Many people are familiar with the typical Pleasant Company style catalogues, but the cover styles changed as Mattel took over the American Girl brand.
Examples of early to mid 90s Pleasant Company catalogue covers:
With the introduction of the modern doll line, American Girl of Today, the catalogue dropped “The American Girls Collection” byline from the cover and changed it to say “For American Girls!” at the bottom of the cover.
I don’t have any late 95 or 96 catalogues that show the byline at the bottom of the cover, however the Holiday 1997 one still uses the “For American Girls!” byline at the top of the cover page:
There are also multiple bubbles with important/interesting information on the cover page instead of just advertising anything noteworthy in the top right corner like the earlier catalogues.
Mattel bought the American Girl brand in 1998 and there was a transition period from Pleasant Company to Mattel from 1998 to 2000.
The Pleasant Company name was removed from the catalogue cover in 1998, replaced with the new “American Girl” logo with stars dotting the i’s in the brand name.
In 2000, the “Shop americangirl.com” byline was added.
This cover title style was in place until late 2002 when an updated title appeared. The catalogue covers now had the American Girl logo in a large font with the text spanning from edge to edge.
Below are some of the cover pages from Fall 2000 to Summer 2003.
I love looking through the old catalogues, there’s so much nostalgia. Peak nostalgia for me would probably be 2004 to the early 2010s, but my sister and I did have a Summer 2002 catalog that my mom had saved before we got into AG and a Holiday 2003 catalog we got from our cousin. They both are well loved catalogs.
What catalogues are most nostalgic to you? Is there a specific catalog you remember the most?