40th Anniversary AG Dolls - A gift to our younger selves

So, recently American Girl decided to rerelease a bunch of their original Historical dolls in honor of the company's 40th anniversary.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, American Girls are crazy expensive, always have been and are only getting more expensive as time goes on, and as a kid, I didn't have any.  I've already bought all my dream dolls, so I wasn't necessarily planning on buying any of them.  But, back in 2022 when American Girl rereleased Molly in her original outfit, i had said to my sisters, "if they ever rerelease Felicity in her original outfit, then I'll get her."

 I've had a rather crazy last couple of months.  To start, my bird Mordecai starting throwing up late at night when all the local vets were closed, so we had to drive almost an hour to a farther away vets office, and thankfully Mordecai ended up being fine, we just had to give him a couple of medications which by day two he didn't let me give him anymore.  But I had to spend several hundred dollars, which I would do again in a heartbeat because this is my bird and I love him very much. Then, Pebbles started having a beak overgrowth issue, and although I had scheduled an appointment to have it trimmed at our vet, we had to rush him in sooner because he started being unable to do things properly.  The vet had been planning on drawing some blood as well in case there was something more serious going on that was causing his beak issues.  (I promise this is all related to dolls haha.)

 Anyway, I had to take a lyft to the vets office super early in the morning and because the vet hat to fit us in for his beak trim, I was going to be there for several hours.  So I was scrolling on my phone, and I see that American Girl had just announced the 40th anniversary dolls.  And I felt horrible because I knew they were going to sellout really quickly and I really really wanted to get Felicity, but I was about to spend another several hundred dollars for Pebbles' labs, so I couldn't. 

Then our lovely vet comes out and tells me she couldn't actually complete the blood draw because poor Pebbles has super tiny veins, so they didn't end up charging me for that.  So that meant I had some extra money now to spend on buying Felicity, because I wasn't spending that money on the labs anymore.  You know, Girl Math. So instead of saving that money like I should, I bought Felicity.  And then I started thinking about how back in the day, when my sisters and I had gone to either Sam's Club and BJ's Wholesale Club, and they were selling a bunch of mini American Girl dolls complete with all 6 of their books, and they were all significantly cheaper than a full-size one.  So my older sister got Samantha, I got Molly, and my younger sister got Felicity.  Seeing as I had just ordered full-size Felicity, and I already had Samantha, I was just thinking about how cute it would be to have all three full-size versions of the mini dolls we had when we were little.  But, Samantha was sold out by the time I made up my mind about buying her...

But a couple of days later, she was back in stock, so I did the irresponsible thing and pre-ordered her as well.

Fast forward a few weeks, and they arrived. But I didn't open them right away, because I wanted it to be an extremely special experience.  

As I've mentioned before, my younger sister and I didn't have any American Girls of our own when we were younger despite really wanting them, and my older sister had two.........  We've since bought a handful of second-hand and used dolls off ebay, but we'd never really been able to open any new dolls together.  My younger sister and I have actually been long distance for quite some time, so she wasn't physically present when I opened Molly.  We see each other in person every so often, but she's about to move even farther away so we're going to be seeing each other in person even less.  

We arranged a time to meet up, and I brought Felicity and Samantha still sealed in their shipping boxes with me, and together, the two of us opened up completely new American Girl dolls together, and it was honestly among one of the best experiences I've had, and it feels quite healing for our younger selves who so badly wanted to just have dolls of our own.  And for that reason, buying 40th anniversary Samantha and Felicity was worth every cent.  Also after we opened the dolls, we watched the Samantha movie together and it was so much fun.

And here they are.  They're honestly so beautiful, and while I know with certainty they are not as nice quality as the original Pleasant Company dolls 40 years ago, they are both so beautiful and I am so happy to have them in my collection.

Felicity and Doll-Hospital Elizabeth look absolutely gorgeous together.  I'm so happy. :') 

 My sister and I actually filmed our unboxing, and we have it up on our new TikTok account where we are going to TRY and stay active on haha.  Feel free to check it out, if you want.

And surprise, yes, Kitty is my younger sister. ;)

 Also, unfortunately for my wallet, Kitty and I may have become rather obsessed with buying used AG dolls recently... so there are quite a few collections updates that I have to share that I will get to eventually.