I really do know the reasons why baby dolls get retired, but as a doll e-tailer, it is a little inconvenient.
The first imported dolls in colonial America were the Fashion Dolls. The European dress makers dressed dolls in the latest fashions and sent them to America. The wealthier Americans studied the new designs and then imported the dresses they liked best; the less wealthy made their own best copies of the dresses on the fashion dolls. Obviously as fashions changed, the doll’s clothes changed as well. The Barbies of today are not all that removed from those times!
And of course the Collectible Doll industry of today needs to keep changing the sculpts and the outfits and the wigs and everything on their collectible dolls, because the collectible doll folks don’t want a room full of the same dolls; they want the variety, and the thrill of adding the new.
But I don’t quite get the need for the baby doll manufacturers to constantly change their dolls. After all, if you give a three year old a baby doll, she will play with it for a few years ’til it’s raggedy and dirty and then she’ll want a new doll more suitable for a five year old. Meanwhile the doll manufacturer’s have churned out two whole seasons of new styles and designs. If our hypothetical family has a younger little girl, she won’t care how many millions of dollars the industry has wasted creating a fresh new look for her… she just falls in love with the doll she gets! And the process starts all over.
What makes this whole thing interesting, is that Addie and I have an e-tail store full of dolls that don’t change; and that does very well ‘thank-you-very-much,’ because they are classics. Raggedy Anns and Madeline Dolls and Cat in the Hat Dolls and Sesame Street Elmo Dolls. Our customers on that site don’t want the dolls to change! They want them to be exactly like they’ve always been.
