What the American Girl Website Looked Like in August 2011!

Who’s ready to take a peek into the past with me? I found this SO cool! When I was eight years old I took a video of the “Fun for Girls” section of the American Girl website. The video was taken on August 19, 2011. Here are some screenshots I took of it – and WOW, has the AG website changed over the years!

Woah! What a flashback! This game, an activity for the AG Magazine, was called Candy Creatures. Using different colors and shapes of candy, you can create cute little creatures! In the video, I named the fat marshmallow eating all the treats, “Bob.”

And one of the girls standing up, I named “Molly” – my absolute favorite American Girl character! And guess who I got that year for Christmas? That’s right, my very first 18″ AG doll… Molly! ♥

I left off the watermark so you could see this a little more clearly. As you can see, American Girl was celebrating 25 years at this time! The menu at the very top reads,

“Shop • Fun For Girls • Magazine • Movies”

We’re at the Fun for Girls page right now.

The Fun for Girls menu reads,

“Characters • Games • Activities • Quizzes • Girl Buzz”

This was the main page when you first typed in americangirl.com. Boy, I really miss when they did this! I love it much more than how it is now…

Here’s the Quizzes section. And look! At the right, you can see Innerstar University! I miss you dearly, ISU!

We still have some of the same quizzes on AG today! Most of them, however, are GONE! :'(

I LOVED taking the quiz Write On! I really, really wish they still had these old quizzes. And I really want to take the How Positive Are You? quiz again to see my results. But they don’t have that one anymore, either!

And look at the American Girl quiz – behold, the old, classic illustrations! What a perfect representation of American history. I miss them so much. You could take that quiz to see which AG character you were most like!

Now let’s head on to the Activities section.

As you can see, here’s were the Candy Creatures activity is. Ohhh, I wish they still had that Stress Less quiz! I’d love to take that now and see my results… I can get pretty stressed sometimes. :P

Here are the directions for the candy creatures game.

“•Click on Start creating!”, and then use your mouse to drag candies onto the stage. Your creature could have huge gummy eyes, a marshmallow body, or licorice arms.
•Change the size of each candy by clicking on it and using your mouse to move the buttons on the box that appears.
•Rotate the candy by hovering the cursor over it until you see a curved arrow and then turning the candy with your mouse.
•Find the new candy colors by clicking on the colors at the bottom of the window.
•Create as many candy creatures as you like, and get ready to roar with laughter.”

So you see an empty stage, which you’ll put your candy creatures on.

As you see, you can change the colors of the candy.

The colors are lime green, light blue, orange, yellow, red, and lavender.

You can change the size and shape of it by clicking on it.

See? I made the candy wider.

You can turn it vertically or horizontally as well.

Here is the Marie-Grace and Cécile page – *gasp*! Sorry, I just got a blast from the past. Flashback… memories… Oh, I miss those days!

Sorry. Almost started crying there… :P

Anybody remember playing Masquerade Magic? That was pretty fun.

I was sorta inspired this game to have my own Mardi Gras celebration with my dolls in 2013! My family does not celebrate Mardi Gras, but I wanted to have a party with my dolls anyways. We dressed up and had a ballroom dance – in fact, you can view that post here!

(We never had King Cake, though. I just imagined my dolls did. I did, however, eat some at my grandparents house in 2013… I got the baby Jesus in my slice! Wasn’t there some tradition involving that? I’m not sure, since we don’t celebrate Mardi Gras. :P)

I forgot how to play this, but eventually you earn costume items which you get to put on Marie-Grace and Cécile – then you get to print them out as paper dolls!

Here’s the Games section of Fun for Girls! As you can see, Kanani’s Onolicious (one of my very favorite games, in fact) is the newest and featured game!

Here’s a screenshot of a few of the games. The only games that are not available today at Decorative Doilies (that was really fun), Pepper’s Frisbee Run (I miss that game!), and Josefina’s Fiesta (love that one too!).

Time for Girl Buzz! That was a pretty cool part. We still have most of these today – the E-card section (but not very many of the original e-cards :( ), To Do Today, You Said It! and Help!

I loved the E-mail from You section (see it near the very bottom of the page?) – we don’t have it anymore. :( Joke of the Day was funny, too. But we still have Fan Gallery!

Here’s a closer look.

Here’s the Joke of the Day! In the video, I thought this one was really funny. Though I had no idea what a paramedic was, so I didn’t get the punch line of the joke. LOL!

Okay – here’s the last section – Characters! Can you guess who that American Girl is? In case you can’t read the picture (my iPhone 3GS didn’t have a very good camera)…

Guess Who?

This American Girl:
•Wants to be an actress
•Helps her cousin from Russia learn English
•Speaks out about unfair conditions in a coat factory

Look at the AG Historical Characters, Girl of the Year, and the AG Pets!

I remember my mom and my brother asking me one day in 2012, “Which doll pet do you like best?” We looked at the pets together and I finally chose Coconut. And I got Coconut the dog for my birthday that year!

And that is what the AG Fun for Girls section looked like in 2011! I hope you enjoyed this peek into the past with me.

Hey… before you guys go…

Does anybody want to see the video I took? If you do, I’ll try to put it up here! It’s a pretty large file, being 5 minutes long, so we’ll have to see. :P

Love,