American Girl hopes a pint-sized doll cures its multimillion-dollar problem

Times have been tough for toymaker American Girl.

First, Queen Elsa from “Frozen” took the doll aisle by storm, icing out other players. Then, last year, American Girl spiffed up the marketing and packaging of some of its dolls, only to find it didn’t drive store traffic like executives hoped. Sales at the brand, owned by El Segundo-based Mattel Inc., fell 7% last year to to $572 million even as the toy industry overall had its best year in more than a decade.

On Wednesday, the company reported that business has only gotten worse since then, with American Girl’s sales plunging 19% in the second quarter.

So in recent weeks, American Girl has launched what it hopes will solve the problem: a line of dolls dubbed WellieWishers, sold for about half the price of classic American Girl dolls. It’s the first time in more than a decade that the toy brand has added a new collection.

WellieWishers is not just an effort to shake up the brand’s pricing strategy. It is also a bid to shore up a struggling business by taking it to a different audience. American Girl has made its name with gear that targets girls ages 8 and older, but WellieWishers is for the 5- to 7-year-old crowd.

Their arrival in stores serves as a test of whether the 30-year-old brand can evolve for a new generation of parents — and an intensely competitive toy market.

The WellieWishers characters are five outdoorsy girls who spend their days clomping around a backyard garden. The companion books feature stories meant to teach girls lessons about kindness, cooperation and taking turns. The “Wellie” in their name is a reference to their brightly colored rain boots, intended to give off the vibe that the dolls are always ready for an adventurous splash in the mud.

American Girl had to figure out how to make them more cheaply than it does its other dolls. That’s why WellieWishers stand 14 inches tall, compared to 18 inches for other American Girl dolls. They also have hard, plastic bodies instead of soft ones, and “fixed eyes” that don’t blink.

One place Mattel didn’t try to trim costs was the dolls’ hair. Julia Prohaska, American Girl’s vice president of marketing, said the team believed the figurines needed to be able to “withstand hours of hair play.”

Halzack writes for the Washington Post.