These 18-Inch Dolls are a $600 Million Empire

Dainty, plastic and expensive, these 18-inch dolls are a $600 million empire.

- Robert Klara

Late in 2013, a new crop of videos began surfacing on YouTube. They featured everyday themes like going food shopping and eating out. One of them even notched over 14 million hits.

Their amateur directors (nearly all of them young girls) shot the films using stop-motion animation. By last year, there were so many of these movies that they became their own genre—AGSM.

Translated: America Girl Stop Motion. It’s hardly the first time that American Girl dolls made the cultural radar screen. For young ladies aged 7-12, there may be no toy more coveted than these 18-inch tall, highly realistic, ethnically diverse and politically correct playthings—yours for only $120 a piece.