves. Every so often, most times in conjunction with a rebrand, the dolls’ outfits are updated, dolls are rotated out and new possibilities are added. The range of features is constantly increasing, now dolls can have colored hair of all hues or no hair at all. They can have wheelchairs, crutches, hearing aids or diabetic monitors to better fit their real-life companions. Their play-sets, purchasable outfits and pets are countless, including sets that celebrate diverse holidays and traditions with informational books on their subjects. In 2018, boy dolls were added to the lineup, with short cut wigs and more “boyish” clothes. Lastly in 2021, the “World by Us” series began, which focuses on education about social justice causes and needs.
In 1998, a huge shift for the company occurred. Mattel bought The Pleasant Company for $700million and opened the first store in Chicago. Two years later, Pleasant Rowland stepped down from the company as the dolls were officially branded as American Girl Dolls after the American Girls collection of historical dolls that started it all.
Despite the departure of the woman who started it all, the brand continued to grow. In 2001, American Girl released their first “Girl of the Year”, a doll patterned after the trends, interests and styles of that particular year with her own unique story and line of clothes and play-sets. The first Girl of the Year was named Lindsey Gergman, then Kailey Hopkins in 2003, Marisol Luna in 2005, and from there a doll was released every year. The lack of dolls for 2002 and 2004 has been debated, with some fans saying it was due to poor sales of the first two dolls, and others saying it was due to release dates being more in the middle of the year, so the company had to wait for the stock to sell out before releasing a new doll. No statements on this have been made by Mattel at this juncture. But from 2006 forward, a new doll and her line of accessories have been released on January 1st.
In 2004, the historical dolls leaped from the arms of little girls onto their television screens. Samantha: An American Girl Holiday was released as a TV movie then sold on DVD and VHS soon after. Many other historical dolls followed including Kit, a girl facing the Great Depression, Melody, a Motown singer fighting for her civil rights in the 1960s and Maryellen, a swinging science-wiz from the 1950s. The Girl of the Year dolls got their own straight-to-DVD movies too. Multimedia content was nothing new to the American Girl Doll brand even besides their books for each doll, since 1992 the American Girl magazine has been in publication. It features crafts, quizzes, recipes, interviews, and true stories from girls of the target age demographic, and advice on how to be a girl. They’ve released craft books and recipe books that girls can do with their dolls. Most interestingly, they released a book and a sequel to said book called The Care and Keeping of You, which is an informational and advice book on hygiene and pubertal changes for girls. It explains everything from bra sizes to period products to hormonal mood swings.
Like any toy from childhood, it is often understood that these dolls will be left behind once puberty hits. But surprisingly in the last few years, American Girl has burst back onto the scene for many millennials and Gen Z. There may be a multitude of reasons for this, the first being the wider toy and nostalgia consumer trends.
According to a market research report from Circana in 2024, 43% of the age demographic 18 and older have been buying toys for themselves, and in 2024, they overtook the three to five demographic for the biggest toy buyers. This is merely the date into the wider trend culturally that many media outlets and corporations are calling the “kidults”. These are, typically, the younger demographics of adults, 18 to mid-30s, that are engaging in toy collecting and consumerism, items that have nostalgic characters but are meant for adults, much like Box Lunch, or shows that were intended for children or were popular when this demographic was young, think Bluey, Hannah Montana or Lizzy Maguire. There are two running theories for this spike in consumerism, the first being neurodivergence.
Millennials and Gen Z have been the largest demographics to be diagnosed or self-identify with forms of neurodivergence, and there have been many studies linking certain conditions like Autism or ADHD with collecting habits. The second theory is the one that most corporations and researchers have come to which is a kind of escapism. This particular demographic has found itself in an interesting gray zone between adulthood and the independence that comes with it. The current American economy, job, and housing market have made it more difficult for these age groups to develop financial independence away from their parents. There’s been a spike in unemployment and living with one’s parents for longer. Due to this and the increased numbers following 2020, many researchers believe that these young adults have come back to their childhood enjoyments for comfort and escape from woeful reality.
But that’s toys in general, why American Girl Doll specifically? Many individuals who enjoyed the dolls have found a new relatability in them. With these generations now living through a global pandemic, tumultuous presidential elections, a rough economy and the resurgence of long-eradicated diseases among other things, there have been countless memes and comparisons to the historical dolls’ stories made on social media. There was also a trend that surfaced around 2020, where social media users would splice together images to make a “modern” American Girl that fell in line with what the brand’s childhood fans were now experiencing. Along with that American Girl has recently released historical dolls from the 1980s and 1990s, allowing new millennial parents to help share their childhoods with their growing kids.
Following this resurgence, American Girl themselves have taken advantage of this wave of popularity, much like in the 2010s when girls started making YouTube videos with their dolls, and engaged with their audience in this new way. On their social media platforms like Instagram, they posted their own versions of the “modern” American Girl doll trend, in a child-friendly way of course, and by including articles from outlets like Huffpost discussing this large leap. And, of course, no one can forget the Saturday Night Live skit about the historical dolls.
The revival follows through on Berry’s campus as well. Students were excited to note their favorite dolls, including Saige Copeland, 2013 Girl of the Year, and historical dolls like Melody, Molly, Felicity and Julie Albright, a girl from the 1970s fighting for causes like Title IX. Love for both the historical and Truly Me series were rather evenly split. Many had fond memories of playing with the dolls with friends and family, and some mentioned eating at the cafés that are attached to the American Girl Doll stores. Those that offered pictures gushed that it was fun looking back on those memories with their dolls.
In all of this, social media comebacks or brand changes, what has kept American Girl Doll a compelling toy for children and adult consumers alike has been its relatability. That’s what it was founded on, teaching lessons that little girls needed to know and found themselves in, and through all the corporate movements and buyouts, it’s maintained that idea in all sections of its brand. That’s why the adults have swarmed back to the dolls on social media or in newfound collecting, not only nostalgia, but in finding the dolls to have a piece of their story and life in them— to be “Truly Me”.
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