Felicity! My First American Girl Doll Goodwill Score!

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends,

First let me say I am sorry there has been a bit of a break between posts here... I've had technical issues for days and days trying to get this posted. You may have had the misfortune of dropping by before I got a chance to write this post because I eventually, in an attempt to just get it to post, posted it with just a title and photos. For some reason the Blogger App and my phone don't get along. Oh well, there's more than one way to skin a cat, right? 

I've been so excited to come tell you about Felicity!! On my way home from work on Thursday last I dropped into Goodwill... As is my custom, the very first place I look is the 'carts' in which the workers at Goodwill roll out the newly arrived stock from the back of the store. They roll them from the back and slowly stock from them but as I've told my husband, I am reasonably sure that at least 30% of the stock never makes it to the shelves and gets shopped right out of those carts. Any seasoned thrift shopper knows it's where the best treasures are usually found. So I saw the carts from across the store and what do I see poking out but two 18inch doll feet. Yes, the poor dear was upside down in the cart, standing on her head! It wasn't until I got to the cart that I realized that she was an actual American Girl doll! I may or may not have jumped up and down and squeeled with happy right there in the store. She was marked $5.99 and as you may imagine, she never made it to the shelf either. 

She was in reasonably good shape for a doll who'd been played with and who someone thought so little of as to just throw into a Goodwill donation box. No judgement here! I am glad someone did because how else would I have found her?! I just can't imagine a world in which I'd give away an AG Doll... You know? Then again, I've given away car loads of other kinds of stuff to Goodwill so I suppose it's all about what you're in to, eh? 

I wasn't sure immediately 'who' she was until I looked at the back of her neck and saw the "Pleasant Company" stamp and then I knew she was Felicity! I was so stoked! You see, back in the 1990s, when I was in my 20's, I added my name to the mailing lists for the American Girl Doll Catalog that was this beautiful oversized catalog of amazing dolls and accessories. Every single time I'd get one in the mail I'd look at every last page and think how lovely it would've been to own one when I was a girl... Or to own one then, even. My favorite, at the time, was Kirsten just because I liked her story best of all the original six American Girl Dolls. A close second place for my favorite was always Felicity because she was from Colonial America. I've been to Colonial Williamsburg a couple of times, both in my 20s, and so her story felt 'familiar' to me after touring there. 

Here is the stamp on the back of her neck. I was kind of confused because the stamp was 'old school' but her body type looked like newer ones? So I asked my favorite doll group on Facebook, Shelly's Doll World, if they could give me any information about her. As per their usual, they knew so much useful information!!  One gal, an Andie Hicks, told me all this: 

"AWESOME find! Congrats. She is definitely made by Mattel. When the company took over they were still using the Pleasant Company parts. Mattel slowly started changing up the dolls features; like harder vinyl, stiff eyelashes, body tags on every doll. They still continued to use the Pleasant Company castings for quite some time. This is why you see dolls like Kit, Kaya, and Nellie with Pleasant Company heads. I'm pretty sure that Kit and Kaya were the last 2 historical dolls Pleasant Roland had helped create before she officially left the company in 2003. AG has since then created their own head mold castings, which is why all dolls after about 2008 no longer bear that sought after Pleasant Company stamp! Here is where it gets tricky though...they do still use Kaya's original Pleasant Company casting because Kaya's neck still bears the Pleasant Company stamp...and this is a good indicator to determine if any future dolls have the Kaya face mold, if one can not be sure"

Isn't that fascinating! I love having a doll group who can tell you information I don't know where you'd get otherwise, you know? 

Another member, Jolina Simm, provided this:

"Yes, it is Felicity. As for her body, there's two things here. First, she could be an older doll that the previous owner sent in for a torso replacement to the doll hospital, hence the newer body/tag. 

However, what I think is more likely is this: the company uses things basically until they run out. For example, many people claim to have "Pleasant Company Nellie dolls." Based on the year that Mattel took over and when Nellie debuted, this isn't truly possible. However, many Nellie dolls do in fact bear the Pleasant Company stamp, and maybe even come in the older boxes. 

So long after Mattel took over, you'd see Pleasant Company still stamped on these doll's heads. Fun fact (as pointed out to me recently by Shelly), the Kaya dolls STILL are marked Pleasant Company on the back of their necks!

So I believe, yes, this is Felicity, and that likely the company made her in the years just before she retired or thereabouts, and she just has an older head because they still had a bunch lying around, LOL (which happened with Nellie's head, and would happen sometimes even with packaging). 

You can actually buy neck strings on eBay, so if you want to restore her with some accuracy and not send her to the doll hospital, I would spend a couple dollars on a string and thread it through - boom, like new (along with the limb tightening)! :) 

Hope this helps. :) I suppose someone could have swapped torsos with another doll at some point, or whatever, but I tend to doubt that simply because anyone who cares enough to do that isn't generally going to send the doll to Goodwill."

Isn't that fascinating? So much to know in the world of dolls!! As you can see, her neck string was cut and then managed to get a bit 'loose' so I'll need to order her a new one. I could put a zip tie in as well because honestly the neck strings are kind of annoying (the previous owner must've agreed) when they hang down but that's how they're made and since she's an AG, I probably should keep her as autentic as possible, eh? 

She was a bit dirty when I found her but I cleaned her up in a jiffy with a Norwex cloth and water...

I wasn't sure the state of her hair until I took it out of the pony tail holder. I figured she would need a new wig but... After brushing it out I think she might be just fine as she is. I still need to hot dip her hair to get it more 'strait' and her ends might be a tiny bit on dry side but all in all, her hair is in great shape.

She cleaned up so nice and is so pretty! I dressed her in my most Felicity styled dress which I kept from a Liberty Landing Doll I madeover once. I wasn't fond of the doll and eventually she was given away to a friends daughter as a companion to her American Girl Doll Saige but I kept her dress because it was so pretty.

The cape was part of the 'meet outfit' to my vintage Mattel Emotions Cameo Sabrina doll who is a doppelganger doll of my Mom and has gone through a body transplant because I loved her face sculpt so much but not her body type. Teehee. No doll is safe in it's original inception in my house! I love to customize too much. 

So here she is all changed... She borrowed the shoes from Stephanie doll's meet outfit and thought they looked perfect. I think it's funny that I recently found a chair and a bench in the Colonial American style at another Thrift Shoppe for the Doll House! God must've known Felicity was on her way!

Better run!

Till next time!

XXOO
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