Contemporary Characters
The Contemporary Characters line was originally released in 2017 as the first line of modern characters with dolls, books, and collections that would extend past one calendar year. The line consists of three dolls, living within two core story lines. In July 2018, it was announced that American Girl would archive all dolls and their collections.
A large criticism of the line is that it was created simply to release the Tenney Grant doll in 2017. The name “Tenney Grant” was patented in 2015, indicating that American Girl had been intending to use that name for a while. It is clear Tenney’s character and world was in planning for a long period of time, since she had a large collection, four books, and a best friend doll. In addition, a few clips appeared on social media which implied a Tenney movie was being made (these clips and rumors have disappeared by now, but a few clips can still be seen on YouTube and other social media, and they clearly show music stages, drums, and guitars).
However, AG fans were surprised when in 2016, they announced the Girl of the Year 2017 would be Gabriela McBride. Her Truly Me look-alike, #46, was pulled from purchase availability shortly before her launch; consumers who had purchased #46 within a short time frame of her launch were sent an offer to receive Gabriela’s complete meet outfit separately for no cost, and it was sold separately from the doll for some time. She was the first GOTY in several years to not receive a movie, no large items were initially available at launch like had been done since Nicki in 2007, and her “unique” earrings were made available for Tenney Grant when piercing a doll. In addition, the earrings were a music note, a bird (songbird?), and light blue flowers, which all match Tenney’s story, but not Gabriela’s. Comparisons between Gabriela’s collection and the character after her, Luciana, show marked contrast in item design and detail.
Critics believe the GOTY was supposed to be Tenney, and they switched directions last minute and rolled out a different GOTY (with a smaller collection and fewer books) to increase their diversity (Gabriela is African-American, while Tenney is another blonde and White character).
Although they did release Z Yang (who looks a lot a reused Jess doll), some fans believe she was only released to help bolster the line and hide the fact that they created the line just for Tenney in the first place. By the time they archived all of the dolls in 2018, Z had only been available for 20 months, shorter than any other doll who was not a GOTY. It’s possible they did intend to release more dolls in this line, and those characters probably turned into the World By Us line.
A smaller criticism was the reuse of the Kaya face mold for Logan. American Girl most likely wanted Logan to have a face mold that didn’t show teeth and didn’t seem as girly, so they used Kaya’s mold. However, since Kaya’s mold had only ever been used on Kaya, it received backlash because the choice subtly implied that American Girl felt like Kaya was more masculine than other dolls.
| Name | Story Year | Photo | Doll |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tenney Grant & Logan Everett | 2017 | ||
| Z Yang | 2017 |
