Hey Gang!
When Mattel first started making Disney Princess(and Prince) the dolls shared the Mattel Barbie(Ken) body with a date on the back but used a head made for Disney that said Disney at the the back of the neck. Those of us that are used to Barbie dolls noted that the head never had the year like Barbie to identify the different head sculpts.
At first, the biggest different from the Disney Princess and Barbie was was the eyes. Since the Disney characters were based on an animated movie, the eyes reflect the larger more animation type style of eyes ie, they looked more cartoonish than barbie because of this. In some dolls, this wasn't as pronounced as in others. The size of the eyes of Snow White-round with the star twinkle painted in them are more cartoonish than the eyes of Pocahontas.
Snow White
Pocahontas
As time went on, there seemed to be more of an effort to distinguish the Barbie from the princess.
I am not sure if this was Disney's idea or Mattel's. The size of the head of the Disney dolls (which always seemed a bit larger) became larger. Blowing up like a balloon! This was also about the time
that the Disney stores started carrying their own line of Disney Princess with larger heads and larger eyes than the ones done by Mattel.
Bratz dolls, which had becoming wildly popular at the time. For a while Bratz dolls had nudged
Barbie out as the top selling doll slot. They had a large head with large eyes and a small body. The
popularity of this doll seemed to catch the doll market off guard.
Mattel and Disney seem to react to the increase in sales of the Bratz doll. The heads on both doll lines became even larger. While the princess keep their gowns, Disney seemed to think that adding even more glitter would make the gown some how better! Tons of glitter was annoyingly add to Disney gowns.
I really wanted this doll and it took many washings to remove most of the glitter off the dress!
Mattel drastically changed (a bad move) to compete the size of doll heads, faces and the style of clothes to look more Bratz doll's crop tops, short skirts and dresses. Fashion Avenue, which is till very popular, was replace with Fashion Fever (more of a hit or miss) which had few Ken outfits (Ken being phased out for Blaine).
Mattel even add a new line, My Scene to compete with Brats!
My Scene Photo courtesy of Mattel
As with many of these types of line of dolls that Mattel with put out. That didn't last for long and Mattel finally sued MGA Entertainment over the Bratz doll and won so the Bratz doll was discontinued.
With Barbie and My Scene along with Bratz dolls have more provocative fashions, many mothers weren't happy to have their child playing with and maybe requesting these types of fashions. I think it was just those types of fashions that got more mothers and other people sewing for dolls to have the kind of clothes they wanted to see.
Fashions I purchase from eBay because they were a more conservative length!
When Disney move the prince line to Hasbro, Hasbro seem to make the heads even larger and the body smaller.
Photos courtesy Bloomsburg.com
Hasbro Princess vs Mattel Princess
Mulan
Jasmine
Set of the princess!
As Disney seems to add more dolls to their line, Hasbro has said that it wants to highlight the
Princess like Mattel didn't! So let's see where they go with them!
OK, Thanks For Looking!
