How old is too old to play with dolls?
According to 45-year-old Diane McMillin, the limit does not exist.
The Massachusetts mom of five told The Post that she has over 80 American Girl dolls in her collection — and she has spent over $10,000 on the toys and accessories.
McMillin said the American Girl dolls’ plucky spirits even inspired her to start a small business — creating bespoke doll clothes on Etsy — after parent company Mattel wouldn’t re-release the toys’ original dresses and shoes that first captivated young fans in the 1980s and 1990s.
“We’re adults now and we have adult money,” said McMillin. “We want to spend a ton on these things. So if they won’t make them, I can.” Demand, she said, is white hot.
“We sell out of everything,” said McMillin, who also runs the Instagram fan account, Sonnet x Gabriella, devoted to American Girl. “Other women are just as in love with American Girl as I am, and they’re willing to invest in their dolls.”
McMillin admits her American Girl “obsession” can seem like a lot, but she said she’s never been judged by friends — or even her husband — for dressing up like her dolls in what she jokes is “American Girl Cosplay.”
“My teenagers hate it, though,” she admitted, laughing. “I have four boys and they ask me to put all the dolls away when their friends start coming over.”
McMillin now has a six-year-old daughter with whom she shares her beloved Samantha doll, and the rest of her plastic brood. “It’s like, finally! My dream!” she exclaimed.
But McMillin’s latest American Girl acquisition isn’t a tiny taffeta dress or an itty bitty pair of antique ice skates.
It’s a $30 hardcover novel by best-selling author Fiona Davis called “Samantha: The Next Chapter“. The brand new book, the first ever American Girl adult novel, follows the very grown-up adventure of Samantha Parkington, who is considered the best-selling American Girl toy of all time.
Based on the charming brunette doll that first hit shelves in 1986, the original Samantha came with a slim book — “Meet Samantha” — that followed the wealthy tween New Yorker in 1904 as she teamed with a 10-year-old factory worker named Nellie to fight child labor abuse.
The new novel picks up in 1920 and follows 25-year-old Samantha as she fights for women’s suffrage and chases her family’s lost fortune, which has been snared in a dastardly scheme straight out of a Dickens novel.
Demoted from a Park Avenue mansion to a boarding house, Samantha works as a shopgirl while moonlighting as a detective determined to reclaim her family’s riches.
Davis said that although the book “stays true” to Samantha’s key traits — an innate sense of justice, a screwball flair for adventure, and a talent for doing the perfect French braid in her hair — it’s not kid’s play.
“There is some violence,” she conceded, noting that New York Suffragettes were trained in self-defense tactics to keep from being attacked. “Women were out there marching for their rights and that made them more vulnerable. There were jujitsu classes all over, and I said, ‘We have to get that in the book!’ So I made sure Samantha could fight.”
There is also romance, though Samantha’s story is quite chaste compared to some of the American Girl Fan Fiction on the internet.
But despite the booming “romantasy” trend in publishing, Davis is happy that she was able to maintain “the essence of Samantha” and her independent streak.
“Sex would not work in these books,” said Davis. “We identify [these characters] as children, and I don’t think it’s necessary to make that leap. There’s other books that can do that.”
McMillin agrees.
“I read the first few chapters and so far, I think it’s good. It’s old-school. Some fans are mad that she grew up at all — like, Samantha should stay an innocent little girl forever. But none of us can do that. And if Samantha wants to be a suffragette and fight for women’s rights, that’s a good example.”
Quinlyn Shaughnessy, 28, another adult American Girl doll collector, is likewise excited for the release of Samantha’s first grown-up book.
“From what I can tell, and the author they picked, they’re treating her story with a lot of care,” Shaughnessy told The Post.
Shaughnessy received her first American Girl doll — the pioneer girl Kirsten Larson — as an eight-year-old, later going viral in her teens for an American Girl blog.
She now owns over 30 American Girl dolls, though she told The Post she has “kind of lost count.”
Shaughnessy has also spent “thousands,” she revealed to The Post, on vintage outfits and accessories for the dolls, including tiny handmade pottery for Kirsten and itty-bitty woolen coats that command up to $250 online.
The Arizona career counselor said her friends are “super supportive” of her doll-collecting passion — and that she’d disclose the hobby up-front to any potential suitors.
“I feel like if someone is going to judge me, romantically, because I love these dolls, I’d rather know sooner than later,” she said. “It just wouldn’t be a match.”
Aubre Andrus, 42, agrees with that sentiment.
The California-based writer was an American Girl corporate employee straight out of college, and eventually edited the brand’s beloved magazine, which featured articles on doll care, friendship, science and art.
Andrus said the dolls, books and magazine “defined my girlhood” and still has all her original dolls, which she is waiting to pass on to her two daughters, aged 8 and 4. “You never outgrow them,” she said.
The former National Geographic reporter recently went viral with a call to American Girl (plastic) arms: She wants to bring back American Girl magazine for a new generation
“These books taught us to be vocal about what we want and organize to get it,” Andrus explained. “So of course now you have hundreds of women mobilizing to get this done,” she said, calling the online campaign “a very Samantha thing to do.”
Even dads are becoming American Girl “lifers.”
Chris Sernel, 41, said he’s spent more than $5,000 on the dolls and accessories that crowd his Chicago home, where he lives with wife Kim and daughters Avalyn, 10, and Ayla, 8.
“It’s a little bit out of control,” he told The Post. “Instead of taking vacations, we’ve bought dolls,” he said, admitting he “cuts ruthlessly” in other areas to afford the pricey toys, which average $100 each.
Sernel is already “a big fan” of the new Samantha book, calling it a “compelling crime gangster thriller” that he’s used in home-schooling history lessons with his daughters.
“It lets us work in those lessons about the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age,” he explained. “Samantha’s aunt was a suffragette! She’s becoming a suffragette! So there’s substance behind this. There’s history. They’re based around real ideas of the time.”
He added that “my kids know ‘The Hunger Games,’ so this book is pretty mild. It says it’s for adults, but kids can handle it.”
Sernel recently interviewed Fiona Davis for his popular podcast, “Oh Hush! Reads,” where he was joined by a special guest: His own American Girl — or rather, American Boy — doll, which sports a teeny Metallica tee, black jeans, glasses and a fake moustache.
“He likes to hang out with me when I’m working.”
