American Girls Have Llamas Too

When I was a young girl I had an American Girl Doll, Molly McIntire, to be exact. She grew up during WWII and had a detailed back story just like the other 5 or so of them. It's been awhile since Molly came out of her box in the attic, so I touched base recently and found that there are now tons of them, including dolls of the year!

This year is Lanie but last year was Chrissa, who happens to have a llama friend you can buy for her - for the bargain price of $25, but what is money when you're talking about llamas with parade packs that can carry bookmarks for your friends. Apparently, Chrissa moved to Iowa to be closer to "Nana" who also bought her the llama. She was lucky enough to befriend my new favorite doll, Gwen, who's homeless! What a girl to look up to. (BTW- Even though Gwen's homelessness and the economic downturn are being exploited, she costs $95 like the rest of the girls.)

The moral to the story is that yay! American girls have llamas too. They've really hit the main stream and the llama lobby is getting 'em young.

And if you're a little bored/out of touch with marketing for young girls, here's a shameful excerpt from Wikipedia about the girl's complicated back story:

"Chrissa attempts to befriend Gwen Thompson, a shy, lonely, unpopular girl who is also bullied by the Bees. Although Gwen is at first aloof, the girls gradually become friendly. At a fundraiser for the local homeless shelter, Chrissa finds out that Gwen is homeless; Chrissa is sworn to secrecy but the girls become closer as a consequence. Meanwhile, Sonali is starting to be friendlier with Chrissa but is still more loyal to Tara. Chrissa becomes friends with Sonali and Tara warns her that if she is friends with her she will be kicked out of the club but Sonali says she dosen't care if she isn't in the club."

Nothing but quality literature for our young American minds.

Sadly, I  think Chrissa's llama doesn't have a name, which means, American Girl really isn't all that "in touch" because if they were, they would know it's a mortal sin not to bestow upon your llama a flashy name.

So, what should Chrissa's llama be called?

White Delight?
Des Moines Dandelion?
Recession Proof Poofy?

You tell us!

UPDATE (by KYLE):
So as it turns out often in life, everything is just one big giant marketing scam that just takes a little scraping below the surface to completely unravel like a spool full of llama wool on your spindle.

It turns out the bookmark carrying (wtf) pet llama of Chrissa already has a name. Wait for it - Starburst. Now you might think this is all just tied back to the ridiculous llama naming trends we mentioned previously, but tamed down for the American Girl Audience, but it goes much deeper.
According to Ad Age, the llama was named Starburst because of the cult success of a Starburst commercial that started out for Hispanic audiences, but then crossed over to the English-markets due to extreme popularity, tweets in social media, etc. etc.






So while the llamasutra naming contest still stands (I think we can come up with something better than Starburst), we've basically learned that the American Girls corporation is one sleazy money-making operation that will name a homeless girl's friend's llama after a candy for a few extra sales. Why not just fill that saddle up with other fine Mars candies while they're at it.

Ok, so maybe this wasn't as scandalous as it seemed in my head. Carry on.