i’ve seen a bit of talk around the community about AG making less quality dolls and cutting corners. and like - you’re not imagining things, they absolutely are doing that. but there is a piece of this conversation that I think gets brushed over a lot, and i think it’s important: american girl dolls are cheaper then they used to be.
before you start telling me i’ve lost my mind, let’s look at some numbers. the original pleasant company dolls were manufactured in Germany and released in 1986; for a doll with her softcover book, the price was $68. “WAIT,” i hear you cry, “that’s less expensive!” however:
it’s actually pretty significantly MORE expensive.
even looking at the prices i remember from my own childhood:
not as much, but that’s still a bit more expensive that the ag dolls of today.
now, quite a few things have made this drop in cost possible. ag dolls are now produced in countries where labor markets are less regulated and therefore labor costs are cheaper (aka workers are able to be exploited for greater profits), modern tech has made some production processes faster and automated, and some materials are cheaper to acquire. however, ag has still absolutely lowered production quality as well. it’s hard to tell if they HAD to, but I would assume they did at least a bit, in order to keep the profit per doll at the same amount or increasing (which would be necessary to please investors, not have to do layoffs, etc.).
does that mean we should stop pointing out the flaws with newer dolls? no, absolutely not! what it DOES mean is that when we have discussions about ag’s decrease in quality, we ought to put those discussions in context.
this was prompted by a video on youtube that I just watched about ag’s quality control issues, which claimed the dolls are more expensive now than ever, and they are simply not. yes, they cost more United States Dollars than ever before, but the usd is worth less than what it used to be worth. even with the recent price increase, ag dolls are actually selling for less than they have for most of the brand’s history!
the reality is - ag can increase the price and make better quality dolls, or they can hold steady on the price and make lower quality dolls. they really do have to pick. and like. with the way people reacted when they increased the price recently, I’m pretty sure they’re going to be sticking with shrinkflation for a good few years coming up, whether you and I like it or not.
that does not, of course, mean they should not face criticism! they, like every other company choosing to lower quality rather than increase prices, are likely to try and get away with some nonsense. it is very tempting for companies to try and push lowered production costs as far as they can, but these dolls still cost $115! they should certainly still be high quality!
however, if you want the new dolls to be as high quality as the older dolls, you will likely be disappointed. I can’t think of any company that has willingly reversed course to have LESS of a profit margin without major pushback that would have eaten into their bottom line otherwise (stuff like perma panties).
this is a difficult conversation because the reality is, even with the cost dropping as inflation catches up, AG dolls are still quite expensive, and very inaccessible to most kids, and many adult collectors as well. i personally am happy that they’re slightly more accessible these days to the kids and collectors who love them (though wealth disparities in the us continue to increase, so are they actually accessible to any more people than they were back in the day when they were more expensive? idk), but im also stuck wishing they were a bit higher cost and higher quality, for my own personal enjoyment and collection.
sadly, there is no simple conclusion here. life is complicated. so are economies and the companies that participate in them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ nonetheless, may you go forth and continue to write well-deserved criticisms with just a bit more context behind you.
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I demand you speak about Hugin and Munin as characters because I think I'm missing something there
GRINS EVILLY
ok so just to preface i am a little bit biased because i love cool robots and i also love reading too much into media. i would also like to preface that's been a while since i played the game in it's entirety (i'm factchecking direct quotations obv) so i may misremember some stuff
while Hugin & Munin are at a first glance faceless, soulless killing machines - and that take is not entirely incorrect - there's actually quite a lot to dig under the surface. as is the nature of machines, they solely reflect humanity and their creators. they're trained on Mihaly's (and presumably others' as well) flight data, and that data is not a neutral statistic. it's something thats been carefully trained and cultivated and influenced throughout a lifetime. they're powered by onboard AI and are shown to have complex thought processes related to their mission and how to accomplish it. they strategize, they plan ahead, they notice Trigger's exceptional skill and bait him out to continue learning from him. the reasonable assumption to make is that they at least have more going on under the hood than simply "kill on sight" and "make more drones" though that is their primary objective as instructed in their code.
once again evoking the imagery of mirrors and reflection, Hugin & Munin are exceptionally packed with symbolism and parallels to previous events and characters and, like i mentioned, are the thematic bow on which everything is tied up. They're Mihaly's severed wings, they're Schroeder's egotism, they're Trigger's final test, they're the great evil that both sides must come together to defeat. it makes me think about how trying to anthropomorphize and project humanity onto something will always yield a reflection of the self, irrelevant to if it has it's own inner world or not (cough cough, neurodivergent in me, ironically, projecting…)
they're the ultimate enemy in that nothing they do is personal or bloodlust or power hunger, they're simply doing what they were programmed to do. and all of it when they were less than a day old. newborns. it almost makes me sad in a weird way. i'm sure a peaceful solution could've been possible if somehow Schroeder could've remotely neutered the murderbot part of their AI, but oh well.
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