Okay, normally I wouldn't use such a capitalized, click bait title, but I want this to show up in the search results, and that's my attempt at that.
For those of you stumbling upon this for the firsts time, I don't write on this blog regularly at all, I'm mostly active on the r/americangirl subreddit, where I moderate a wonderful community of American Girl Doll collectors and fans who discuss AG.
Recently, there's been an uptick in posts asking about the Doll Hospital. I've written many long, long, drawling comments because I just can't stop talking about the injustices committed by AG in the Doll Hospital. So, I thought I'd use my potentially autistic "strong sense of justice" and compile everything here in another place, so I don't have to continually link through Reddit and worry about losing place of certain comments I've made elsewhere.
And with that introduction, Let's Get Started (Part 1)
Recently, American Girl changed the name of this place from the "Doll Hospital" to the "Doll Care Center". Much like the Twitter to "X" rebrand, nobody calls it the doll care center. EVERYONE still refers to it as the Doll Hospital.
On their website AG says this about the change. "The new name reflects the more complete care experience we offer that goes beyond repair services, to include skin cleaning, hair brushing, restyling, and more.".
However, I am reminded of "shrinkflation" and the way that companies will shrink products and then put a label on the new, smaller version of the product that says something like "improved formula" or "__% more!" to try and fool customers into believe the product is now better, when in reality it is usually smaller or changed in some way.
I believe, though it is purely my own speculation, that this is the real reason American Girl has changed the doll hospital. It is to hide some sort of downgrade, whether it's keeping less of a variety of doll heads in stock so certain dolls can no longer have their head replaced, or potentially trying to hide bad experiences labeled with "doll hospital", though that second idea is less likely I feel. I do not trust in any way that the doll hospital has been improved as a result of this change.
Also consider that a "hospital" implies really deep fixing of things, maybe saving a life, perhaps making a doll more complete, whereas "care center" shifts the focus to more surface-level things and doesn't get you thinking about the complexities of doll repair like "hospital" does...
In fact, if you analyze this sentence really closely the "skin cleaning, hair brushing, restyling and more" is something they have ALWAYS done, it's nothing new. It was previously called a "wellness visit". They go on to say that the doll care center has the same services and is the same thing, but what an interesting bit of corporate language!
All dolls are eligible for the "Refresh and Renew" service, which allows you to choose one service from the following 4
1- head reattachment- NOT replacement
2- Limb reattachment- NOT replacement
3-eye replacement- these can actually be replaced
4-Wellness visit, which is cleaning the doll's body and re-styling their hair.
The Refresh and Renew tier is $45.
The "Care and Repair" option includes most of the same things, but with full replacement of the Head, body or limbs rather than simply reattaching those parts.
1- Head replacement- On their website they include a parenthetical (Includes hair and eyes). This to me seems to be for those who only want one thing changed about a doll's head, which the doll hospital has never done. They cannot replace wigs, they ONLY replace heads in order to give a doll new hair. The eyes can be replaced separately from the head, but the wigs cannot be. More info about why I think this is the case later.
2- Limb replacement only
3- Torso replacement only
The Advanced Care and Repair includes the same services as listed above, but this time you get to select two of them rather than only one.
Now, to their credit, dolls still come back with a hospital gown, socks, ID bracelet, get well soon card and certificate of good health, so thankfully they haven't started skimping too hard on the freebies you get with your purchase of their services. That is one good thing in all of this.
Part 2
This brings me to one of the first MAJOR issues with the doll hospital, head replacements. Up until a few years ago, ANY doll from ANY time period could have their head replaced. They had exact replacements available for every doll, even if it was retired. That is not the case anymore. There are several dolls that cannot have their heads replaced at the doll hospital. These dolls are still eligible for the other services, but the doll hospital will not be able to give you a new head.
We've tried to keep a list of these dolls for the subreddit. However, it's nearly impossible to do so. There have been conflicting reports from different customer service representatives about which dolls can and which ones can't have their head replaced. Sometimes they'll say a certain head is available, but that head is a version which looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the original head.
Kanani is my go-to example of this. They ran out of Kanani heads a while ago, BUT they released a new Truly Me doll that looks nearly identical to Kanani.... but the heads are absolutely different.
The problem is that most people are NOT told about this upfront. It's usually not until they've sent the doll off that they get an mail saying the replacement won't be exactly the same. See this tumblr post for more information about Kanani. There are some other dolls they do this with too.
In this video, this collector sends a Lindsey doll into the doll hospital, only to receive a Truly Me #23 upon her arrival. Now, American Girl did send an email saying that Lindsey doesn't have a head replacement available, but they went ahead and made the repairs because they didn't get a response in time. AG keeps the original parts for 30 days, but YOU as the consumer have to send the doll back and then wait for AG to send you your original doll back. This collector also mentions in the video that Christmas is in 30 days, and there's NOT ENOUGH TIME to get the original doll back in time for that!!! They replaced the limbs too because they didn't match the new head, so in effect that is a completely new, completely different doll.
Now, the collector in the video wasn't terribly upset, but imagine if it was a child. Imagine if you had sent a doll you absolutely loved for your entire childhood to the doll hospital, and they came back COMPLETELY different!!!
Again I'd like to remind you, this person was NOT AWARE of this UNTIL they had already sent their doll into the hospital.
AG claimed that this doll had been "upgraded" to a new #23 doll. They are NOT the same doll. In the video he says it's a gift for his niece, so he's not too upset. However, as a collector, or even if I was a kid, I would be PISSED if I sent in a doll and got a completely different one back.
I've included some photos in case you aren't as well-versed in AG and need to know the difference between these two dolls.
For Reference, Lindsey Bergman, Girl of the Year 2001
Truly Me #23
Differences between the two:
-Different wig
-Lindsey has feathered eyebrows, #23 has line eyebrows
-The doll eye colors may vary, as Lindsey has particularly light blue eyes that are different from Kit's eyes.
As an additional resource, This is what our subreddit list of dolls that can't get head replacements currently looks like...
PLEASE CALL AG IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, DO NOT TRUST ANY LIST, AND CALL MULTIPLE TIMES TO CONFIRM
Lindsey #12
Marisol #4
Jess
Cécile
Kanani
Ivy
While everyone in the collecting community knows that this kind of thing happens, everyone outside of the collecting community is typically COMPLETELY unaware of it, or only made aware when they get an email from the doll hospital, after their doll is already miles away and the control is out of their hands. This replacement of certain heads with similar but not the same matches isn't mentioned on the AG website, in any marketing for the hospital, etc. It's always presented as "send your doll in, and we'll do the rest".
I have read countless stories of people who send a doll in for a head replacement, and are disappointed when the doll comes back different. Whether it's because they weren't aware of how much the face on the doll had changed, or because they had an attachment to the doll's smell or particular features, there has been major disappointment with the doll hospital, and you will never find ANY mention of it on AG's website or social media.
Even if you google for it, there is nothing that blatantly states "some dolls have their heads replaced with completely different ones". You basically HAVE to ask collectors or else you'd never know.
Thus, we have included this warning in the subreddit wiki page on the topic:
"While many people have had successful experiences with the doll hospital, please keep in mind that there is always a risk that your doll will come back to you different in some way than they were before. Head replacements are made using the most recent stock, so dolls sent in with a Pleasant Company head will come back with a Mattel head. Other small details about the doll may change, such as their eyelashes, smell, the squishiness of the vinyl, or other details. Although there is a text box labeled "Anything else you would like us to know?" on the admission form, those details do not always make it to the technicians working on the dolls. Remember, you do not have control over your doll once you send them to the AG doll hospital.
Therefore, it is the advice of r/americangirl that if you are in ANY way attached to ANY detail of your doll, and would be disappointed if they came back different in any way, no matter how small, that you find an independent doll hospital or doll repair service that is not from the American Girl brand."
Part 3
So, that's a major issue, that there's essentially no transparency on exactly what dolls can and can't have exact head replacements, and when a doll's head is being replaced with something completely different. However, after talking about this problem over and over again on the subreddit, I began to question, why do they do this? What's their motive behind this mindset of simply fully replacing things.
And I finally kind of figured it out, or at least have a working theory.
See, the AG doll hospital is a warranty repair center. Its purpose is to fulfill AG's obligation to the warranty of their products. Since it is a warranty repair center, they tend to focus more on replacing products, rather than fixing what's sent in. However, the doll hospital is marketed as this place where any and every AG doll can be magically fixed up. So, the public gets the impression that the doll hospital cares deeply about each doll and will do whatever it takes to fix the issues a particular doll has. In reality, it's basically just a replacement for your current doll, and when they can't replace your doll, they don't care.
I find it to be a corporate atrocity that so many people send in their dolls to the doll hospital and then get duped either with a completely different head, repairs they didn't request or pay for, or are generally blindsided by something AG should have been transparent about.
In the real world, when we get something like a car or other machine fixed, you usually receive some sort of work order or invoice with notes from the technician on what exactly they did. AG may include a receipt of what tier you paid for, but they have never included notes from the person who actually worked on your doll. While they do include some letters for some things, like replacing a doll's head with one that's completely different or covering the fee for silver eye replacement, you will never see notes on who actually touched your doll or what they actually, specifically did to it.
In fact,
in this video a tiktok creator openly says that she does not know if AG replaced her doll entirely or not. She did get a new Mattel head, but the body isn't revealed in the video. However, I wouldn't be surprised if AG gave her a COMPLETELY new doll, that being new head, torso AND limbs.
I find it unnerving that even she cannot say with complete certainty either "I got a completely new doll" or "I got the same body but not the same head". If I was to use the doll hospital's services again, I would really like to know exactly what they did.
My Story
So, here I'm going to put my story, just because I'd like for it to be in as many places as possible. In 2015, I sent a Lindsey doll into the doll hospital. I needed her head and limbs replaced, but I put in the box for additional comments that I wanted them to keep her body, because she had a pleasant company body with the flat neckline that I was happy to have in my collection. When I got this doll back, the neckline was wrinkled. I fully believe they completely replaced my doll and completely threw out the old one.
Now, that was the story, but fun fact, I recorded opening her 9 years ago!
It's in two parts, part one is me just opening the box, but in
Part two I even say "yeah I think they just completely replaced the doll" and "They literally just gave me a brand new Lindsey doll". I was only 14 at the time, but I could absolutely tell.
Part 4
So far we've been looking at the doll hospital as it pertains to replacements people have paid for. But, what if you didn't pay for or request a replacement? I know I didn't pay for them to replace my torso, and I never was given any letter or notice that said "we replaced the torso free of charge". There surely have been instances where other people too have sent a doll in and gotten a new doll body or limbs when they didn't request it. This leads us to the question, what processes does the doll hospital use to "repair" dolls?
Now, one of the circumstances where this typically happens is when the new head doesn't match the tone of the vinyl body, so they'll replace all the limbs so that everything matches. This may have been the case with my Lindsey doll, who got a head replacement that was probably a different color than the limbs, so they just gave me an entirely new doll, torso and all.
So, again the question still remains, what exactly does the doll hospital do if they're not completely replacing a doll?
I wrote out a very long comment on Reddit explaining how I believe the doll hospital processes are carried out and how they've changed over time. In fact it was so large that I had to split it up into three different parts in order to be able to even submit it to Reddit. I'm going to put the full text here, but split it up and try to provide some additional commentary and not just copy-paste the text.
"So, the original Pleasant Company limb construction used thick elastic cord. You put a small brass ferrule around the cord (ferrule is the technical name for it, but you'll see around the sub I usually call it a brass clamp because not everybody knows what a ferrule is, and the size needed for AG dolls doesn't even come up if you search just generally for "brass ferrule"), crimp it, then take the elastic and thread it from the inside of a limb through a white tension cup and the doll's body, then pull the elastic tight and add a second brass ferrule to crimp the elastic and hold it while it is stretched, creating the tightness."
I won't include photographs here simply because I'm writing this for those who have just recently found out about the doll hospital. If you would like more resources on limb stringing and restoration, look at the r/americangirl wiki
here.
"So, the doll hospital and AG did this method for a while. Until sometime in the 2010s, I would say around the time of Beforever if I had to guess (there was this, the bad eyes, the permapanties, etc), they changed the method. Instead of brass ferrules, they started using these plastic pieces, I'll try to find a picture later. They were kind of T-shaped and fulfilled the same purpose as the brass ferrules, but they're plastic so they saved AG money because they're cheaper to produce. "
I still haven't been able to find a photo of these pieces, but one exists somewhere. When or if I find it, I'll update here with that photo.
"The doll hospital, at least as far as I know, then followed this method instead. Because the doll hospital is a warranty repair center run by the company, they typically are assumed to use and follow the same procedures the dolls currently in production used. So, dolls that come in with a zip tie get a zip tie. Those with neck strings typically remain with neck strings (if you've ever done a neck string replacement yourself, you know how hard those shoulder seams can be to get a safety pin through). Heads are replaced with the latest and most recent stock, hence why all the Pleasant Company dolls come back looking completely different, because it is in fact a different head with all the changes over time. Sometimes AG is transparent about this, but in general marketing and the explanations presented on the website they're very vague, because of course people don't want to send in the doll if they know it might come back different, hence less money for them."
I still stand by all of the above.
"Dolls that need limb replacements though typically need new hardware, as you can't really un-crimp and re-use the brass ferrules (maybe you can but it's incredibly time consuming, and time is EVERYTHING in the doll hospital). So, those dolls get the latest hardware, that being the plastic pieces. The plastic pieces are alright but again, they are meant to be cheaper and may be a reason a doll has limbs that become looser faster. "
One important point here that I haven't managed to put in earlier, although it is very important, the doll hospital is very constrained on TIME. They have thousands of dolls that come through, and while the current turnaround time is listed on the website as 2-4 weeks, it is generally known by the AG fan and collector community that this can go up to 6 or 8 weeks during peak times of the year, like around Christmas where people want their dolls fixed for a holiday gift.
Time is another reason I think AG only does head replacements and tends to give entirely new bodies and limbs rather than only replacing limbs. When I stated this on the subreddit I had someone tell me that limb replacement wasn't super long.
For us collectors working on just one or a few dolls, it may not take very long, but when you're the doll hospital and have thousands of dolls that need repair, with a 2-4 week turnaround, you are trying to repair the dolls as fast as possible. This thus gives incentive for them to do all of the things I described in the prior parts, because that makes the process faster, even if it's at the cost of a few disappointed people.
"THEN later on AG started only knotting the elastic. Not entirely sure where this stands now, but they ditched the plastic pieces entirely and simply knot the elastic. This method leads to limbs that start out tight, but become loose faster, at least so far as I know. "
If you've ever had shoelaces come undone, you know that one knot isn't going to hold much, especially in a thicker cord like the elastic used to string AG dolls. Knots also stretch out the elastic much more than a crimp. One day I will do an experiment and have actual photos and results to prove my hypotheses correct.
"It reminds me of how DIY limb-tightening used to consist of a standard hair ponytail rubberband that would get wrapped around the elastic in between the brass ferrule and the tension cup. I tried it once, it did not work one bit. Even if it did work, it's not a good solution, because all you're doing is stretching the elastic out EVEN MORE, making the problem worse in the long run."
Yeah don't waste your time trying to use hairbands to help the problem. It was a popular thing back in the day, it does not work and is a waste of time.
"Truthfully there's no way to know what techniques they're using, other than to send dolls in over and over again and analyze the results. If I had the money and time I absolutely would do this, but I haven't even had a doll to send to the hospital since like 2017 with permapanties."
Here is where my main issue is, at least I hinted at it subtly here. There is no way to know what process the doll hospital is using to fix your doll. Maybe each technician does it differently, maybe they are actually using brass crimps and we're all mistaken, we just don't know!
I think a lot of people would see the amount of text I've written here on this topic and go "why? why are you complaining and talking about this if you don't send dolls into the doll hospital?". I want company transparency on these services! I hate seeing people send in a doll and get disappointed because they replaced the head with something different or made a change the person didn't want only because they weren't aware or informed that this is what it can be like for some people.
This is not a doll issue, this is a company transparency and customer trust issue.
When is the Doll Hospital a good option?
After this giant post, and my many comments and posts on reddit, you may think that I hate the doll hospital. This isn't true, I'm really happy it's an option and that it still exists this far into the company's history. This CAN be a good option for some people. If you aren't attached to the doll you found at the thrift and you just need a new head, it's a wonderful option. If you don't care that the doll comes back looking different, that's great, the price isn't even that bad for everything they offer.
However, if you have a doll that is sentimental to you in some way, those changes can be devastating. There are kids too who can absolutely tell when their doll looks different, this isn't just a collector's problem.
What can you do if you've had a bad experience?
If you have had a bad experience with the doll hospital, or if they have performed a service you didn't request or pay for, please fill out this survey so we can record these experiences for our community. You are also welcome to post, but posts will become buried with time and this allows for us to have a much better picture of what kinds of experiences people are having with the doll hospital.
Alright, we're at the end
If you've made it all the way here, congratulations! I'm not going to get into every process from the doll hospital, like eye replacement or limb tightening (rather than just replacement), just because those are conversations that are kind of separate from the main issue here, I simply used the restringing and elastic as an example of how the processes at the doll hospital are so obscured that nobody actually knows what's going on there. Please put all of your comments or reactions into posts and comments on r/americangirl, as I don't read comments here. Signing off for now, I hope this helps everyone!
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