Aladdin Central Messageboard

[Spike]

I was just wondering do you think the Disney Princess line will continue since its been up now for about 4 years do you think it will stop by time like any other disney movie boom ever happened you find merchandise everywhere then they disapear or they will last forever and become something like the Barbie line??and do why do you think the Disney Adventurers "Disney Heroes" aren't big as Disney Princess??
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[Calluna]

My guess is they'll keep it going for as long as the stuff sells, and from the amount of it I see I guess it's still selling.
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"If only I could believe you. Perhaps I can! After all... you do bear the name of a flower." -- Arbutus

[AladdinFan92]

I think the DP line will be around for a while. Even if Disney does put out another big movie (and sadly,I doubt they will) The classics are still gonna be popular with little girls,and they'll still look up to the old princesses.

As for that Disney Heroes line,I think the reason it's not that popular is because when you really get down to it,especially with little kids,mostly girls like Disney. There aren't that many young boys who get into it,and the few that do usually grow out of it by the time they become teenagers. Not all of them are like this,but all the ones I know are.So they won't really want to buy Disney merchandise,wheras girls,who really love all these movies,will totally go for the DP stuff.
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AWWWW!!!

[AladdinsGenie]

The Disney princess line is a gift and a curse . It's great that these characters are getting exposure after all these years and they can still sell like crazy, but they have botched their images so much that I think they have forgotten the actual character and who these girls really are. It kinda makes me glad they forget Jasmine sometimes because I don't want her image ruined, whatever image she has gained . I don't mind it being around for a while because I only buy the Jasmine stuff anyways.

As for the Disney heroes line, I think that's more concentrated to the Disney stores, so that's why you don't see that line that much. A few things leak out like the watches, but I haven't seen much past that. That, and Disney despite all the male characters and dominated movies is more of a female thing.

[Guest]

First off, agreed with Shiera about the blessing/curse thing here.

Second, no, I'm not named after the brand...I was the poster girl for a lot of what it stands for when I was young enough to be in the current target audience. I read an article that said the brand was to "Make Disney Princess not just a collection of characters that girls liked in movies and want to play with in doll form or dress as, but to make Disney Princess a way of life!" Well, it was mine years ago, still is in many ways. Only minus all the bad characterizations and the pinkness and a lot of the ridiculous products like "Disney Princess: the motor scooter for toddlers." I'd pick a Princess on a given day (or for a given string of days in a row)...and I WAS her. I didn't have all the costumes or merchandise, I had movies, a few dolls sometimes, and a wild imagination.

Do I think the brand will continue? Absolutely. It's huge, and the target audience (or said audience's parents, at least!) are buying it, hook, line, and sinker. In the last year or two, WDW added a Princess lunch at Cinderella Castle and Princess dining for all 3 meals at a restaurant in Epcot because it was darned near impossible to get into the Princess breakfast in the castle, and still is. The demand is sky high, the princesses have lines to meet them all the time, and just about every little girl that I talked to had a favorite Princess (even if she was 'all of them'...the kids have opinions). Again, I TOTALLY agree with Shiera that it's WONDERFUL that kids can be exposed to the characters when they're young (especially in the case of Aurora; I think Sleeping Beauty is a great film and very little information about it was 'mainstream' even in the world of Disney...I didn't own it until I was 11), but I don't often like the way it's done. Too much emphasis on pink, hair, makeup, and pretty dresses, not really much about what makes the Princesses unique, different, and endearing. And if they made them look anything close to how they did in the movie, that'd be great.

Anyway...why was a Princess brand a hit and the "Adventurers" brand less so? Well, Disney Princess(brand) is basically just looking at the different products that Barbie has been on in the past...however many decades Barbie's been around now (isn't she pushing 50?) and substituting Cinderella and friends' faces for Barbies...the market is practically pre-determined, they're seeing what's kept Barbie popular and selling their characters the same way. With the boys...a lot of little boys tend to like action figures as kids and such, but in general, boys seem to outgrow (or pretend to outgrow but remain 'secret fans') a lot of their childhood interests like Hot Wheels and GI Joe. (Yes, I'm speaking in broad generalizations because that's how they look at the market. )

The 'time frame' in which boys keep their interest in these sorts of toys just doesn't seem as long as it is for girls....it's 'cool' in some sense for a girl to continue to sport a Disney Princess on her shirt when she's in high school, but fewer boys would feel comfortable wearing an image associated with something they really liked AS A KID when they're older. I also don't think Disney's entirely sure how to brand and market the heros...they wouldn't just have all the heros get together for a dance or tea party like the Princesses might, according to Disney Consumer Products. However 'cool' the heros are, they have a 'softer' image than say, GI Joe, which might be their closest competitor if a Hero line were to become huge but still wouldn't be a direct 'substitute' like with Barbie and DP, and quite a lot of them (Tarzan, Hercules, and Aladdin, for instance)...get a girl in the end. That was a reason that my little brothers liked Genie and Iago better than Aladdin when they saw that movie as kids...the hero loses some 'cool' factor when he wins himself a lady fair.

Boys in general seem to respond to more larger-than-life with little to no (or at least more subtle) interest in those 'icky' girls...Peter Pan, Buzz Lightyear, and non-'hero' type characters like Stitch. And I guess grouping them under one banner just...doesn't help them sell as much as just putting out some random products with those characters.

~*DP*~
Proudly un-trademarked or branded by Disney Consumer Products...they'd be sure to make my hair either way too dark or way too light.

[AladdinsGenie]

[Ariellen]

[A Whole New World]

I don't think this line will ever end actually,seem timeless,it has female heroes from some of the most sucessful Disney films.
Yeah,there was the Disney Heroes about guys from Disney guys that had Peter Pan,Hercules,Tarzan,Aladdin,Arthur and Robin Hood (Thought some merchandise had Jim Hawkins,Shang,Milo and Prince Phillip but I think they were there like how the Disney Princess had Alice,Nala and Megara,also I don't think that Phillip and Shang should be there,they"re not heroes) but I think it failed because it's stopped,I guess that Hercules and Tarzan aren't as popular as Aurora and Belle.
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[Salukfan]

... Philip and Shang aren't heroes?

Philip defeats Maleficent, how is that not a heroic action? If you want to embrace stereotype, he even has the total "knight in shining armor" vibe going for him too.

Shang is most definitely a heroic figure. He trained Mulan (and Yao, Ling, and Chien Po) to the point where they could ally to defeat Shan Yu. He broke protocol to save Mulan's life. He tells his men to draw their weapons when they were pretty much screwed on the mountain top. Yeah, Shang doesn't have a ton of "moments" of success in battle, but without him, Mulan couldn't have pulled her success off.
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"This cow's been covered with flour!"

[AladdinsGenie]

The Disney Heroes line never had Milo, Shang, and Jim Hawkins stuff. I would have remembered those .

And Shang to me is more of a secondary hero because I think giving him that hero title means you gotta give every other person that attributed to the main heroes success in some way that's relevant that same level of credit, in which case, a lot of characters are heroes . That was my problem with the Disney Princess line when it first came out because it was too broad in its definition of 'princess'. Every girl was considered a princess and that's crazy

[Meesh]

[Salukfan]

To me, Shang's case kind of comes to how you define "roles" in a story. I think a film can have more than one hero. I'm drawn to HoND-- there are two heroes in that story, in Quasimodo and Phoebus. Quasi is the protagonist and the one who motives and drives the plot, but Phoebus sacrifices himself, rallies defenses for Quasi/Esmeralda, and opposes Frollo directly. While Quasi's the hero, Phoebus is a hero. Uh, if that makes sense.

Shang's is similar to Phoebus, IMO. He's way beyond sidekick but it's hard to pull him into the archetypal hero role. Part of that comes from Shang's role in the story--- he's a representation of what Mulan and Shan Yu need to overcome to get to their final goal. You can't pull him out of that story, which I think you can with other "assistant" characters (this requires re-writes, of course, but bear with me)

Mulan wouldn't have developed without Shang. He needed to challenge her and yes, that's a function of job title as much as character, but Shang represents what she's trying to be. For Shan Yu, Shang represents his path to the Emperor. At some point, whether he already had control of China or not, Shan Yu would face Shang.

Shang is a hero for what he does. He leads our heroine through her story. He never overcomes Shan Yu to save her, but his act to spare her life is just as heroic. Like Mulan, he defies what he's been taught to do what he believes is right. It's not as grand scale (plotwise). But he's tries to almost his dying breath to take out Shan Yu. He would die for the good of his country as Mulan would for the good for the family. It's not his story, but Shang is also a hero.

In the same breath, I wouldn't call Mushu a hero. He does a hell of a lot, but he doesn't drive Mulan to change. He's a part of her change, definitely. But he doesn't move her forward in the same way that Shang does, and he doesn't have the same overall "importance" that Shang does.

I hope this doesn't sound like BS. I've been sitting here for 45 minutes figuring out how to phrase it all.
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"This cow's been covered with flour!"

[AladdinsGenie]

In a broad sense a movie can have more than one hero, absolutely, but, yeah, there's a bit of a difference between the hero and a hero, even if they're all in the same family . I could give that same hero title to Esmeralda, too. She championed for her people, opposed Frollo directly, and risked her life for Quasi's humility and all around safety, as well. I don't think I'd sit well with it, but it applies. I think I just don't like tossing that title out to everyone who does something heroic, I think is my problem. This is also probably coming from years of military life where everyone wants to be a damn hero for what they did and it's annoying . I agree that they're heroes in their individual struggles and that they're important to the characters, but I just wouldn't put Phoebus on the same level as Quasi, nor would I put Shang on the same level as Mulan. What they do is important for the main character, but I'm not particulary sad if they don't achieve something in the story, personal or not

And I don't know about Mushu's importance . He may not drive Mulan to change, but I don't think his importance is downgraded because of that. This could be my bias that characters that are funny hold a lot more importance than I think people write them off as speaking, but I think he serves as a bit of a backbone or a cheerleader for her because she absolutely needs it. I think he caters more to Mulan's subscious efforts to prove to herself that she could do something right because no one else believed she could. No one believed MUSHU could do anything right, so he's going through a similiar situation . If you take him out, I don't think I'd believe her story. I would have to wonder where a character that doesn't really believe in herself got all that strength from to prove her family and now the military wrong if there wasn't something encouraging her in the background along the way. He was that little thing that kept her going mentally just as Shang was that thing that kept challenging her physically. Mushu is her strength and Shang is her dicipline. She needed both to reach the arrow . It's just as important that she was able to overcome her final goal with Shan Yu to put all that training to use as it was for her to understand that she's not a huge screw up and that being her dinky self is just as valuable in that fight, so I think Mushu is just as important as Shang.

[AladdinsGenie]

[Meesh]

But they're not targeting adults... The word "princess'" is a word that most little girls can identify with.
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