Spotted: Target Run & Done

After being cooped up in our house since Wednesday evening -- thanks, Hurricane Florence -- my family and I ventured out to Target this morning. (Honestly, though, where else would we go?) We didn't really need anything, but Target is such a great place to wander around and somehow end up with a cartful of random things.

Plus there's coffee. Which, after four days in the house, was definitely, actually needed. (Starbucks + Target is my second favorite pairing behind Starbucks + Disney.)

Target's also a great place to do "field research," which is a fun way of saying I get to look at the Disney-related merchandise through an academic lens.

And Target didn't disappoint. First up:

📷: Me (and yes, that's my coffee in the background)

First, I tried searching Target for "mulan doll" and the only one that came up was the Hasbro doll. (At least she's wearing the outfit from the end of the movie and not the matchmaker outfit that she's usually in.) This one is marketed as an "Action Adventure Figure" so that's a solid plus. Also a plus -- this is the closest thing to Warrior Mulan I've seen in the Mulan merchandise. Normally, for whatever reason, she's marketed in a dress and definitely conforms to feminine conventions. So, another solid plus for a Mulan figure who's wielding a sword and is portrayed as a kick-ass woman. 

But...those legs!? 

Not exactly a win in the "realistic body image" column there, Hasbro. So, Con. 

On a less relevant note, I also saw this:

📷: Me

My daughter wanted to watch Tangled this weekend -- anything that wasn't Frozen! -- and I'm just really confused about why Maximus has such a glittery mane. I'm pretty sure he's not glittery in the movie and can't we market a male horse without adding glitter? My daughter loves Maximus just fine without the glittery mane, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't need to have one marketed towards her.

And we may or may not have left the store with this shirt:

Dream big, princess.

"Don't Underestimate The Importance of Body Language"

Y'all know how I feel about Target.

So when my husband asked me if I wanted to get out of the house for a bit and take our daughter on a Target run with my mom while he watched the newborn, I jumped at the chance. (And I don't care how #basicwhitegirl it makes me if I love walking around Target with my Starbucks macchiato. Or #suburbanmom. Or both.)

And I'll admit that one of the reasons I love going to Target -- and there are many -- is that there is always so. much. Disney. stuff. Disney is a marketing genius, and this extends to their ability to merchandize everything and anything.

In our house, we're a sucker for Disney Legos -- if only because Legos are my husband's Kryptonite. Combine them with Disney? There's no hope for us.

So as we're walking down the toy aisles, I noticed this set, "Ariel and the Magic Spell":

Nothing special -- I was actually more interested in the Moana sets on the shelf below -- but it struck me that this was kind of a "dark" scene for Disney to make a Lego set out of. (Aside from the fact that it's the scene with one of the greatest Disney songs, ever.) It would be having a Snow White set with the old crone and the apple or a Sleeping Beauty set with Maleficent and the spinning wheel. 

And then I took a closer look at Ursula:

I'm not one to judge but...if Ursula weren't an animated cartoon character, she'd probably have serious grounds for a misrepresentation/overly Photoshopped lawsuit. She is, IMHO, surprisingly slender, given her original appearance. I mean, yeah. Maybe I'm reading too much into the design of a tiny Lego toy, but still. Part of Ursula's design -- and her appearance did evolve; in early concept art she was based on eels/manta rays/lion fish rather than her now-iconic squidlike similarities -- is her corpulence. The late 80s/early 90s was also the time for heroin chic in fashion, so it (unfortunately) makes sense that the heroine would be impossibly thin and the villainess would be the opposite. (Compared to, for instance, rail-thin Cruella De Vil in the 1960s.)

Again, I don't think Disney or Lego is making a statement about female body image through Lego characters...I just think it's really interesting that Ursula is so much slimmer -- and that she's even in a toy set at all. Just scrolling through the first few pages of the Disney Legos on Target's website, the closest thing to a villain in the other sets -- excluding the Star Wars ones because they make villains cool -- is Marshmallow from Frozen, and even then, he's not the uber-villain of the movie.

New Moana Doll At Target

Was at Target the other day (although, to be honest, when am I not?), and I took a stroll down the toy aisle just for kicks.

And guess what? The new Moana merchandise is out! (Yes, even before the film is released.) So if you know someone who's going to want Moana merchandise, get it now before the actual release of the film. 

Not the point. The point is that the Moana doll, much like her character looks so much different than a "traditional" kid's doll. 

Here she is next to Barbie:

Look at the differences in height (Barbie is considerably taller), face shape, neck length, bust and leg size. Sure, Moana's eyes are unrealistically large, but hey. That's animation these days. Overall, she's more built more "realistically" and her legs don't look as if you could snap them like matchsticks.

For comparison, here she is next to Pocahontas (who is actually the only other Disney princess whose legs you can see in the box):

To be fair, Pocahontas has some fairly well-defined legs (for a doll), but she does run around the woods barefoot a lot so....

Is this progress for Disney & Hasbro? Have we finally moved past the princesses whose waists were as thin as their necks?