In brief, as of this Monday evening, AGPSF seems to still be primarily stocked with the older versions of the 18" dolls--no obvious signs of perma-panty dolls. I was only able to open a few boxes, such as the TM 55 pictured above and below.
It was surprising how happy I was to see the removable panties on the TM doll!
I peeked in a few more boxes in the TM area and then opened one Julie box and was pleased to see she was still sporting removable panties as well.
So now a on worrying note--the store was quiet, there were plenty of assistants doing what looked like stocking and arranging--but the # of doll boxes on the shelves in the BeForever area seemed extremely sparse.
Where I might normally see BeForever doll boxes lined up in each character kiosk area at least 2 deep and all the way across I now saw boxes only 1 deep and not all the way across. My (irrational?) fear is that for the big debut of Tenney & Logan on Thursday that AG is also planning to pull, re-box, and "debut "the BeForever girls in some new atrocious full-window style box.
Note that AG has been known to pull out and re-box store-stock dolls in the past. For the big Truly Me debut launch in May 2015 the Visual Department at AGPSF took ALL the modern dolls out of their old boxes, redressed them in what we know as the current Lilac Dress, and then re-box them in the new Truly Me box. (I overheard some of this while in the store the morning of the Truly Me debut in 2015 and also managed to get a few behind the scenes tidbits of info when I found a chatty employee who told me that Visual hd been up until 4am making those very changes the night before.)
TL;DR
*AGPSF still has older dolls with removable underwear in stock. Go soon to avoid perma-panties.
*The BeForever box could change without warning and Thursday's debut is one possible (but not confirmed) switch-a-roo point.
I live outside the US and rang up to order two Truly Me's before perma pants. They said they could not guarantee I would receive removable pants TM's from Middleton, pre-Tenney release, even though I had both asked for them and had said I would have to return any perma pants doll from abroad, with postal and duty implications. She said perma pants were so the little girls didn't lose their doll pants. Bit my tongue.
ReplyDeleteGood luck! I have my fingers crossed for you to get TM dolls with the original body design!
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