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.”