You can now buy a teeny tiny Xbox One S for your American Girl doll. I might actually buy this.
American Girl, an expensive brand of dolls aimed at young girls that want an eighteen inch plastic version of themselves they can take to school and eventually ruin by forgetting to brush their hair, said today that it will start selling adorable Xbox One S replicas as an accessory, alongside a little controller and gaming headset. The set will cost $50.
When I was growing up, I begged my mother for an American Girl doll for months until she finally got me Addy. At this time, American Girl as a brand was selling dolls based on particular times in American history, which came with a set of books that taught you all about the trials and tribulations of when and where these girls lived. Addy was a runaway slave and at the time the only black doll. She had the best books of any girl in the set, which I checked out from the library at a feverish pace before asking my mom to buy the doll for me. Addy’s accessories were period- and class-appropriate clothing for a young girl that used to literally be a slave. As a kid, that frustrated me. Why did Addy get the raggedy clothing when rich-kid Samantha got the cutesy princess bed? I ended up begging my mom for the fancier accessories, mixing and matching until I thought Addy had the life she truly deserved.
Now American Girl is all about dolls that are just like you, or the young child who desperately wants you to buy her a doll that looks just like her. As such, they now offer itty bitty Xbox One S’s, just in case your resident doll owner is a gamer.
While this is fucking adorable—look at the little controller!—I have a few questions. Why is this an Xbox One S and not a One X? Can children not handle the programming power of the Xbonx? It also comes with two games, one of which looks like Just Dance, and another called “Blocks” which I assume is a Minecraft clone. Those probably fit the tastes of many children who play games, as this accessory is aimed at kids ages eight and older, but would it kill them to add some kind of sprawling fake-JRPG as well? Also, christ, that girl is not getting any lumbar support on that gaming chair.
Despite all my complaints, there’s part of me that wants to grab this set and unearth my Addy doll, which is still in my parent’s house. If she made her way to freedom, she might as well have an Xbox too.