Disney LE Dolls and Race

[@_frankiefreak_]

Tiana is my favorite Disney Princess & she has one of… if not THE most costume changes in her movie from all the Disney Princesses, yet she only has two LE dolls that represent something from the movie (with one of the dolls being from nearly 15 years ago when the movie came out). It’s so frustrating being a Tiana Fan 🥲

[@laluneroi]

Not you reminding me how badly I want her brown and white dresses in doll form, it breaks my gay heart

[@riqrimoli]

i love tiana sm too…. i kinda live for all of her outfits she wears a green dress in the reprise song in the end of the movie and its so cute

[@Lewis-hl9qw]

Something that unfortunately has to be acknowledged though is the consumer base themselves. After collecting LE Disney for over 6 years, in my experience with things like shopdisney drops, I never struggle to get non-white dolls but have missed out on multiple white doll releases. I remember the blue dress 17” limited edition Tiana doll being in the physical Disney store for months and months after the initial release here in the Uk. It’s a beautiful doll but she just didn’t sell well at all. If the consumer base isn’t willing to buy the dolls to the same degree they do certain white characters, what makes it profitable for Disney to keep making more of them? It might not be right representation wise but ultimately profit is the goal. It’s like boy dolls, If consumers aren’t buying them as much as girl dolls the company will always make less of them. Especially at an expensive collector level.

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

I don’t necessarily disagree. Definitely a conversation to be had about why this discrepancy is a thing/whether Disney or the consumers are “at fault” so to speak. To me it’s just frustrating because Disney is such a massive company they definitely can afford to make dolls and have lower profit margins…like they have the money to decide to be more diverse and do the right moral thing, but they don’t. Again, you’re 100% correct that they’re going for max profit, but it still high key sucks

[@drawnathan]

id love to see more analytical videos like this! it was really informative, and i can tell you put a lot of time and care into it. i think its really important to highlight stuff like this as a collector.

[@RambleMaven]

This obviously took a lot of time an energy! Thank you for highlighting this issues and all the disclaimers. I feel like you discussed this very thoughtfully.

[@arcampbellart]

I wonder for some of the non-white princesses, like Mulan and Moana, if them also being dressed exclusively in more accurate cultural garments and being deeply entrenched in their culture of origin makes Disney more hesitant to give them dolls out of possibly creating designs that might be culturally inaccurate or insensitive. I feel like we don't really care about being inaccurate in depictions of European cultures or fashion, but doing so with a non-white culture is, understandably, more controversial and looked down upon.

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

I definitely think that’s a strong possibility! Bothers me though cause to me, the simple solution is to hire designers from those cultures who would be able to make sure they’re represented appropriately

[@aruvius]

@@FaeryTaleDolls you’d think that’d be the obvious thing to do in general, but not to Disney 😭

[@ViktorErikFade]

Brave is also probably a lesser loved movie because midway through the plot shifted from what it was to ... Bears 🐻 It was just such a big tonal shift it hurt the popularity Other than that I do personally love her and the fact she likes archery

[@rosebudjess96]

Thing is with the top 3, not only is Snow White the oldest pop culture wise as you pointed out but she's a pivotal part of not only the disney princess brand, not only disney as a whole but also the entertainment industry as a whole. Without her feature length animated films may never have become a thing or if they had they may never have been as successful as they are and certainly wouldn't have been around for as long. So to me it makes sense that Disney would want to honour her a lot. Cinderella and Aurora have castles in the parks so they've had dolls made to celebrate park anniversaries which technically has nothing to do with them as characters. Plus Cinderella is known as the unofficial disney princess mascot. Then Ariel is pretty much the most popular character when it comes to dolls hers sell out so fast (most of the time) and end up being the most expensive on the 2nd hand market. You constantly see a lot of demand for her despite her having a lot of dolls because people want more opportunities to buy her. And of course Disney answers to that. Plus being a mermaid and her bright red hair arguably makes her one of if not the most unique which drives up her demand even more. So to me the top 3 (well 4 cause I included Aurora) makes sense. Great video by the way!

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

No that totally makes sense, so many of the older princesses that have become integral to the brand are white so I do get the top three being a bit skewed. I really only included it cause I think on top of everything else it kinda solidifies the point? But definitely standing alone there are other reasons for those characters to be top

[@rosebudjess96]

@FaeryTaleDolls Yeah I agree. I mostly brought it up cause so many times in these discussions people often forget about those variables and claim it's purely a race thing (not saying you were just people in general do) But even with saying that, if we remove the top 3 it still stands that the white princesses are better off than the non white princesses (I assume I haven't actually done the maths 😅). So even with the top 3 having valid reasons for being top that still doesn't mean the non white princesses are getting enough and can't get more. Get on it Disney come on

[@catgirl6940]

you know I just thought of something. They have Mulan who is from China, when will we have a princess from Japan? Or Korea?

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

Would love to see it happen!

[@catgirl6940]

@@FaeryTaleDolls Me too. I just find it odd they have not done a princess from Japan or Korea when they are in the same general part of the world with China.

[@RambleMaven]

Do you mind linking the article with the data that you drew the popularity from?

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

Cannot believe I forgot to do that 😬 Just added it to the description on my end so it should update soon!

[@RambleMaven]

@@FaeryTaleDolls I see it’s updated now thank you :3

[@_cartoon_lover]

My favourite and only disney le doll is Kida and she has only one disney Le doll, despite that doll being immaculate its only one doll.I understand the movie not being popular but she's also a damn disney princess. My gal got two dolls ever Id sell my soul for another LE Kida doll or any doll actually

[@LordofFullmetal]

She's actually not considered a Disney Princess. Her movie didn't do well enough at the box office.

[@kristinaland]

Wow I am impressed with all the work you did for this video! You seemed really good at math to me 😅 This was very interesting especially showing the order by number and order by score. I’ve always thought white characters got more dolls but wasn’t completely sure but it just felt like it was so I think this is very important. . Thank you for all your hard work on this, Rainn.

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

I do my best! Definitely checked my work over and over cause I was nervous of getting the numbers wrong lol

[@kristinaland]

@ You did an amazing job, truly, so thoroughly researched! @faerytaledolls

[@OpticalSorcerer]

I get why she's controversial, but Pocahontas is my 2nd favorite Disney princess. I do wish Disney had made more NA films by now though, as well as collabing with NA experts for her doll designs. Oh, and Raya is also SUPER underrated.

[@ozg948]

Great job. I still can’t believe Pocahontas only has one 17 in doll

[@slytheringingerwitch]

Do you think that another factor is the number of costume changes within a movie such as a wedding outfit in the earlier movies?

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

That’s an interesting point! I don’t even know how you’d go about factoring that in though lol cause sometimes princesses with many costume changes get fewer dolls and sometimes vice versa is true.

[@lamiagunyuz5047]

ı love your essay videos, will watch when ı can spare time (ı mean when ım avaliable)

[@ladybuggamer4479]

As a black doll collector it’s kinda always been this way with collector type dolls that I have noticed. Even just looking at monster high for example. Clawdeen, a black character has gotten only three collector dolls when someone like Drac has what like 7? Yea Drac is popular but Clawdeen is also such a popular character. Tiana is a popular character. I think she may be the most popular poc princess besides maybe Mulan and Moana, but with the others it’s not as fair and it’s never been fair. Whether people figure out what reason or not people of color have always gotten less collector dolls than their white/ more popular characters. Most of the time the white characters tends to be the more popular character. It just kinda makes me sad ya know 😅 I want to see myself represented in dolls. I’m sorry we aren’t like, cool enough to them to be turned into dolls when we have lots of character and interesting cultural influences.

[@Mitsuri-zp2eo]

Rapunzel and Tiana are my favorite princesses

[@littleloganjaime2232]

Fun fact for some who didn't know: Raya from Raya And The Last Dragon is a Disney Princess...I didn't know that for such a long time 😅

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

Ngl I realized that after filming and panicked before realizing she didn’t get any LE dolls (at least not yet)

[@ozg948]

Can you also just do a video on the limited edition 17 inch dolls

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

I’m not quite sure what you mean, about them in what way?

[@ozg948]

@@FaeryTaleDolls maybe just a check list of all the 17 in dolls that had been released by Disney. You do such an amazing job on your research

[@charliemidnight.7598]

tbh, I thought about something similar like this at some point, when it comes to black playline dolls (specifically in Europe), because a lot of time my country (Austria) doesnt get the black dolls at all (specifically Bratz/RH/Barbie) - so, that's what I found out: Disclaimer, I am SPECIFICALLY talking about my area now and what I'm stating here are very dry facts and I am not trying to imply anything here - its merely an example/hear me out: There's some factors that I do think are also important to this question and the most important one is definitely is the consumer base (since in the end a doll is produced to make a profit) - and only contributing their buying habits to racism would be far too simple - like, especially when you look at specific countries other than the US. For example in my country you rarely get black dolls - and when you see them in store, they usually stay there for a while or go on sale, because a majority of the consumer base are little girls who just want a lookalike doll. And my country is over 90% white. Yes, there are people who buy black dolls, especially collectors (who are the ones complaining about having to import them from other places, like me), but I'd argue many little girls do not think to deep into this and they either pick a lookalike or the princess they like. While I, as a collector, would really love to see more diversity in the doll aisle, I also have to stress that many stores here are way smaller than US ones (like wallmart/target and co) - we do not have this here. So a lot of time stores are super selective with what they order and they play it safe - which is understandable on their end, so again, I wouldnt blame the stores, but the customers. Its a shame, but I don't blame a store for not ordering something that didn't do well in the past. Again, blame the consumers. And to tie this into the question you have proposed about Disney Dolls, I'd also argue that a lot of the classic princesses are just safe bets for stores to order, and Disney takes notes of this, so some Princesses get this treatment. Also, a lot of the older princesses, who sell well cuz they're iconic now (aside of Jasmine) were white, so that definitely skews the data. If anything I'd say Tiana is probably one of the really good sellers, despite being a fairly new princess and being black. And yeah, I guess we could be cynical and say Disney is trying to virtue signal, but I'd rather be positive and think its because she is actually popular for her character/design and does really well with the collectors. Also since Moana is doing super well and they have made specific body molds for her, I can see them maybe adding more dolls for her in the future? On a side note: Itd be interesting to compare this treatment between LE dolls and playline dolles too, because I guess the target audience is a different one here. Maybe BECAUSE LE caters to adults, they go more for the classic princesses many of their buyers grew up with Either way, sry, for the wall of text - its just a very interesting topic! I hope u don't mind my 2 cents from across the pond.

[@LordofFullmetal]

It's actually a myth (and a harmful one) that little girls only want to play with dolls that look similar to them - so already you're making a huge assumption that isn't actually true to try and explain away demonstrable trends. Do you understand why that doesn't give me much confidence that your comment is anything but pure conjecture from someone in a mostly white country who, all due respect, is probably fairly ignorant to many of these issues as a result of not being exposed to them?

[@marycallahan6394]

So sorry I missed this live.

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

All good!

[@paul11-f9e]

raya is the newest

[@danoh.8072]

idk what it is but youtube recently started to auto-translate your videos into my mother tongue (german) with this weird AI voice, and also the title of the videos are german now?! anybody else having this problem?

[@FaeryTaleDolls]

Apparently it’s a new feature on KZbin, some people have said they really like it so I’ve left the feature turned on on my end, but if you don’t like it there should be something in your settings you can turn off so it stops!