Disney’s quest to find the next Frozen

This image released by Disney shows a teenage Elsa the Snow Queen. AP Photo/Disney

This image released by Disney shows a teenage Elsa the Snow Queen. AP Photo/Disney

Published Dec 11, 2016

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New York - Walt Disney Frozen, a fantasy

tale of a snow queen coming to grips with her icy powers, was a stunning winner

on store shelves. Years after the film’s release, children are

still squealing for pretty dolls, kiddie karaoke machines, and tiny ice

palaces. There are board games, Play-Doh sets, and upholstered chairs featuring

its animated stars. You can even get behind the wheel of a $299 Frozen

mini Jeep Wrangler. Really.

Of course,

the media giant would love to replicate that success. In November, Disney Chief

Executive Officer Bob Iger said he expected the studio’s next animated release,

Moana, to join its “pantheon of recent hits.” To an extent, it’s accomplished

that goal, topping box office rankings the first two weekends and quickly

grossing almost $200 million worldwide. Meanwhile, there are lots of Moana

toys in stores—but they’re mostly figurines and adventure play sets. No jeeps

to be found.

“There’s

quite a bit of product out there,” said Jim Silver, a toy industry veteran who

runs the website Time to Play. “But it’s not a Frozen. Very few properties are

Frozen.”

Box office

success doesn’t always translate into merchandising success. Silver points

to Finding Nemo, Pixar’s 2003 animated epic about a lost clownfish, which made

almost $1 billion at theaters worldwide, more than double the haul from

Cars three years later. He estimates Cars raked in about 25 times the

merchandise sales Nemo did, despite the box office gap.

It’s

simple: Kids want toy hot rods and racetracks more than stuffed fish. Seeing

as it’s now holiday shopping season, parents may want to take note.

When it

comes to competing with Frozen, Moana doesn’t seem to have the mighty

drawing power of Elsa, Frozen’s heroine, with her hit songs, sister Anna’s love

story, and the fun characters surrounding them both. Rather, Moana is more

like Brave, an original story starring the fiery-haired Merida and her bow and arrow. Auli’i

Cravalho’s Moana has a paddle and a canoe to spur her adventures while Maui, her demigod pal voiced by Dwayne Johnson, totes

around his magical fish hook. None of those things are a match for, say, a

glimmering ice castle dollhouse. No one really expected Moana to compete with

Frozen.

Instant hit

Frozen

debuted in late 2013 and was immediately deemed a hit, though

industry experts didn’t expect that, either. But no one — including Disney — had

anticipated the mad rush for merchandise. Of course, Elsa turned out to be

hugely popular. But so were Anna and her love interest Kristof. Even the

sidekick snowman Olaf had a following. With a musical’s soundtrack anchored by

Broadway star Idina Menzel’s Let It Go to keep the movie in the public’s

consciousness (the official sequence has more than 500 million views on

YouTube; a sing-along version has almost 1 billion), Frozen enjoyed uncanny staying

power at theaters before shifting to televisions everywhere.

Overwhelmed,

Disney struggled to keep up with demand for Frozen toys in 2014. In

2015, sales of Frozen merchandise jumped tenfold and kept momentum into

the next year. Piper Jaffray analysts estimated earlier this year that

Frozen has brought in a stunning $6 billion in merchandise sales. 

“Disney was

as surprised as anybody by the heights that Frozen soared,” said Marty

Brochstein, an executive at the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers

Association. “When Frozen first came out, there wasn’t much merchandise out

there. Disney and retailers spent the next year playing catch-up.”

Read also:  Disney taps 'Frozen' for prosthetics

Hasbro, the

Pawtucket-based toymaker, is the biggest benefactor of Disney’s movie

merchandising, riding the wave of Disney Princess and Frozen goods. It

muscled the Disney Princess doll business away from rival Mattel Inc. in

January, nabbing a chunk of the $5.5 billion enterprise Disney built

around its heroines. Hasbro has the main toy license for Moana. Disney

didn’t respond to a request for comment on its plans for Moana merchandise.

Sequels

Beyond

Moana, films coming out of Walt Disney Animation Studios have done mightily

this year, with Finding Dory and Zootopia each topping $1 billion at the

box office worldwide. Dory, the long-awaited sequel to 2003’s Finding

Nemo, stars Ellen DeGeneres’s lovable little blue fish, while

Zootopia introduces plucky bunny Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin.

But Dory is not Elsa. Nor is Officer Hopps. Moana, it seems, isn’t, either.

Perhaps the

next super-sellable Disney character is just a new version of an old heroine.

Disney’s live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as

Belle, will be in theaters next March, and it’s a proven brand. The toy

industry can’t wait, said Silver.

“You have

Belle and the Beast, you have the enchanted castle, the teapot, the

candlestick, the clock, that yellow dress,” said Silver. “Everyone is so

excited.”

BLOOMBERG

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