The Best Friend Characters are companion characters to the Historical Characters [1]. Best Friends are not given unique time periods and wholly share the era and stories of the characters they are paired with.
Best Friends are often prominent characters in the main series of their Best Friend; in the Historical Collections, they showed a different aspect of the same time period due to differences in their backgrounds and/or situations. Because of their ties to their companions, they were not generally considered separate collections of their own; and so were often subjected to the same archiving when their companions were.
Cécile Rey and Marie-Grace Gardner, while sharing their time period and marketed as each other's best friend, are not considered part of the Best Friends line since they are given equal prominence in their historical time period and share their Central Series books.
History and Information
The Best Friend line debuted in 2004 with the release of Nellie O'Malley, Samantha's best friend, who was released to coincide with the first American Girl Movie, Samantha: An American Girl Holiday and was a main character in both the movie and Samantha's original stories. While it was initially advertised that Nellie was going to be a limited edition doll, overall positive reception prompted American Girl to keep her as a permanent extension of Samantha's collection and expand the line to include other characters.
Elizabeth Cole, Emily Bennett, and Ruthie Smithens were each partially released as a tie-in to the upcoming movie of her companion; Ivy Ling was released with the initial debut of Julie Albright's release. In 2009, Chrissa Maxwell was the first and currently only Girl of the Year to have companion characters with Sonali Matthews and Gwen Thompson.
Best Friends were given much smaller collections than Historicals and while they were never displayed in the Historical's personal outfits, they were marketed as being part of (and thus being able to share) the collection of their companion. Some collectors are known to prefer the Best Friend and so purchase items of the main collection for a Best Friend.
When Samantha Parkington's collection was archived, Nellie O'Malley and her collection were as well. This was also true for Felicity Merriman and Elizabeth Cole; Chrissa Maxwell, Sonali Matthews and Gwen Thompson; and Molly McIntire and Emily Bennett.
In 2014 American Girl announced that the remaining best friends available for purchase, Ivy Ling and Ruthie Smithens, would be be retired along with Cecile Rey and Marie-Grace Gardner, effectively ending the Best Friends line.[2] One of the many official responses from American Girl was that they are seeking to return the focus of the Historical collections on the main characters themselves, and later announcements for BeForever solidified the remarketing of the Historicals.
The announcement stirred up public criticism in multiple media outlets, emphasizing the loss of diversity in Historical Characters; Ivy was (and so far has been the only) Asian-American historical character (and Cécile was the only other African-American Character available at the time besides Addy Walker).
List of Historical Character Best Friends
- 2004 - Nellie O'Malley, Samantha's best friend
- Book: Nellie's Promise
- 2005 - Elizabeth Cole, Felicity's best friend
- Book: Very Funny, Elizabeth
- 2006 - Emily Bennett, Molly's English friend
- Book: Brave Emily
- Book: Good Luck, Ivy
- 2008 - Ruthie Smithens, Kit's best friend
- Book: Really Truly Ruthie
List of Girls of the Year Companions
- 2009 - Sonali Matthews and Gwen Thompson, companions to Chrissa Maxwell
- Unlike the Historical Best Friends, Gwen and Sonali do not have individual books and came with a copy of the book Friends. This could be due to the fact that Chrissa has two companions and both feature with equal prominence in her books. During Chrissa's availability, she could be purchased with either Sonali or Gwen in small collections of two, but the two dolls could not be bundled together without Chrissa.
Changes to the Historical Best Friend Characters
Elizabeth
In Felicity's original illustrations until 2005, Elizabeth was shown and described as having brown hair and eyes. In Felicity: An American Girl Adventure, she was played by Katie Henney, who is blonde with blue eyes. The doll was made to resemble the actress and the original illustrations and texts were edited so that there were no discrepancies.
Emily
Emily is not really considered Molly's best or even closest friend; she originally appeared in only one of Molly's Central Series books, Happy Birthday, Molly!, as a temporary house guest seeking refuge from wartime London and was only expected to stay with Molly for a few weeks.[3] She is thus marketed by American Girl as "Molly's English Friend." It was theorized that because Molly has two best friends (Linda Rinaldi and Susan Shapiro), a different character was chosen so that neither one could be more prominent than the other. Since Emily is from England, her story offers a different perspective from Molly's that neither Linda nor Susan could give (especially since most books feature the three as a group).
The movie Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front gave Emily a greater role and a different backstory than the books; the mystery The Light in the Cellar also gave Emily a much greater role than she had previously had and fit itself within Molly's canon chronology. Her own book, Brave Emily, made the character more stereotypically British and focused on the differences between cultures.
The illustrations of Emily in Happy Birthday, Molly! were also edited to reflect the doll's looks. Her hair was lengthened from a bob to shoulder-length and her clothes were changed to reflect actual items released.
Ruthie
The only major change was giving Ruthie the doll grey eyes instead of the brown shown in books; however, illustrations were not majorly changed. Stirling Howard is also a close friend of Kit's but since AG does not make boy dolls outside of the Bitty Twins, he was never considered an option for a release.
Unreleased Best Friends
Other Historical Characters were never given official Best Friend characters. In part perception came that because all but Rebecca and Caroline have a best friend of color these characters were not released; however, the declining popularity of the line resulted in eventual termination.
Magnetic Mini Worlds, as well as Paper Doll sets and Play Scenes and Paper Dolls paired each girl with a "Best Friend":
- Kaya'aton'my: Speaking Rain[4]
- Josefina Montoya: Clara Montoya or Mariana
- Kirsten Larson: Singing Bird or her cousins, Anna Larson or Lisbeth Larson
- Addy Walker: Sarah Moore
- Rebecca Rubin: Ana Rubin[5]
- Caroline Abbott: Lydia Livingston[6]
Josefina does not technically have a prominent best friend; Clara is her older sister and Mariana was only mentioned in one book.[7] Both were shown in Josefina's Paper Dolls II and Clara was part of the Magnetic Mini World.
Much like Emily was marketed as "Molly's English Friend", the Magnetic Mini Worlds list Speaking Rain as "Kaya's Sister" and Clara as "Josefina's Sister." Ana is Rebecca's cousin and has significant presence in the series, as does Lydia in Caroline's.
References and Footnotes
- ↑ And one Girl of the Year.
- ↑ Announcement from American Girl's Facebook page
- ↑ Happy Birthday, Molly!, pg. 2-3: "No, just until her aunt gets better," said Molly. "But Mom says she'd be with us for a couple of weeks at least, and that means she'll be here for my birthday."
- ↑ Speaking Rain is her adopted sister/cousin.
- ↑ Based on Rebecca's Play Scenes and Paper Dolls and Rebecca's Fashion Design Portfolio.
- ↑ Based on Caroline's Play Scenes and Paper Dolls.
- ↑ While Emily was initially only in one book in Molly's Central Series, she was given further prominence in her mysteries and especially in the movie.