Disney's Hair Play
2010's 'Rapunzel' has 'toyetic' written all over it
By Cliff Annicelli -- Gifts and Dec, 2/1/2010 12:00:00 AM
Hot on the heels of last fall's introduction of the newest Disney Princess, Tiana, the African-American star of the The Princess and The Frog feature film, Disney does it again for 2010 with the big screen coming out party for another character destined for membership in the doll aisle's royal sorority, Rapunzel.
Playthings spoke with Disney Consumer Products' Chris Heatherly, General Manager & Vice President, Toys, North America; and Mary Beech, Head of Franchise Development, about merchandising plans for this newest princess, the performance of The Princess and The Frog toys and the Disney Princess brand overall.
Playthings: What does Rapunzel bring to the Disney Princess family?
Beech: She's a real heroine—she drives the action in the story and is very independent. She's got an action-adventure quality; she does things that we haven't seen a female character in a Disney movie do in a long time. And then there's the hair—70 feet of blond hair that glows when she sings—which is an added value for us. When we went in to see the film, we almost had to carry out our head of toys creative on a stretcher he was so excited.
Playthings: What does the merchandising look like for toys?
Heatherly: Like with The Princess and The Frog, our core licensees for Rapunzel will be Mattel and CDI. We'll have a pretty expansive line of dolls.
In addition to being a beautiful princess and having a great story, Rapunzel, of course, has the advantage of having long, beautiful hair so we'll be doing some cool things with that and giving girls a lot of ways to play with her hair. When we were designing the line we said: 'Let's own hair play.' We looked at every major innovation that's happened in hair and, I think, created some new ones. So you'll see us really take a strong position on hair play with Rapunzel.
There are also some really great moments in the movie that we're going to be able to capture in toys—both in small dolls, but also with a large fashion doll tower that's 3 or 4 feet high. When you think about that major gift that mom and dad purchase to put under the tree, we think the tower is going to be the must-have gift for girls next Christmas. There's also a pretty extensive role-play line from CDI.
In addition to Rapunzel, we'll also relaunching our large doll business this fall with Jakks and their subsidiary Tolly Tots. We've done a lot of permutations of Disney Princess large dolls over the years, but some of them in the past have felt more like a generic baby doll than one of our princesses. With this line we really put a lot of focus on nailing 'royal nurturing' and delivering the feeling that you're raising a princess. So we're going to have a gorgeous line with great value from Jakks that I think is really going to bring a lot of freshness to the large doll space, plus a whole line of accessories—like a baby carriage shaped like a [horse drawn] carriage. Everything is very princess-like.
Plaything: What's the verdict on The Princess and The Frog toy line's performance?
Heatherly: It's done far, far better than I think the retailers initially anticipated. We always felt strongly about the film. We were pushing the retailers to take an even bigger position on the movie but there was some concern about the release date and things like that, yet as soon as the products set we were having trouble keeping toys in stock. In fact, most retailers sold out before or around Thanksgiving; Toys R Us had to pull product off their shelves in order to have enough product to set the feature shop when the movie came around. It far and away exceeded everyone's expectations. We always felt that it was going to be huge; I think it lived up to everything we thought it could be. The doll has done great. Of all of the Disney princesses, Tiana was the number one seller over the Christmas season—that's a pretty big deal for a new character.
Playthings: What's new for the Disney Princess brand overall in 2010?
Heatherly: One of the ways we're growing the Disney Princess brand is looking at things like how to make Disney Princesses more a part of a girl's day. One of the strongest successes we've had this year has been our bath doll line; it's really proven to be entirely incremental to our core fashion doll line.
The other thing we've done—a big step for us—is integration between CDI and Mattel in terms of themeing. We worked with both to create a whole new bath segment against Princess that includes a variety of role-play items and dolls that you can play with together in the tub. We're pretty excited about it. We're also bringing that integration into the core power SKU of the entire Princess range, which is the sparkle doll segment. We reinvent it every year—it always has some sort of glittery dress—but what we've never done is really align the design of the doll and the role-play dresses so that they look the same. One of the things I wanted to do when I came on board to run toy licensing was to take more of a brand-forward approach to our licensing effort and really integrate design across our licensees. When you see a Disney product you shouldn't be able to say this product came from this licensee or that one—it should all feel like it came from the same hand. We had great cooperation between Mattel and CDI in designing the 2010 shimmer princess dress together and have it in both the role-play scale and in the doll scale.
We're also working with CDI on what we're calling a “party” segment, but which is really more of a play food line.
So this combination of themeing and looking at a girl's day gives us more opportunities to create Princess product that fits better into girls' lives—looking closer at the types of play patterns that a princess might do—and bringing those into the brand.
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