Some American Girl Accessories

When the Toy Box Philospher visited an American Girl store recently, she admired the play violin, but the block of rosin was missing. I decided to take pictures of the violin we bought for the Dancer's AG doll, and include that item. As I commented at TBP's blog, AG accessories are often more expensive, but the quality and details are often better as well. In this case, the violin included several items that I found with no other off-brand set: a music stand, a doll-size book of Christmas music, and the rosin.

Here's a picture of the violin in the case. It is a very nice-looking set.

Here is where the rosin rests in the case. In the picture that TBP took at the store, the rosin is definitely missing.

And here's the rosin out of the case. A very nice little detail to make the set more special.

Here's the book of sheet music that came with the set. As you can see, this is nicely realistic, although the Dancer has never tried to play any of this. Of course, when she first got the set, she was a very beginning violinist and reading sheet music like this for herself was probably beyond her abilities at the time.

Another example of the difference between AG merchandise and others, for some reason, is the tap shoes. When I looked for tap shoes for her doll, all the other tap shoes on the market had pointed toes. In real life, all the tap shoes with pointed toes that I have seen, in several years of buying tap shoes, are generally lower quality than the ones with rounded toes. So I ended up with the AG ones again, just because I thought they looked nicer to my eye, and more like what the Dancer wears herself. These originally came with a dance costume for AG Girl of the Year Marisol; I was able to buy just the shoes on eBay. The pink bows on the shoes were not a big deal, especially since the Dancer had pink bows sewn onto her own shoes for a recital costume almost four years ago now.

There were lots of excited squeals the first time those sparkly canes came out for practice.

AG Molly's Miss Victory costume also includes tap shoes, with metal taps as opposed to plastic. Molly's line is being "moved to the archives" for now, but I'm sure her merchandise will live on at eBay.