American Girl through the years

Hey! Today I will be talking about the changes to the American Girl dolls body through the years. In 1986 the dolls Molly, Kirsten, and Samantha were released with plain white, cotton torsos with thick white shoelaces for neck strings, these were manufactured in Germany. For a limited time, for an extra 10$ you could choose to get a signed doll, Which go for astronomical  prices on eBay. The first change made to the dolls was sometime in 1991 with the release of Felicity Merriman. Due to the low-cut necklines of her clothes, she would look weird with a white body. (If you know when Felicity was released, feel free to tell me! this would really help my blog if you tell me something I missed in a post) The cloth of Felicity's body was a dark tan, as with most dolls released through 2000.  
In 2000, when the company's were changing from Pleasant Company factories to Mattel, some manufacturing defects are present from 2000 dolls to 2003 dolls, such as Green/Grey/Pale skin, Made in China for "American Gril" tags, or wonky eye placement. American Girl will fix these free at their Doll Hospital (except for Lindsey), all you have to pay for is shipping there. ($7.95 U.S) Along with those bad things, there are also good things, such as the internal body tag, which tells you the year AND month your doll was made from 2000-2009. But in these years, some dolls were returned from the doll hospital and SOLD with zip ties. Due to fan Backlash, dolls were again sold with the infamous neck strings. Things were going pretty smoothly for AG until 2016, when Lea Clark got a sewn off zip tie. A sewn off zip tie is like a doll with a zip tie, but instead of the end poking out, the fabric "tunnel" is pulled over it and sewn closed. This puts an end to customization and neck posing... or does it? you could cut the thread holding it closed, cut the zip tie , and put in neck strings, but with this years GOTY Gabriela McBride, it is more professionally sewn closed.
The most recent changes to the cloth body are a thinner, smoother material, and... perma-panties. People fought long and hard with Mattel, and even started a petition, and Mattel listened. They stopped the perma-panties, to many peoples delight. I hope you found this useful, and if you still have a question, feel free to ask! It can be anything (within the world of dolls) and I am pretty good at basically anything Barbie and American Girl, so feel free to ask away!        'til next time     - JCole