American Girls Collection/Trivia


 * Fake Brit: The actress who plays Emily in Molly's movie is actually Australian.
 * Market-Based Title: An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars was released internationally as American Girl: Shooting for the Stars, likely as the brand is better-known amongst foreign audiences than the characters themselves.
 * Mid-Development Genre Shift: Of the medium shift variety. Barring WellieWishers, all theatrical/television media featuring the characters has been in the form of live-action productions; the film featuring 1980s Historical Courtney Moore was released as a stop-motion featurette in 2020 in lieu of a live-action production likely due to complications brought by the COVID-19 Pandemic, which made work for child performers difficult if not hazardous due to obvious health risks.
 * Old Shame: For a time, Cecile and Marie-Grace was shoved under the rug following the dismal failure of their joint collection. This changed however when the George Floyd protests renewed and further intensified calls for greater racial diversity, leading to American Girl re-releasing their books featuring African-American characters for free.
 * Promoted Fanboy: Abigail Breslin, fan of the American Girls Collection, played the main role in Kit's movie. Breslin mentioned in an interview that she had the complete Historical doll lineup, which given her status as a child actress at the time is no surprise.


 * Vaporware: Rumors of a new American Girl doll, Rebecca, began to surface in the adult collector community as far back as 1998, when Mattel trademarked the name of the character. Eventually details leaked that she'd be the first Jewish historical, and after that, she seemed abandoned, with dolls such as Native American Kaya and '70s girl Julie (and the entire "Best Friends" line) appearing instead. Rumors of prototypes of Rebecca being seen by company insiders floated the entire time, with various descriptions given of her appearance, but most of the collecting world had given her up as an idea dumped on the drawing room floor. Following the retirement of Samantha in 2008, American Girl finally confirmed they were producing Rebecca, who was released in May of '09.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * Kit was originally intended to be wearing a differently-coloured meet outfit, along with a straw cloche hat as part of her accessories. The change to a knit-cloth cloche was done as it was found out that the initial batch of straw hats made as part of the accessories fell apart rather easily, and as explained by redditor and former model Caitlin Waite–who originally lent her likeness to Kit–in a post at /r/americangirl, they did the photo shoot for Meet Kit in its entirety with the pre-release meet outfit, but they later redid the shoot following the straw hat issue.
 * Leaked renders of Maryellen's prototype meet outfit designs surfaced months before the doll's announcement; this was later shown in a coffee-table book by American Girl.
 * Mia St. Clair was originally designed as black.
 * Felicity originally was known under the working name "Lucy".
 * Prior to release, McKenna went under the codename "Velma".
 * An activity book for Rebecca shows a prototype doll for what appears to be her best friend Ana. Whether this was meant as a placeholder or plans for an Ana doll were made was unknown, but as the Best Friend line was discontinued, the Ana doll was scrapped.
 * Tenney was apparently intended to be the Girl of the Year for 2017, but following calls for better racial diversity and representation in the doll line, Gabriella, an African-American character, was released in her place, based off an existing Truly Me doll with a repurposed collection from off-the-shelf American Girl accessories as an Author's Saving Throw. Tenney was used to launch a stopgap line called the "Contemporary Characters", which were similar to the Girls of the Year, but are not intended as a limited-edition character, followed by a boy doll named Logan and a Korean-American character named Suzanne "Z" Yang, who previously appeared in a series of promotional videos which cashed in on the AG stop-motion craze.
 * The Wiki Rule: Here.