Pleasant Company Doll

[Tiff02]

This item was released at Courtney's debut in September 2020.

Courtney doesn’t consider herself a “doll girl,” but when she learns about Molly, who also misses her dad, she feels a connection. She’s totally surprised when her dad gives her this Molly doll for Christmas in 1986—making her one of the first to have a doll from the brand-new Pleasant Company. Set includes:
A mini Molly™ doll wearing a sweater, skirt, glasses, shoes, socks, bloomers, and two hair bows
A classic Pleasant Company® mini doll box where Molly can be stored
A Meet Molly mini book that tells the character’s story
A mini version of the very first Pleasant Company® catalogue where Courtney has circled all the things she wants for Christmas.
SKU: GRN50
Price: $30







This is my first ever mini doll so I can’t compare her to previous mini dolls. Courtney’s Molly looks just like the limited time mini Molly that American Girl released a couple of years back. She has a vinyl body and painted-on eyes. She comes in a burgundy Pleasant Company doll box with printed-on vertical ribbon. Wrapped around that box is a real red ribbon that closes in the front with Velcro.



She comes dressed in the classic Molly outfit which includes a skirt, sweater, socks, shoes, bloomer underwear, hair ribbons, and her glasses (which are in a separate little bag in the tray that holds a tiny version of Meet Molly). One mistake AG made regarding the mini book was to use the illustrations from Nick Backes instead of C.F. Payne. Payne was the original illustrator of the book.





Also in this set is a doll-sized Pleasant Company catalogue featuring the original three dolls. Of course this catalogue does feature the books using C.F. Payne’s illustrations. The catalogue has red circles around various Molly items that are on Courtney’s wishlist.





Also included is a pamphlet explaining the significance of the set to Courtney’s story. It is kind of reminiscent of the ones that used to be included in the old PC/AG historical outfits and accessories.



All the items are very well made and overall I really love this set. I liked that they included the little catalogue. It sort of sells the idea that it belongs to Courtney’s collection. If your Courtney is not a Molly fan, swap her out for mini Sam or Kirsten.
This gets an A+ from me.

Here are a couple more pictures showing mini Molly’s full outfit, a comparison of 18” and mini Molly’s sweater, and the back of the outfit.

[Jamirae]

Of course, the very first item to get my attention in Courtney’s collection was her Molly doll. It was the only immediate thing I wanted from Courtney’s collection. Though I have ever sooo many Mini Mollys from the very first glass eyed version to the latest one before this one, in the new meet outfit, I had to get this new mini doll .

That she comes packaged as the original 1986 American Girl dolls were, and with that first Pleasant Compsny catalogue was the icing on this cupcake of a doll. For that alone, I’d have gotten her.

But this new Molly is a new version. These are a few things that caught my attention. She doesn’t have a white cloth body, or those strings holding her head in place , as those original AG dolls did in 1986. In fact she does not have a cloth body at all. Nor does she have a glue on wig or glass eyes as the very first mini dolls had. She is very much like the latest version of mini dolls with an all vinyl body, rooted hair and painted eyes.

A few differences, however. This mini Molly has very straight bangs unlike the fluffier bangs the prior version has (still available at AG, by the way) and her navy skirt is not the thicker wool fabric that the earlier versions wore—those with the original meet outfits. Her face appears to remain similar, if not the exact mold. The lighter eyed classic mold minis seem to have rounder faces than m, say, dark eyed Mini Samantha. She is quite the cutie.

I give her an A- because AG did not bother to make a duplicate of the original 1986 PC dolls, and because of the skirt fabric. If they’d even have given her a cloth body, I’d have given this full A. As mentioned in earlier review, AG got the book version wrong too. But she’s still in “A” category to me because AG did include her in this 80s collection even though she stands out discordantly among all the bright pink and blue 80s stuff

She’s on backorder right now until Dec 15, I just noticed. I’m glad I got this earlier this month.

[mamared]

I no longer have this doll, but about a year ago I wrote up a review comparing her to a couple of the fabric-bodied mini-Molly dolls that I also had at the time. The entire write-up is over in Molly's section, but I'll copy over some of the relevant parts here ...


Here they are all together. The first two have fabric bodies and painted eyes, and Courtney's Pleasant Company Doll is on the right.





This first one is from about 2000-2002.





This next one seems to be from about 2015. I think this one is really cute.





In comparison to these two, Courtney's Pleasant Company Doll stands just a bit taller. Her face seems to be a bit more oblong-shaped, and her bangs are straighter and lay flatter along her forehead. In looking at her eyes, they're a little more rounded at the corners, have less detail painted in the irises, and her eyelashes have a different pattern than both of my earlier fabric-bodied mini Molly dolls. I think there's something a little less friendly-looking about her (maybe a missing sparkle in her eye?), but that's just my opinion and she's still pretty cute. Her neck doesn't have either a PC or AG imprint, although I think there is some kind of imprint on her vinyl lower back or bum area.





Even though Courtney's PC Doll has an all-vinyl body, the outfits for all three of these dolls are similar. Like the others, this doll's sweater has the blue and red argyle design with green accent threads, solid blue sleeves and back, and attached white collar with the embroidered zigzag design. It looks virtually the same from the front (the zigzags on the collar might just be a touch closer together?), but the back has a long strip of the no-snag Velcro which extends almost to the bottom of the sweater. The very bottom is still sewn together, so the sweater will still need to be pulled over Molly's head, but this bigger opening should make it much easier to do so. There are two labels sewn into the inside side seam of the sweater; one is the American Girl branding tag and the other has the code 1600NF.

Courtney’s PC Doll is on the right in the following photos.




The skirt on Courtney's Pleasant Company Doll also looks very similar to the others, but it also has differences worth mentioning. First, it seems to be made from a thinner material, so the hems and seams have less bulk. Second, whereas the two other skirts that I have each have a separate waistband and two seams (one seam with a Velcro closure and one on the opposite side of the skirt), Courtney's PC Doll skirt has an elastic waistline and only one seam. This doll also has two labels sewn in the skirt's side seam; matching the sweater, one is the American Girl brand tag and the other has the code 1600NF. I don't see any care instructions on the clothing labels for Courtney's PC Doll.





Finally, I haven't completely undressed this doll so can't speak much to the bloomers (at quick glance they appear to be the same or similar to other versions), but I did take a couple photos of the socks and shoes so you can see the comparison.





Courtney's PC Doll came with plastic glasses that I never took out of their package, and also a parchment colored mini paper back book. Unlike the other dolls' books that I have, the back of this book seemed to have some special markings that showed it's a mini-book and not just a scaled down facsimile of the bigger books. The inside seems to similarly contain just a couple of chapters, but this mini-book doesn't have a title page at all - It just goes right into Chapter 1: Turnips!





Overall, I really like the idea of Courtney's Pleasant Company Doll. It's a great little time warp feature, and I like the packaging that Tiff02 shows so clearly in the first review, especially the inclusion of the Pleasant Company catalog and how easy it is to unwrap the Velcro ribbon that's around the box. The actual doll was fine but not my favorite, and I guess I'm kind of curious about whether the other vinyl bodied mini dolls have a similar look. If I had really wanted to keep this piece, I might have replaced the doll with my more sparkly-eyed fabric-bodied one. Ultimately I decided it wasn't for me.