Gwynn Tan by American Girl

I got a little nostalgic about the blog this week.  As I was writing today's review, which features Gywnn Tan, a 14-inch American Girl doll, I thought to myself, "I should reference the WellieWishers review I wrote not so long ago."  Well, "not so long ago" turns out to be six years ago.  I was struck by my commentary at that time; I mentioned being caught up in our town's high school musical, which was, indeed, a big part of my life back then.  But both of my kids were in high school six years ago...and now they're done with college and interviewing for jobs.  Ack!  And I know from the wonderful letters that I've gotten over the years that many of you were little when you first started reading this blog (some of you even wrote guest reviews!) and are now in college or working at jobs of your own.  It's crazy.  The doll world can slow time in funny ways (the WellieWisher kids are the same age they were six years ago, after all) but real life forges ahead.

Enough about that, though.  Let me tell you a little bit about why I'm bothering to revisit this style of doll six years later.  The first reason is simply that I'm excited about Corinne, American Girl's Girl of the Year for 2022.  I'm excited about Corinne because she's the first Chinese Girl of the Year, and I'm also excited because she has doll siblings--like Gwynn!  Corinne herself will make an appearance on the blog at some point in the future, but for now I'm focusing my attention on her little sister.

I'm focused on Gwynn because of the larger purpose of this review.  I've noticed a variety of 14-inch dolls on the market over the past few months, and, because I tend to get obsessive about certain ideas or styles of doll, I bought five of those different varieties.  These five dolls aren't different enough to each need long, complicated reviews, so I had the idea to run a series of shorter, interconnected reviews that will take a more comparative look at the five brands.  Every comparison series needs to start somewhere, and with some benchmark, so I figured where better to start than with one of America's most popular doll brands?  With all of that in mind, here's Miss Gwynn Tan to kick off this 14-inch doll extravaganza:

Gwynn Tan by American Girl, $65.

Gwynn's list price is $65, but I was fortunate enough to find her on sale last month for $52.  I didn't realize American Girl had sales that good, so I need to pay more attention!  Of course with shipping and tax, I still ended up paying around $65 in total.

Gwynn arrived in a simple cardboard box that has the same basic concept as the WellieWishers boxes, but is less fanciful:

I miss the whimsy of the WellieWisher's box:

But it's neat to see the Girl of the Year designation on a 14-inch doll!

The back of the box is plain white cardboard, with some safety warnings and recycling information:

Gwynn was secured in the box with a few stretchy plastic ties, and also a molded plastic shell behind her head:

For the most part, the packaging is wonderfully simple and easy to deal with.  It is also almost completely recyclable.

Here's little Gwynn on her own:

She's adorable.

She balances pretty well, but I noticed right away that her head tips to one side:

The left head tilt is endearing, and I like it, but I'm not sure it's intentional.  The Gwynn in the box photo has a straight head:

It's hard to find a photo of Gwynn facing straight forward on the American Girl website, but this one is pretty close...and her head doesn't look tipped to the side at all:

Corinne's brother Blix is adorable, too!

In addition to tipping to the left, Gwynn's head tilts upwards quite a bit, and this is something I noticed in photos of other Gwynn dolls.

Here's a straightened-out look at Gwynn's sweet face:

As far as I can tell without having both dolls side by side, Gwynn has the same face mold as the current WellieWisher Emerson.  Emerson has a different skin tone, though, which can make her features look slightly different:

I love her unicorn outfit!

There are two other WellieWisher face molds at the moment, both of which were in my older review.  Willa has one of those faces:

And Kendall has the other:

I like Willa's smile the best out of these three, but all of the faces are very cute.

The WellieWishers on the American Girl website right now say that they're "new and improved," so I suspect there might have been some modifications to these faces over the years.  But the older dolls look fairly similar to the current versions:

Here's the current Willa:

And here's Kendall:

I can't really tell any difference between the old dolls and the new dolls--at least from these photos.

Gwynn's wigged hair comes tied into two braids:

There's no center part in the back, but there are short hairs in the wig that help conceal the wig cap:

That looks pretty good!

In profile, Gwynn has a small nose and chin, and simplified ears:

Here's a closer look:

You can choose to get her ears pierced, but it costs $16.

I like Gwynn's half-profile a lot.  She looks very inquisitive.  I think the head tilt contributes to that!

Gwynn has heavy bangs, so I clipped those to the side to get a peek at her eyebrows:

Those eyebrows are super-cute!  I wish they weren't covered up all of the time.  They have more of an arch to them than either Willa or Kendall's brows.  Here's a shot of Willa's eyebrows for comparison:

Gwynn has fewer eyelashes than Willa, too.  She only has lashes on the top of her eyes, and these are made up of six short hair lines:

Anyway, the eyes themselves are dark brown and have some nice, realistic iris detail.  The iris pattern looks slightly blurry to me--not perfectly crisp and clear.  As if the iris is out of focus.

I remember being worried that Kendall's eyes would fade over time, but of course I no longer have her so I don't know the fate of those eyes.  All I can say is that for some reason, these eyes make me nervous.  Maybe I've just seen too many faded doll eyes in my life!

Gwynn has a pretty mouth, with a full upper lip and the classic American Girl front teeth:

My husband calls these "gopher teeth."

Here are real gopher teeth, for your information:

Haters gonna hate.

But seriously, I like the shape of Gwynn's mouth more than many of the full-sized American Girl face molds!

To me, one of the best things about the WellieWishers is their creative, colorful outfits and wonderful namesake boots.  There's no reason for Gwynn to share this aesthetic since she's not technically a WellieWisher, but I still feel disappointed that her outfit is missing that Wellie whimsy.

Gwynn's outfit includes a purple sweater, a pink sherpa skirt, white leggings, and purple boots:

Here's the outfit from the back:

The sweater comes tucked into the skirt, so let's look at the skirt first:

The design of this skirt is very simple, with a single metal button at the top of the stitched fly.  The skirt has an elastic waist and no velcro in the back.

The stitching on this skirt looks very robust, but the pink fuzzy fabric feels thin to me.  I find myself worrying that I will stretch the fabric out of shape as I'm maneuvering the skirt over Gwynn's legs and hips.

Also, the lack of a velcro or snap closure in back makes this skirt a bit hard to manage.  It's easy to remove, but putting it back on again takes some work and puts a lot of stress on the waistband.

Gwynn's purple sweater has a lot of detail and looks good...but it also looks like something that the popular kids wore in the 1980s.  Are puffed-sleeve sweaters popular again?  I guess so.

I have to say, the shape of this sweater reminds me a little of ice skating outfits from the 80s, which fits with Gwynn's character--from what I understand.

The sleeves were a little flat right out of the box, but they can be puffed up a little more, like this:

The sweater also has an indentation in the middle where the waistband of the skirt cut in.  Maybe this could be ironed or washed out, but it didn't relax on its own throughout the short time I was interacting with Gwynn.

The construction of the sweater is really nice.  It's not all one knitted piece, of course, but the knitted parts are beautifully assembled, with a delicate ribbed collar and evenly-spaced gathers along the puffed part of the sleeves.  

There's also a velcro seam in back for easy dressing:

The internal seams are very neat and well-enforced:

Gwynn's boots coordinate nicely with her sweater:

These are made out of purple imitation leather, and have multicolored fur around the top: 

The outer edges of the boots wrap around and meet in an overlapping area that creates a bit of a slit that allows the boots to slide easily on and off.

Gwynn's leggings seem like a dismissible item of clothing at first glance, but they're actually quite nice.  The fabric is thick and has some shine, and they feel durable:

They're easier to use than the skirt.

Under the leggings, Gwynn is wearing pink underwear:

The pink underwear is the same as what came with both of my older WellieWishers, but it was clear right away that there have been some changes to this body over the last six years.  

Here's Gwynn next to Willa so you can see what I mean:

First of all, in the comparison pictures, above, Gwynn's legs looks skinnier than Willa's, but I think that's a result of the fact that I had to photograph Gwynn from above looking down--so that her upward-facing head was looking at the camera.

The biggest difference I can see is that Willa's torso is made out of hollow plastic, but Gwynn's torso is vinyl.  It's not solid, but it feels heavy and substantial.  Also, the color of the torso matches the limbs perfectly since everything is made out of the same material.

Another nice feature of the vinyl torso is that while Willa has an obvious seam along her side...

That looks a little cheap.

Gwynn does not have this seam:

Seamless.

Gwynn's body has five simple points of articulation:

And she has molded underwear with the WellieWisher "W:"

On her back, she has a large American Girl copyright mark:

Here's a closer look:

There's not a lot to say about Gwynn's articulation, but I'll take a moment to run through all of her joints.

Gwynn's neck joint has only simple rotation.  This is disappointing.  A simple neck works well for the cloth-bodied American Girl dolls, since there's flexibility in the stuffed chest, but for an all-vinyl doll, this type of neck joint is restricting.  I'm starting to sound like a broken record, I know, but I feel strongly that a highly-movable head makes a big difference in a doll's personality.

Like so many dolls, Gwynn's upwards-glancing head turns ever more upwards as she rotates it to the side:

The upward glancing poses are cute, for sure, but this doll cannot look straight forward if her head is at all turned.

What are you looking for, Gwynn?

Head in the clouds.

When she's facing backwards, Gwynn's head looks all of the way up to the ceiling!

That pose allowed me to appreciate the detail in her chin mold, though.  Pretty cute, right?

Gwynn's arms also have only simple rotation, so she can raise them straight up, but can't lift them out to the sides or away from her body at all.

She can sit on the ground, but only in this exact position:

Gwynn's legs do not angle apart as much as Willa's do, which is interesting:

Gwynn can also do solid front-to-back splits.  In this next picture, it looks like she needs the support of her left arm to stay upright, but she does not:

Willa's splits look almost identical, but her back foot rotates a bit more into a flat position:

Gwynn has the same hand mold as Willa, and this is basically a scaled-down version of the regular American Girl hand:

Gwynn's feet are the same as Willa's, too:

Once I'd taken a look at Gwynn's joints, I let down her braided hair.  The braids looked really sweet, but they made it hard to evaluate the texture of the hair:

It's hard to tell in pictures, but this is wonderful hair.  It's extremely silky and smooth, and the braid crimps disappeared mere moments after I'd taken the braids out:

The hair doesn't even need to be brushed very often--it hangs beautifully.

I love the color of the hair, too.  It's not just pure black, but has subtle highlights of medium brown that make it look very realistic:

While her hair was still down, I put Gwynn back into her full outfit.  At first, I left the sweater untucked to see how it would look:

Who tucks their sweater in?

I had high hopes that the untucked sweater would look nice and a bit less formal, but it doesn't look great.  First of all, the fit is too tight for it to lay nicely over the bulky skirt, and also that crease across the middle is distracting.

So I tucked the sweater back into the skirt:

I'm conflicted about this outfit.  The pieces are well-made and have nice textures and details, but it just looks uncomfortable to me.  The tucked in sweater, the puffy sleeves, the extreme shortness of the skirt...and does the color of the skirt even go with that sweater??  I don't know.  It's not my favorite doll outfit, but I can appreciate its originality.

I also suspect that it's fun for kids to use Gwynn's wardrobe to give a new style of clothing to their WellieWishers.  As much as I love the fantasy theme of the WellieWisher clothing, it's not very accurate to what a real little girl would wear every day.  I'm not sure Gwynn's outfit is any more accurate, honestly, but it's certainly different.

I'm curious what this little cutie would look like wearing a different outfit or with a different color palette.  I don't have any other 14-inch clothing available to try right at the moment, but I'll have at least four more outfits by the time this series of reviews is over!

Before I forget, I should give you some size comparisons.  It's quite easy to find photos of Gwynn with Corinne, so you can see how tall she is in relationship to a standard 18-inch doll, but here she is with Paola Reina's Las Amigas doll and my Barbie assistant, Lina:

From left: Paola Reina Las Amigas doll, American Girl Gwynn, Barbie Lina.

The last thing I wanted to do with Gwynn was to see how easy it is to re-braid her hair.  

It's very easy:

However, as you can see, I wasn't able to get all of the short wig hairs to tuck in as neatly as they were in the original style:

A few chunks sticking out there on the left.

I think I slightly prefer Gwynn with her hair down, but that might just be because the hair feels so nice!  It's a shame to have it braided:

As usual, I wanted to get a few photos of Gwynn outside in the natural light, but this part of the review definitely made me feel nostalgic!  New Jersey is beautiful, but the shore is a bit harder to reach than it was in Maine.  I remember very fondly the day I took Willa and Kendall to the beach.  It was a super-fun adventure--and only 20 minutes from my house:

We had a really good day together.

I probably could have found a better setting for Gwynn than my backyard, but it's been pushing 100 degrees here lately, and I didn't want to wander too far from the air conditioning.

The outdoor setting enhances the appearance Gwynn's hair, but it makes her eyes look faded:

Gwynn was a little overdressed for the extreme heat...

Okay, a lot overdressed.

But she wanted to explore around the yard anyway.

All of my dolls seem to like this big gum tree--maybe because they can hide from the large rabbits that have taken over the place?

Actually, I think Gwynn finds the bunnies rather cute, and is--like me--secretly hoping to get close to one of them someday.

Gwynn is the first girl who's ever attempted to climb this gum tree!  She made it about three feet up:

But I told her that I didn't think the new branches were thick enough to hold her weight for very long.

Before we retreated back inside to the cooler air, Gwynn insisted on walking the perimeter of the yard in one last attempt for a rabbit sighting...

And she found one!

Bottom line?  I feel mostly the same about Gwynn as I did about the WellieWishers that I reviewed in 2016.  However, a few things that I remember about Willa and Kendall are not true of Gwynn.  For one, I remember not being completely happy with the WellieWisher's hair--mostly because there were some bare patches, and the shorter strands of hair in the wigs limited my styling options.  In contrast, Gwynn's hair is lovely.  I could do without the bangs (they hide those expressive eyebrows!) but it still might be her best feature.  There are short stands of hair in the wig, but these don't disrupt the sleek appearance when the hair is let down, and they do a pretty good job of concealing the wig cap when the hair is up.  I had a bit of trouble making everything look neat when I re-did the braids, but overall the hair feels amazing and is easy to work with.

Another thing that's different between the WellieWishers and Gwynn is the clothing.  All of the outfits are very well-made--no question about that.  But the WellieWisher clothing felt really special and fun to me, with adorable boots and lots of mix and match potential.  In contrast, Gwynn's outfit is a little strange. It's not super-flattering, with the tight, tucked-in, puff-sleeved sweater.  Also, the skirt is really short (she can't sit in it).  That's all personal taste, though.  What might be more relevant is that the skirt is hard to use.  It does not have velcro closure in the back, and so it has to be tugged on over Gwynn's legs and hips--while also trying to tuck in the sweater--and it's all just unnecessarily hard.  With that said, Gwynn's outfits add nice diversity to the otherwise cutesy, fantastical lineup of WellieWisher clothing.

I'm also annoyed by Gwynn's head articulation, and I don't remember being too hung up on that back in 2016.  Not only does Gwynn have a permanent head tilt (which I'll admit is pretty cute) but she's always looking up.  Furthermore, with only rotational movement in her neck, she can only look from side to side, and her gaze drifts more and more upwards as her head turns.  The rest of Gwynn's articulation is fine, although it's very basic and I was often left feeling that she looked stiff and unnatural in her poses.  I've read online about some problems with WellieWisher legs falling off, but I obviously didn't have that experience with Gwynn.  On the contrary, her all-vinyl body feels solid and durable to me, and I prefer the new torso to the hollow plastic of the earlier dolls.  However, I didn't manipulate Gwynn for very long or with the vigor she might experience with a young child's play style.

I'm charmed by Gwynn's cute face (especially her mouth), I love her hair, her body feels sturdy, and her outfit--while it might not be my style--is really well-made and original.  Furthermore, she has the added magic of being a part of the American Girl world.  As a character in Corinne's story (which I can't wait to read!) she brings with her a whole personality and background, and she has a slew of appealing outfits and accessories available to her.  With five 14-inch dolls queued up in this series, I can already tell you that Gwynn is the most expensive of the bunch--by more than a factor of two in most cases.  One of the questions that we'll look at over the next few weeks is whether or not all of her good qualities--and there are many--are enough to justify this difference in price.