
An American Girl version of Netflix
goth girl Wednesday Addams sold out in one week last month -- a testament to the phenomenal popularity of the Charles Addams-inspired series “Wednesday.”
American Girl made only 6,000 of its 18-inch Wednesday doll, which was part of the Mattel-owned company’s limited edition “Collector Dolls” series.
One example is a current Collector Doll of Cinderella modeled on the lead character of the 1950 animated Disney
“Cinderella” movie to mark the film’s 75th anniversary. The Cinderella doll is priced as $310.
The Wednesday dolls were available to
purchase for only seven days -- from July 21 to July 27. Seen in the above photo with “Wednesday” star Jenny Ortega, the doll cost $275.
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It came
with accessories such as “Thing,” the famed, severed, living hand from the Addams Family universe who plays the role of silent sidekick to Wednesday on the Netflix series, and two faux
plastic bags filled with water and piranhas (not real, of course).
An Amazon listing for the doll deemed it appropriate for children 8+, although it is
reasonable to wonder how many young children have formed the “Wednesday” habit on Netflix.
The first, eight-episode season of
“Wednesday” premiered in November 2022. Season two consists of just four episodes. It started streaming Aug. 6 on Netflix.
Does the Wednesday
Addams of the “Wednesday” series really qualify as a quintessential “American girl”?
On the one hand, the character of Wednesday is an extreme version of a teenage girl archetype seen in movies and other TV shows who will be familiar to many parents.
But as befitting her upbringing in the household of Gomez and Morticia Addams (Luis Guzman and Catherine
Zeta-Jones), Wednesday is fascinated by death.
She is unsmiling, distrusting, sullen and stubborn. She talks a lot about violence and murder -- and investigates the latter --
but she herself is not especially violent, except when she is disabling a serial killer.
I have little or no knowledge about the American Girl line of dolls for
small girls, but I have a feeling none of them have ever been like Wednesday Addams.
In addition, she’s a teen, not a
small child, although the American Girl version imagines her as a little girl.
As a matter of fact, Wednesday was a
little girl in the first and still well-remembered adaptation of the Charles Addams characters for TV, “The Addams Family” (1964-66, ABC).
Played
by Lisa Loring, the Wednesday of that show was said to be six years old. But she too would not have fit the profile of an American Girl doll.
Among other things, she had a black widow spider named Homer and a lizard named Lucifer. Among her toys was a
headless Marie Antoinette doll.
An American Girl version of Wednesday Addams seems off-brand for the doll retailer. But a little simple arithmetic reveals
that Mattel grossed $1.65 million from its American Girl Wednesday dolls.
Meanwhile, the new season began earlier this month with Wednesday returning for
another year at Nevermore Academy, a kind of anti-Hogwarts whose students are all misfits with various paranormal abilities and tendencies.
In her first year
at the school in the first season of “Wednesday,” she was content with being unnoticed and left alone -- an outcast among outcasts.
But this
year, she is the center of unwanted attention because of her newfound celebrity status as a student sleuth.
Like goth teens everywhere, Wednesday cultivates an image of the outsider, while at the same time drawing the attention of others for that very reason.