American Girl starts to recognize the adult collecting audience

American Girl has long since been a brand for 8-10 year olds. Since the 80's when it was Pleasant Company the target audience was the same from the books that told historical stories in the era from a child's perspective. It is not unheard of for adults to collect toys from their childhood. Nostalgic collecting has been a great part of collecting as a whole. Sometimes it's collecting a toy or doll that we didn't get as a child because our family didn't have the funds and we never received it as a gift. Sometimes we started a collection and never got to finish it and so it's a To Do list in our adult lives where we come back to it and finish it off. This is very true for adult collectors. A number of American Girl Collectors search out the entire collection for the original characters piece by piece until they have completed it, paying quite the price for the harder to find items. Many obtain the doll they wanted as a child.

But it evolves past that, in that adult American Girl Collecting has actually branched off in a similar way that Barbie did where it becomes a lot about collecting fashion. Beyond the original characters, American Girl has spawned many businesses who continue to create historical wear beyond the original collection pieces and strive for historical accuracy. Adults are also customizing American Girl into characters that reflect movies, tv, and even themselves as a look-a-like. Adults collecting and customizing American Girl dolls has become a huge hobby.

Mattel certainly knows how to embrace adult collecting with it's Barbie brand. There are the Barbies that are in Target and Walmart and clearly gear towards children. And then there are the Barbies that are made in fine materials, in limited editions, and even with elite clothing brands that are clearly targeted towards adult doll collecting. It's a classic example of a brand that embraces multiple audiences and makes their product adaptable.

On the American Girl brand side, much has been developed and marketed on the children's audience side but it is as if the adult audience doesn't exist. The historical collections that there is a clear fan following for have been largely ignored in favor of modern kid friendly series. There have been re-issues of the original characters and outfits, but not much in the way of new anything for the original characters that fans love so much. Historical re-makes have also been set at higher prices. A few years ago, Bbeauty Dolls played with the idea of a cross-over on the brands for adult collecting, combining the American Girl brand with the Barbie brand inspired by the movie release. It was something not being done by either of the brands and was a fun tribute. The idea must have gained someone's notice because the following year American Girl released a nostalgic Barbie American Girl collector doll and subsequently has been releasing throw back outfits from Barbie's 1980's fashion collections for American Girl size.

Barbie Peaches and Cream from 1985

This is interesting because it's an acknowledgement of the adult collecting community for American Girl. 80's nostalgic outfits aren't something that mean anything to the children's audience collecting American Girl dolls and widely appeals to the adults that were of that era and remember those outfits. After the doll which sold out, the outfit from Barbie's Day to Night was launched and is still on the website. The second outfit looks to be from Barbie's 1985 Peaches and Cream fashion that is upcoming. I am not sure if this was an answer to requests, but before this release there were many home sewers and doll artists recreating this look for their dolls as a favorite. You could actually count Courtney's work out outfit as the first tester piece. Mattel made that outfit a comeback in Toy Story and although Courtney's outfit is not an authentic replica they are very similar.

You can see that the color schemes on both outfits are apparent and the stripes on Courtney's sleeves remind us of those rainbow striped leg warmers. It's almost Barbie's original outfit deconstructed. Courtney's collection also had a number of nostalgic throwbacks that current children aren't into such as Care Bears and PacMan, so it could be that her collection was the start of trying to get adult collectors engaged. After that, single 80's throwback outfits might just be testers to see how sales go and whether the adult collecting audience is ready to buy as much as parents for children. Only time will tell if American Girl continues to embrace the adult collecting audience with releases targeted for them.