The American Girl Store in Boston

It has always been my plan to visit the American Girl store in Manhattan.  My mom lives in Manhattan, and I figured that the Big Apple would have a pretty great example of the American Girl shopping experience.  What I failed to notice, though, is that there's a big American Girl store in Boston, and Boston is 2 hours away from where I live in Maine.  So, this week I decided to hop in the car, go see what American Girl is all about, and finally purchase my first American Girl doll.  Many of the other dolls I have reviewed (Carpatina, Princess & Me, Our Generation, Karito Kids, Hearts 4 Hearts, My Twinn) beg a comparison to American Girl, which is a hard thing for me to do without ever having spent any time with an actual American Girl doll in my hands.  Besides, I'll admit it, there's a part of me that has always wanted to go to one of the American Girl stores and get one of those awesome big red bags.

Thanks to your help in my poll, I went to the store determined to purchase Rebecca.  I'll say right up front that the experience was nothing like I imagined it would be, and I did not end up buying Rebecca...or at least not in the way I thought I would.  Apologies up front about that.  Let me tell you about my experience at the store, show you some of my favorite items, and explain why I came home with a different doll (and a few other goodies).

The American Girl store in Natick, MA.

So, first of all, the Boston American Girl is not actually in Boston.  It's at the Natick Mall in Natick, Massachusetts.  Traffic around Boston is scary (for this Mainer), but the mall itself is easy to find and the American Girl store is hard to miss.  It is in the front of the mall and has its own clearly defined two-story edifice:

The store opened at 10:00 and so I tried to time my arrival for 10:30, just so I wouldn't be beating down their doors...or be the only customer.  I shouldn't have worried.  The store already had about 10 enthusiastic shoppers by the time I arrived...and was packed full by the time I left (three and a half hours later). 

There are large, attractive, modern window displays on either side of the front door:

Cute dogs!

Once inside, I asked if it would be ok for me to take pictures for a blog, and they looked at me suspiciously and said, "no."  Maybe I forgot to brush my hair that morning and looked a little spooky?  I don't know.

The thing is, everyone there was taking tons of pictures, and they even had several places set up where you were supposed to take pictures.  I protested a tiny bit and they agreed that it would be fine to snap some photos, so no harm done.  This is a good time to point out that after that awkward initial interaction, every single person working at this store was amazingly friendly and helpful to me.  They struck a perfect balance of being there when I had a question and disappearing when I wanted to browse on my own.  

The front of the store is filled with the historical character dolls and all of their accessories.  There's a small book area in the middle, and then the back of the store has all of the Bitty Babies.  It's a bit overwhelming at first.  There are a ton of displays, and many of the dolls are featured in multiple displays scattered throughout the room.  I had to wander through the displays about five times to get my bearings before I started taking pictures.

The first dolls you see when you walk in are Molly and Emily.  Emily was in my top three favorites list.  Molly and Emily are slated to be discontinued late this year or in early 2014.

The American Girl Archives?
That sounds dark and musty.

As I mentioned, each character appears in several displays.  This is good because you can see how the dolls look in many different outfits.  It can also get confusing--I kept thinking I was seeing new dolls when it was just re-dressed dolls I'd already seen.  

Here are Molly and Emily with Molly's Birthday Set ($68), Molly's Table and Chairs ($85) and Molly's Party Dress ($28):

Everything in this picture would cost $429.  Ack!

Here is Molly in her pajamas, sitting on her bed.  I didn't recognize her.  She looks really sweet like this, I think.  Much cuter than she looks in the online photographs.

Emily was standing next to the bed in her chenille robe and PJs:

Ready to shuffle around the Archives.

Emily was easiest to photograph from this bookshelf display where there was no glass.

Emily also looks very different in person than she does in the catalogue.  Her hair is longer than it looks in the pictures, and her eyes are very blue and plain.  Her outfit is beautiful and looks perfect with her eyes, but that cardigan is sold separately.

She's really cute, and was a serious option for me, especially because she is being sent away to the Archives.  In the end, though, her eyes are just a tiny bit too vacant. 

Please don't send me to the Archives....

Another doll on my favorites list is Saige.  Her display was pretty large and was also right inside the front door. 

Saige has a nice collection of diverse outfits.  I like the dress she comes in the best, but it's interesting to see how different she can look wearing her other outfits.  Here she is in the Parade outfit ($34):

Here are the earrings from her accessory set:

I was especially anxious to see Saige's horse in real life.  I think the horse's name is Picasso.  The catalogue pictures of Picasso don't look good to me.   

For some reason, I forgot that Picasso is articulated, so I didn't play around with this display horse.  Also, at this point in my visit, I had not yet realized that it was ok to play with the open displays.  I was keeping my hands to myself like a good girl.

Apparently, Picasso's right leg, head and neck can all move.  The right front hoof has a molded and painted silver horseshoe on the bottom.  This is a cute detail.  It's weird how the flocking stops at the knee on the American Girl horses, though.  I find it very distracting, and I don't think that the seams look good.  The ears and muzzle aren't fuzzy, either.  

Picasso with his bridle is $94 and the Parade Saddle set is another $38.  The saddle looks good, but it is made out of very thin fake leather.  I can remember some amazing real leather saddles that I used to have for my Breyer horses.  Those had actual metal stirrups and working buckles on the stirrups and girth.  Given the realism of some of the other American Girl accessories, I'd have enjoyed a more rugged Western saddle.

I think Picasso has a very sweet face, and his mane and tail are soft and fairly full (the mane is thicker than the tail).  I love his flea bitten grey color.  Too bad about his strange body stocking fur.

Saige's hot-air balloon is insanely big.  I should have gotten a full picture of it.  It costs $150, and having seen all of the options in the store, all I can say is that there's a much better way to spend that kind of money.  The balloon is attractive, but I don't see the play value being anywhere near as high as the price.  I guess it would make a nice decoration for a large playroom.  If I was visiting the store with a kid, I might try to present some of these larger accessories as props--not things you'd actually buy.

Saige looks elegant in her Sparkle dress with her hair let down.  I think she almost looks like a different doll in this dress.  The sparkles and color are a nice contrast to the Parade outfit.  

When I was looking at Saige online at home, I found her Painting Set ($48) appealing--maybe because of the featured horse picture:

The store had another display with Saige and the Painting Set, but this display was out where it could be handled.  This Saige was wearing her slightly frumpy Sweater outfit (yet another very different look!):

She looks a bit like an antique dealer from Sedona.

All of the paintings are printed onto paper with a canvass texture.  It looks very realistic.  

The painting is cuter than the toy horse.

The pictures have a nice backing:

The paints and palette look authentic, and the brush is a perfect miniature of a real paint brush:

The portfolio contains some pencil sketches of various things:

Everything in this accessory set is fun to look at, but it doesn't deliver enough for the $50 price tag.  This would fit well in the $28 category.

Many of the girls visiting the store were carrying Saige around.  She is an appealing doll, but one thing I noticed (that has also been pointed out to me here on the blog) is that all of the Saige dolls visiting the store had messy-looking (and very long) hair.  

Finally, here is Rebecca--the doll I assumed I would buy.  She is great, and her meet outfit is fantastic:

I also love her in the Winter Coat outfit.  If I had bought Rebecca, I would have included this coat for $24:

Rebecca's bed display was the easiest to photograph:

Here you can see how pretty her eyes are.  They have a lot more detail and realism than Emily's eyes:

Here are her two cute kitties:

Rebecca's Sideboard and Sabbath set made for an impressive display:

My plan was to buy Rebecca's Phonograph accessory set, which I have been coveting for a long time.  In real life, though, the phonograph looked too big and I wasn't crazy about the large, un-detailed plastic bell:

The merry go round from Rebecca's Souvenir set was also on my radar, but it is made out of plastic and is a bit too simple to impress me to the tune of $32.

So, of the three dolls I was considering, I actually felt most tempted by Emily.  Her red hair and pretty dress almost won me over.  Rebecca was a close second with her wonderful green eyes and fantastic clothes.  Saige was a more distant third.  She just didn't stand out to me.

A few of the dolls that I had dismissed during my online shopping deserve special mention here.  First of all, Caroline wins for the prettiest doll with the most expensive taste.  If you fall for her, you're going to be wanting some very fancy accessories...like this boat:

That little skiff will set you back $175.  Unlike the ballon, though, I can see some fun games centering around the boat.

There's also this Parlor Set ($300):

I have to admit that while I didn't consider buying the Parlor or the Skiff for a second, Caroline's pretty face and ringlets did impress me more than her catalogue pictures ever did and I considered her as an interesting option for a while.

Julie wins for having the best accessories.  My enthusiasm could just be because I am a child of the 70s, but I think Julie has some seriously cool accessories: a bike, a VW Bug car, a groovy canopy bed, a record player, a tape deck, several dogs and an awesome flower lunchbox.

Ok, which of those dogs is not like the other?

I don't have a good picture of this, but the dog set is a bit ridiculous (you can look at the catalogue picture here).  I mean, I own a Chihuahua and a miniature poodle and they are exactly the same size.  Julie's dog walking Chihuahua is waaay out of proportion to the other dogs.  It made me giggle, though.

Here's the lunchbox--complete with a thermos (I almost bought this):

And here's the car:

Punch buggy convertible!

I wasn't really impressed by the car.  It looks great from a distance, but it's sooo big, and it doesn't do much.  The hood and trunk open and the headlights turn on...

But there are only two buttons on the dashboard: one causes a faint, garbled radio noise to play, the other is meant to be the ignition and triggers a realistic car engine noise.

Julie seems to barely fit in the driver's seat (would two dolls even fit in here?):

The car seemed cheaply made to me--and too big to play with.  The side doors don't open and the plastic felt flimsy in places.  I didn't test this, but I hear that the wheels don't even move.  As much as I love VW Beetles, I wouldn't pay $350 for this toy.  No way.  It's fun to look at in the store, but that's about it.

In contrast, I came really, really close to buying Julie's record player set:

You can actually change the little records and each will trigger a recording of a different song.  The songs are a little bit hard to hear.   If the arm isn't positioned correctly, the music won't play.  It is very realistic!

There are three records to choose from and they can be stored inside paper sleeves and packed into a shiny blue and white cardboard storage case.

The record player is part of Julie's Sound accessory set.  The set also includes a mini tape recorder.  The cassette is molded into the rest of the recorder (it doesn't come out) but the cassette holder lid lifts up and down.

The tape recorder has two working buttons--a red one under the REC label and a black one under PLAY.  I figured this meant that you could record your voice and play it back.  I used to tell little stories into my tape recorder when I was a kid, so this feature would be nostalgically wonderful to me.  I double-checked with a sales associate to make sure that it would actually record sounds, but she told me that the buttons were just for show.  That was the deal breaker for whether or not to buy this set.

Back at home, I see that in fact this recorder really will record and play your voice.  So, I am back to thinking that this is a great accessory set.

Another accessory set that caught my eye is Kit's Reporter set ($28).  I think the camera in this set is great:

It comes with a camera case:

I almost bought this set just so that I could read all of the miniature newspapers. They are filled with real printed articles.  

A few more random accessories caught my eye.  Cecile's Parrot and Games set:

And Kit's Schooltime set with an amazing rolltop wooden desk:

I also stopped to peer at the mini dolls, many of which did not look as cute to me in person as they do in their pictures.  I think this might be because the dolls get handled a lot by passing children and have pretty messy hair.

Rebecca and Samantha.

Molly and Julie.

I had been in the store for about an hour before I finished circling these historical displays enough times to start making some decisions.  I had pretty much decided that I would buy Emily, mini Rebecca (because I said I would buy Rebecca...), and Kit's Reporter set.  I was pacing around at the back of the store, adding up the prices and making sure I felt good about my purchase, when I saw an escalator.  I figured that the restaurant and salon would be upstairs, and I should probably check out the whole store so that I could report back to you.

Well.

Upstairs, as many of you probably know already, there is a restaurant and salon, but there's also a whole other store.  This is where the My American Girls live.  I should have known about this.  What can I say?  I have been so focused on the historical characters and keeping them all straight and trying to decide which one to buy, that I never gave any thought to the My American Girl dolls.  I didn't even notice that all of the dolls in the windows at the front of the store were My American Girls.   

I guess I knew in the back of my head somewhere that you could get an American Girl doll that looked like you--that there was some sort of capacity to personalize these dolls.  For whatever reason, though, this notion had completely left my mind and so when I saw all of these diverse, contemporary dolls colorfully spread out across the upper floor, I got a little giddy.

Surprise!

There were so many hair color, eye color, clothing and accessory combinations that it made me dizzy.  I had no idea where to start my exploration of this area.

Fortunately, a wonderful sales associate was on hand to help me navigate this new room.  There are two huge cases displaying all of the available dolls, and this seemed like a good place to start:

I peered into these cabinets and tried to pick out which combination of hair color, skin color, eye color and hairstyle (oh--and freckles or no freckles), appealed to me the most.  The dolls are identified by number, and if I got confused, I could grab a little sheet of paper with a doll's number and a complete description of her features.  

After a few minutes, I saw that I had about five sheets of paper in my hands, and the dolls were all starting to look the same. I decided to take a different approach.

I wandered around the room, looking at the diversity of displayed dolls, waiting to see if one of them would strike me as being special.  

There was a brunette doll wearing a wedding dress and brandishing her flute like a weapon:

There was an ice skater with long, shiny red hair and freckles:

There was a cute girl in a wheelchair:

And several dolls in the bathtub:

There was even a doll with stick-on braces:

Peeling off.

As I walked around this part of the store, I got distracted in my mission to find the perfect doll, because there are a million new accessories that go with the My American Girl dolls.  There were clothes, sporting equipment, horses, instruments, food, furniture--everything.  The shoes are particularly great.  Look at these sandals, as an example:

Awesome.

There was so much to see on this floor, but I'll stick to showing you four displays that I really liked.  First, I was anxious to see the horses.  These horses are very similar to Saige's horse, but they lack articulation and have the same strange flocking pattern.  Kind-of a disappointment, although I am a sucker for anything that is horse-shaped, so it's mostly the price tag that keeps me from wanting these.  I think the Our Generation articulated horses would be a wonderful, inexpensive alternative to these equines.

Palomino horse, $75

One of the riders was really cute with her horse tee shirt and tortoiseshell glasses...

But her wig did not look very nicely cut in back:

That worries me a little.

My favorite part of the horse display was this little foal.  He's adorable, if a little cow-like:

Moo.

I was so excited when I saw this schoolroom display:

Reminds me of the Arizona Doll and Toy Museum!

Each girl is reading a tiny book filled with real printed information:

Miniature books with real printed writing are among my favorite things in the toy world.  Look at all of the real math problems and pictures!

Squeel!

So cute!

And look at what this doll has on her desk--a SCIENCE set!  With a mini microscope!

This is the first thing I grabbed and put definitively into my shopping bag.  No doubt about this purchase at all.  I'll write up a short review of it in a separate post.

I kept coming back to this schoolroom display throughout the afternoon, and I was delighted every time I saw a young girl walk past, get excited and say something like, "Oh, I love science!" 

I also like the school lockers.  They're a bit short for the dolls, but the details are fun.  These were temporarily sold out:

The musical instrument section was another favorite.  My kids play a lot of music, and so I love this kind of thing:

Some of the instrument sets seemed very well-priced to me.  For example, the violin set is $34 and comes with a very nice case, a violin, a well-made metal music stand and some music.

The latches on the case are plastic, but the overall look is great:

The violin doesn't play, but it has real wires and bow strings and looks very convincing:

They didn't have any of the instruments that my kids play (a mini saxophone would have been another slam-dunk purchase...) but I almost bought the flute set.  This set is $28 and also includes one of the nice metal music stands.

The keys on this flute don't move, but it looks like you could actually blow into it, and the music is readable and looks like real flute music.

I tend to gravitate towards food sets, too, and so I spent a lot of time drooling over things like this Delicious Breakfast set (although, eep! $58 without the table...):

The winner of Best Accessory In the Entire Store goes to this set:

Campus Snack Cart, $150.

If this cart hadn't been sold out, I might have decided to buy it instead of a doll.  It is fabulous.  I wanted to ditch my camera and bag and just plunk myself down on the floor and play with this thing for hours.

The pictures above are of a display behind glass, but there was another cart out in the open that I could actually sit down and play with:

The cart itself is colorful and nicely designed.  The canopy is made out of some kind of sturdy vinyl type material and the rest of the cart is plastic, but the plastic seems thick, heavy and strong.

The set comes with tons of fun food items.  There are hot dogs, smoothies, ketchup and mustard bottles, shish kabobs, fries, corn, ice cream treats, and maybe more things that I missed.  There are several paper items included with this set, like a cake box and hot dog holders.  Because of these less durable items, and many of the smaller parts, this set might be best for kids on the older end of the American Girl enthusiast spectrum.

The hot dogs do not come out of the buns...mild disappointment.

There's a hot dog warmer with a little dial that actually turns, causing a "heating" light to come on.  You can also spin the hot dogs around with a knob at the top of the unit.  These hot dogs do not come out which is another slight disappointment.  If you could pretend to heat the hot dogs and then actually take them out of the warmer and slot them into the plastic buns, that would be amazing.  

The back of the cart has a lot of moving parts, including a microwave oven that opens and closes, a cupboard, and a drawer:

Those little dials on the microwave really turn:

The skinny drawer on the top also opens to reveal some cash:

The size of the coins is wrong, but appropriately scaled coins would be too small to play with.

$150 is a ton of money, but nothing at American Girl is cheap.  This set stands out to me because, unlike the Saige's balloon or Julie's car, I can see this playset getting a lot of use.  It's big, but not so big that you couldn't move it around or put it on a table or a shelf.  Also, I have found that "playing store" is a fun game for a huge variety of kids.  You could even use the food from other American Girl sets to expand this cart into a larger enterprise that sells sandwiches, pastries...or even rugelach.  

While I was examining all of the accessories and displays, I was also keeping an eye out for a doll that I might like better than Emily or Rebecca.  Many of the displayed dolls have numbers on their shirts like this:

Number 38.

If you see a doll you like and she has a number, you can go back to those two big display cabinets and figure out which doll she is.  Some of the display dolls aren't labeled, though, and so you have to do a bit of investigative work.  Neither of my two favorite display dolls were labeled.  I really liked this one, who was being used to show how the doll carrying bag works:

I picked her up and carried her around for a while, trying to find some good light to photograph her, and trying to figure out what her number is.  She has long dark brown hair (with a slight curl) and dark green eyes.  Her eyes have a lot of detail, but they're not the same as Rebecca's eyes.  I'm pretty sure she's number 55.  I can't find her in the online store.

I found her in another display, wearing a colorful hair extension and a beautiful pink beret:

I love everything about this doll.

The other doll that I liked was in this display:

Not the redhead with glasses, as you might suspect, but the brown-eyed brunette on the left:

Something about this doll just stole my heart.  Towards the end of my visit, many of the dolls were starting to look the same to me and blur together (I was tired), but his doll kept catching my eye.  She has a sweet, innocent, expectant expression on her face, and that knitted dress looks beautiful with her darker complexion.

I found her box (she's number 29) and then carried her up and down the escalator (twice...) to compare her to Emily and Rebecca.  There were many good reasons to buy the other dolls--Emily is being sent away to the Archives, Rebecca won the poll, Saige is the Girl of the Year, there were several brand new My American Girl faces...but in the end, I decided that I should stop being so analytical and just follow my heart.   

So.  This is my new doll, and I will give her a full-blown review when I get home from Boston.  I also bought her the dress she's wearing in this picture, because I wanted to re-create this exact doll as precisely as I could.

I finally got my big red American Girl bag...

And a mini red American Girl bag, too (for Rebecca).  I love miniatures:

Bottom line?  Well, first of all, I was supposed to buy Rebecca but bought Number 29 instead.  Why did I change my mind?  What are the big differences between the historical characters and the My American Girls?

The historical dolls are great, and they offer a better value than the My American Girls because they come with a full-sized book and a carefully-designed historical outfit.  In addition, the books have some real history in them, and I love the idea of kids learning something while they're having fun.  One of the sales associates told me that she's had teenaged customers come back to the store to tell her how much the American Girl books helped them build a foundation for their study of American history.  Also, it's neat to see so many culturally diverse accessories like Josefina's outdoor oven or Kaya's sled dog and teepee.  This historical component of American Girl is brilliant, and it is very well executed.

The My American Girl dolls were more exciting to me, but this is partly because I had never seen them before.  I hadn't spent any time looking at these dolls or accessories online before my visit.  There's an online play feature that accompanies the My American Girls.  This is not as appealing to me as the historical books, but I might give it a try some day.  Mostly, I loved the creative element of the My American Girl part of the store.  You can go in there and design a unique character all for yourself.  You don't even need to buy everything you see--the vast range of accessories and displays can just serve as the fuel to imagine what kind of girl you want to create.  I picture my doll as being a shy, kind, horse-lover who is good at science and math and plays the flute in her spare time.  She collects dolls (AG Rebecca is her favorite...) and she likes to ski in the winter.  She has her granddad's old record player sitting on her dresser, and enjoys listening to his Beatles records on weekend mornings.  She also runs a snack cart...or visits it frequently, I don't know.  I just know that somehow the snack cart has to play a role.  

The American Girl phenomenon has a lot to do with the in-store shopping experience.  The knock-off dolls like Our Generation or Journey Girls might have some cool accessories, but buying one of those dolls is not an event.  You don't feel transported to another world when you walk down the OG aisle of Target.  I got completely caught up in the novelty of the American Girl shopping experience.  I loved watching one family patiently follow their young daughter around, sharing in her enthusiasm for every tiny detail.  I was moved by the little girl who came in with a custom-made bald doll...to match her own temporary lack of hair.  I chatted with a wonderful mother and daughter pair from New Hampshire, who both seemed to be having the time of their lives just enjoying all of the displays, taking lots of pictures, and smiling so much they seemed to glow.  I liked seeing that some girls had just come to give a beloved older doll a makeover, or get her some new earrings.  I enjoyed overhearing the sweet conversations and deliberations of the girls who were sharing a day out with their grandparents, carefully selecting an item that was within the budget, or sometimes just browsing and dreaming about future birthdays.  

I wasn't so excited to watch the more spoiled children demand high-price items and pitch fits when their wishes weren't granted.  I didn't like the parents who dragged their kids through the store in an irritated rush, moaning "aren't you done looking yet?"  I didn't like the older girls bragging to each other about how many dolls they had, making those with fewer dolls feel inadequate.  I didn't like seeing parents set reasonable guidelines for a purchase and then cave to their angry, bossy kids.  This was consumerism at its worst, and it cast a different light on the extravagance of the store.   

Like so many things, I suppose the American Girl experience is what you make of it.  Some parents see it as simply a huge store with lots of overpriced toys that tempt them to spend unreasonable amounts of money.  There's some truth in that.  I think it might be safer to view this store as more of a doll museum.  The larger, expensive items can be seen as props or decorations, much like the life-sized stuffed animals at FAO Schwarz.  I'm not sure I'd ever go to this store expecting to buy nothing, but if you don't want to buy a lot, the store's opulence can still provide the raw materials for creating some magical family moments.  If you walk in there with enthusiasm, imagination and time, it's like Disneyland for a doll lover.  With the right approach, a girl will remember shopping at a store like this forever.  Whatever she has in her red bag when she leaves, whether it's a new doll or just an awesome new pair of doll shoes, that item will be special enough that you're unlikely to regret the price.