Madame Alexander 2013 Doll Release

This year the Madame Alexander Doll Fan Club held their annual Convention in Louisville. This is a weekend long event where the announcement for the Fall line is made (there is a smaller thing done in the spring as well). It was amazing to see the age range that attends these conventions. There were 3 and 4 year olds who were surprisingly brought by grandma, even more surprising were the teenagers there who were super excited about this event and a chance to add to their collection. I brought with me my soon to be 8 year old kid. She thought it was neat to see what options were out there for Madame Alexander Dolls, and since getting a sneak at the launch announcement has decided she wants to be on their design team, and to own most of the dolls.

This year celebrates the 90th year for Madame Alexander Dolls, which were started on the kitchen table of Madame Beatrice Alexander Behrman in 1923. She was one of the first women to start their own business, which for the time is absolutely amazing. She hand sewed most of her dolls at the first but when other materials became available such as plastic she was one of the first to take advantage of this. She paved the way for dolls like Barbie and American Girl. Madame Alexander Doll Company has licensing for many books and cartoon characters, way more than any other company. One of the biggest ones is The Wizard of Oz and there are some super special dolls coming next year with the 75th Anniversary of the movie.

With the announcement of the new dolls they said there were only going to be 3 collectable limited edition dolls released this year. There will be one from the MET (Metroplis Muesum in New York City) and can be found in their catalog this fall. There will be one you can exclusively buy from Radio City in New York City (and yes this means you have to go to New York to buy this doll) and this one is a rockette and is super cute.

We did get a look at someone's Wendy doll collection. There were so many of this doll who was celebrating it's 60th year in production. My kiddo was fascinated with seeing this and here she learned most of the dolls bent at the knee and elbow and a few were "walking" dolls, where if you moved her feet her head moved back and forth.

Mom check out all these dolls!

Close up of one of the Wendy Dolls.

 Now this is a Madame Alexander Fan Club event so they hold a raffle or "helper" as it is required to be called in Kentucky. In this room there are hundreds of dolls all donated to be raffled off, some in this room came directly from Madame Alexander because they had a move this past year and they found dolls sitting around and decided to donate them to the club. Here was the other wonderful thing I found, the President of Madame Alexander knew most of the club members by name. She was a wonderful woman who even took some time to encourage my kiddo to follow her dream of designing. That to me was awesome and the designer told her in college to apply for an internship with them. That meant the world to my kid. Now in this room were two dolls that were going to be auctioned off. One was an older doll, another they designed just for this event.

Deisgned just for this event.

From the past, a Queen Elizabeth Doll.

Here are a few of the other dolls up for raffle. . .

Now I loved this chance. And the history I learned was amazing. I also got to meet the director of marketing and she was a very kind woman. She was great interacting with my child and even asked for her opinion when it came to ideas on how to market their dolls. But they mentioned opening a museum that will include original machines and molds to create the dolls.
There is also a competition held at these events to see who can be the most creative when it comes to dressing their dolls. This is done anonymously and voted on by the other members. There are multiple categories and you won't know who did what until then end of the convention. Here is one of this years entries.

She is ready for the Derby.

The Fan Club did tell me of these Tea Parties they throw in the fall that is open to non members. There is one that will be held in October in Loveland, OH and it is only $35 to attend. Here you can see dolls that are only for this event (they tend to run $50-$75) but you are not required to buy a doll if you just want to attend the tea. I have to tell you the enthusiasm and passion these women hold for Madame Alexander Dolls is catching. In fact my kiddo was sad to see that the dolls were sold out (the 18 inch size you can find at Target, Meijers, and Walmart) at one of our local stores (probably because they were on clearance). There are quite a few local stores you can find the collectable dolls at locally as well