I recieved Gwen and Hallie yesterday. I initially had decided to leave Gwen in her box as the Gwen for my niece and consider the Gwen doll in my second order as mine. On a whim, I decided to take her out of her box this morning so I could see what the doll is like. She's new, but her stringing is already loose. Not only are her arms and legs floppy, but her poseable head is also strung, so her head hangs forward and gives her a rather dejected appearance. And if you thought the dolls were creepy before: if you lie Hallie on her back and then pick her straight up, she's strung tightly and her joints remain stationary. However, if you do the same with Gwen, her loose knee and hip joints allow her legs to bend, and her head even flops backwards as if she has an odd case of whiplash. It's weird that this is a new doll but her stringing is already failing.
Getting her to the doll hospital won't be too much of a problem since I'm close enough to an AGP that I can hopefully just send her there to be shipped to the doll hospital. However, I thought I should pass on what the CS person told me. Apparently the AG doll hospital will no longer service the Hopscotch Hill dolls after the end of this year.
I understand the business reasons for the decision, especially since they'd no longer be producing parts to use as replacements so they couldn't offer full servicing on the dolls anyway, but the stuff holding these dolls together appears to be the same as that used to string the 18" dolls and, since they'd still have the elastic, it would just be a little more comforting if they kept the option open for customers to pay a fee if they needed to have a doll re-strung further on down the road. In the interests of learning the do-it-yourself method, does anyone have any idea how involved servicing the stringing on one of these dolls would be as compared to an AG doll?
