Dolls are definitely popular with my two little girls (3.5 and 20 months). They also both LOVE dollhouses and arranging the people and furniture. We have a couple of dollhouses (my MIL is obsessed with buying them at yard sales) and they all see plenty of use, so no particular brand to recommend.

I second the doll stroller (get a good quality one that will last; the little boys like it, too) and the kitchen with fake food. My kids play with the kitchen every single day; even my oldest son still likes it. (I have an 8 year old boy, 5 year old girl, 3 year old girl and 1 year old boy.)

Baby blankies and baby clothes.  My girls don’t do much dress-up of themselves, but they like to dress their dolls and all the stuffed animals and tuck their “kids” in.  A little table for them to play with fake food and feed their kids has also been popular.  I second the dollhouse - that gets played with every day around here!

Dolls, play kitchen food, play kitchen, dress up clothes.  My 4 year old loves all these things.  She has Barbies, but really loves the smaller dolls, such as the Tinker bell line of barbie dolls that are only about 4 or 5 inches tall.  and the doll houses that go with them.

I completely agree with the doll stroller-that was a hit with all 3 of our girls, as well as the baby highchair.  I would also suggest a little tykes shopping cart-my daughters loved to push their babies around in that a lot too.  The kitchen set, with the plastic foods went along good with the cart as well.  Lastly, dress up stuff-my 4 year old never wears “normal” clothes anymore, she still loves to dress up in any one of her play outfits all day long

My girls are 10, 8 and 1.  They have been partial to baby dolls, American Girl dolls (or other similar sized ones), Barbie type dolls, baby strollers, and craft supplies.  Right now my 10 and 8 yr olds are really into Harumiku stuff - basically it is a manniquin that you tuck material around to make different outfits.  You can buy the Harumiku stuff or if you are like us and have a handy grandma with tons of fabric bits and ribbons you can use those.  Dress up stuff was very popular from about age 3 until age 7 or so.  And just like boys, they appreciate sports equipment (I have two girl ice hockey players!), blocks, fire trucks (when they are little), Little People stuff, etc.

I have four girls ages 2-7.  Every single day they play with:
the doll house
wooden kitchen and play food
dress up clothes (I have to go through these regularly, they get SO much love that some of them end up shredded to bits - we have several play silks that need replacing for sure!)
coloring books and crayons (they seem like they’re coloring all day long!)
dolls - baby dolls, American Girl Dolls, stuffed animals, all very loved (as is the play stroller)
games for the bigger girls - the current favorites are Uno and Mastermind for kids
paper dolls
stick horse (technically, it’s a stick unicorn haha)
PlasmaCar (ours stays in the house)

Some of the things they LOVE to play with, but I don’t let them have out all the time are:
floor puzzles (we prefer Melissa & Doug floor puzzles)
wooden blocks
a large collection of schleich type animals and dinosaurs

Great ideas, I have to add Playmobil too!  We’ve been buying it for 15 years.  I particularly like anything they can add on to:  Playmobil, dollhouse, kitchen, Schleich animals, etc., and they seem to as well

Schleich toy animals and elves/horses.

My in-laws gave Bitty Babies (American Girl Doll) to my first four girls when they were between 2-4 yrs old.  These have been favorites ever since and have stood the test of time, with my younger two now playing with them.  They come with all sorts of adorable accessories (expensive, but mostly hardy). 
As they get older, too, craft supplies are always a hit.  A big box with glitter, glue, beads, string, yarn, fancy paper and stickers is just about everyone’s favorite gift.

American Girl dolls for the 7-11 girls—we tried the cheaper 18” dolls, only to find they will not last (hair gets all tangled after a few months). We purchased second hand AG dolls, and they will be heirlooms forever!

I can’t believe no one has mentioned Polly Pockets yet. Goodness—PP is so fun—we took a wooden “doll house” that was really supposed to be a book shelf or something—but it’s shaped like a house—and installed “carpet” and “wall paper” and some odd doll house furniture, and this is their Polly Pocket house. Add that to the fact that we have a perfect little “nook” under the steps in our finished basement, and the girls have their very own hideout for their PP dolls—Polly World as we call it

I have three girls ages 14, 12 & 9.  Things that have been a big hit over the years - the Bitty Baby & American Girl dolls and accessories, esp the double jogging stroller - that must have lasted 10 years until I finally gave it away last summer.  Dress up clothes, play kitchen and food, a black board/white board easel, and my youngest really loves playing with her Barbie Town House.

My niece loves princess dress-up clothes.  Also, there are so many great children’s books out there for girls.  I love my son dearly, but I am really grieving that a lot of these books won’t be ones that I can share with him.

I agree with all the other commenters so far

The one thing I will add is a Melissa & Doug castle that we got when our younger girls were 4 and 5 - they are now 5 and 6 and I don’t see them EVER playing with it less.  We didn’t buy the Melissa & Doug “people” - instead we filled it with Papo figurines (princesses, fairies, knights, horses, etc.)

Here’s the castle:
http://www.melissaanddoug.com/wooden-folding-princess-castle

Here are examples of the Papo figurines:
http://www.happyhentoys.com/papo-castles—knights—-figures-princess—-fairy.html

My girls, 3, 7, and 10 love Schleich fairies, animals and horses.  The hot glue gun and fairy making supplies are also a hot item here (fake flower leaves, wooden bead heads and pipe cleaner legs), the things they have created with the hot glue have been amazing.  For my youngest, baby doll stroller and Corolle baby are her favorites.  Dress up clothes has been a hit for them too along with magnet dress up dolls.  These are like paper dolls but they are all magnets.

Loved my Little Kiddles dolls.  And my daughter loved every baby doll she had plus her little kitchen and her dollhouse.  Her brother and her played for hours with those!

Great ideas above!!! I have 5 daughters 21 to 5 and they all have loved WOODKINS. http://babystepsjmj.blogspot.com/search?q=woodkins
They are great gifts too and you can add your own material.
Enjoy!

The wooden kitchen is, hands down, the MOST played with toy in our house.  We have three girls: 8, 3, and 1.  The boys play with it too.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/86085110/wooden-play-kitchen
A close second would be the doll stroller and dress up toys.

My daughter is 14 months old and her favorite toy is a Fisher Price Tea Pot that sings.  She’s played with that Tea Pot every single day since she was 7 months old. She loves to sway back and forth to the music that it plays. It has never gotten old.

I have six daughters (now ages 5-17).  I read through quickly and most of our favorites have been mentioned.  Those include dolls (baby and later, American Girl dolls), a wooden play kitchen, Polly Pockets, plastic horses, and certain beloved stuffed animals.  Last Christmas my then 4 and 7 years old daughters received the pink box of Legos and have really enjoyed those.  With no boys here, that was our first Lego set ever! 

But did anyone mention puppets?  We were given a nice wooden puppet theater and the girls have played with our puppets a lot over the years.  The older ones even did a Romeo and Juliet puppet show with some friends a few years ago and put it up on YouTube!  Melissa and Doug make some nice puppets. Some of ours came from Lillian Vernon.  We even have an inexpensive fairy tale themed set that I think came from Oriental Trading Company.

Also, I never bought playsilks, even though they had been highly recommended by friends, simply because they are so expensive. Then a few years ago, I ordered some inexpensive 30 inch silk scarves online at Dharma Trading Company and packaged them with various colors of Koolaid drink mix as a Christmas gift for the younger girls. Then sometime after Christmas, the girls and I dyed the silks together. So the gift was both the silks and the craft of dying them together. You can find instructions online by googling Koolaid and play silks.  They really are a great addition to a dressup collection.

I have 2 daughters, 13 and 1. My 13 yr. old wasn’t into barbies- but she did love My Little Pony (5-8 yr. old) and Littlest Pet Shop ( 7-10 yrs.) and Webkinz (stuffed animal w. internet code 9-11 yr. old) and beanie babies. Shrinky-Dinks- (7-12 yr. old) shrinkable plastic craft- the boys love it too!
I agree with many of the above suggestions- shopping cart, doll stroller. Thanks also, I am ready to sell my plastic kitchen and get a wooden one. (the kids never played long with our plastic one)

I have three daughters ranging in age from 1 month to 10 years.  The toys that have seen the most play time with my older girls are: American Girl’s Bitty Baby, doll stroller, pretend kitchen and food, shopping cart, tea set, doll cradle, wooden blocks (they’re perfect for building a castle for Barbie or Polly Pocket), Barbie, Polly Pocket, musical instruments such as recorders, harmonicas other simple rhythm instruments, chalk board easel and dress up jewelry and clothes.

When my daughter was 3 we bought her the Loving Family Dollhouse and furniture. That dollhouse had nonstop play until she was about 8. She put Loving Family Dolls in it. She put Strawberry Shortcake dolls in it. She put Polly Pockets in it. She put Kelly (Barbie’s toddler sister) dolls in it. It grew with her - until she was about 9, when we got her a KidKraft dollhouse for her Barbies.

Now she’s into Barbie - and has been for some time. We get most of the dolls and clothes on Ebay. You can get nice lots of gently used clothes for a reasonable price, and the older clothes are a lot more modest and the dolls prettier and more feminine than all the trashy supermodel style barbies that are out today. There are also a lot of Ebay (and I imagine Etsy) sellers who make 50’s style Barbie dresses for good prices.

Other things my daughter has loved - when younger: play-dough, arts and crafts. Older: games - cards (one little deck of cards - soooo many games! Great stocking stuffer!), Yahtzee and Racko (awesome games that are fun but also teach math skills), Clue, Monopoly, checkers, etc. And Connectagons are great - they come in all styles. We have one made of Butterflies and Flowers. They’re kind of like Tinkertoys, and she makes all kind of fairy and doll houses out of them.

I also loooove Playmobil, but my daughter sadly never got into it. I love looking at all the sets to see the amazing detail they put into them. I’ve always thought one of the most fun jobs in the world would be to work on the design team at Playmobil!

And one last note (because I’m going on forever, lol) - fabric. Several years ago I went to a fabric store and we picked out a few rolls of fabric from the remainder bins. It gets used for doll blankets, pillows and sleeping bags, horse saddles, kerchiefs and aprons, picnic blankets, tents, etc. for her dolls and other toys. Something simple with a million uses. I could also say the same for boxes - not cardboard, because that gets trashed easily, but pretty little decorated wooden,velvet, resin, etc boxes. Those get used all the time.

One of my daugthers (7 yr old at the time) received one of the “old fashioned” potholder makers.  You know the one with the different colored rings that you weave on a metal square.  I must admit even her older brother enjoyed making a pattern.  We were able to then give some away as gifts for her aunts and her grandmas’s too.

My daughter had the sweetest little picnic tea set. It even had little napkins and a picnic blanket. It went perfect with the little kitchen and fake food we had. She’s 11 now and I still see her playing with those things with her brothers.

I also second dress-up clothes and dolls. Fun!

I loved to play office as a kid, so get some discount office supplies and let the little secretaries get some early training in.

Oh, I also had a baby carriage (I think it was my own when I was small enough).