Tag question

Hi gang!
My ten 1/2 year old Addy is not tagged. Why not? She came from PC the first year she was introduced. The ebay sellers are always mentioning older dolls tags.Why would my beloved Addy not be tagged? [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]

None of my old dolls have body tags- not one. Mine were all purchased early on. Molly, Sam and Kirsten were all pre 1990 and Addy was when she first came out. My newer ones do have tags. I think it is just because they are older.

Many older dolls were not tagged. The tags they had were only in their clothing. My White Sam has no tags except for her clothing. Your Addy probably has the same thing.

My three early dolls are not tagged either.

You have to watch out for ebay sellers and never trust anything they say as Gospel. There are many, many honest ebay sellers, but there are also dishonest or uninformed sellers as well. It is desirable to have older AG dolls so a lot of sellers try to pass off a newer doll as older. None of my pre-Mattel dolls have tags either. I have seen sellers state that something is retired when it isn't and there was even a seller today who had a doll that had the marking above the ear. In the auction she said it meant the doll was German made. I told her that the markings were not necessarily Gotz and that no one really knew what the markings were. I also told her that not all older dolls have the mark and some new AG dolls do. She wrote me back and said she didn't know that and she had gotten her information from another seller who was obviously misinformed. So, a lot of seller don't even do their research, but instead copy things they have seen other sellers write about their auctions even if they are inaccurate.

Kim [img]smile.gif[/img]

I don't know much about the older dolls, and how to distiguish them. But I hope someone can shed some light on a Felicity I got from ebay a while back. She DOES have a body tag marked Pleasant Company 1986, but Felicity wasn't introduced until 1991, right? Do you think this could possibly be a fake? If I ever figure out how to post an album, I'll have some pictures!

None of my older girls have tags on their bodies either. I don't think the Felicity with a tag is fake. I think she is a newer China made Felicity. It seems to be the China made dolls that have body tags. The body mold was copyrighted in 1986 and they probably have tons of bodies in the factory and pop on whatever head.

To distinguish older dolls from newer ones
Felicity's hair is redder
Felicity's eyes are lighter green
Sam's hair is lighter
Sam's eyes are darker
Molly's hair is lighter
Skin tone is shinier and darker
face shape is thinner and more oval
eyes are inset and molded

This might be a question for Sarah S's FAQ if it's not there already!

Our Felicity's body tag says made in Germany for Pleasant company, c Pleasant company 1986. Any ideas? I'm not the original owner, so I don't know her history! The dress she came with is tagged made in China for Pleasant Company 1993. [img]confused.gif[/img]

Thanks Robin! I should add this sort of info, it comes up a lot. But how shall I define "older" and "newer"? We don't really have a cutting-off point, do we? Or are we talking German vs. Chinese? And if we are, are we positive we are? [img]tongue.gif[/img] Part of the reason I'm afraid to talk about dating facts with the dolls is there are so many we're not totally sure are facts.

For what it's worth, I think the "made in Germany" body tags for the dolls may have started around 1995. Addy was released in 1993 -- I bought mine as soon as I could and she doesn't have a body tag. (None of my earlier dolls that I bought from Pleasant Co. do either.) The next new doll that was released in 1995 turned out to be the American Girl of Today series. Gina is one of the first AGTs (again, I raced from the mailbox to the phone with my catalog!) and she has a "made in Germany" body tag. Her box label says something like "Made in Germany, Spain, China" and I think that referred to the various places that clothing was manufactured as well as the doll. For example, the dolls' stockings were made in Spain originally. I'd have to look but I think Gina's white shirt was made in China.

Addy's cutter sled was the first plastic item I ever received from Pleasant Co. and that was always made in China and first released in 1994. There was also a recall of Felicity's tarts that were purchased early in 1996, because the first tarts made in China were painted with lead-based paint! Before that the tarts were made somewhere else and the coloring was more realistic. Kirsten's strawberries also changed around that time and became less detailed and differently colored because they were made in China. So I think that the 1995 to 1997 period was when more and more of the accessories were made in China and the body tags were used to identify that the doll herself was still being made in Germany. When Josefina came out in 1997, the doll was made in China, too! I was so dumb-founded that I went back and read the labels on all my doll boxes before Josefina and that's when I noticed that other countries besides Germany were shown on the labels. I hope this helps.