Parents shelling out sky high prices to snap up merchandise from Disney's hit movie Frozen after doll shortage

Almost 40,000 items of Frozen merchandise offered for sale on eBay

Limited edition Elsa dolls are selling for three times their retail value

Sets of dolls featuring both Elsa and Anna for sale for close to £6,000

A shortage of merchandise from Disney movie Frozen has led to bidding wars online and parents buying items for up to three times their retail price.



Limited edition Elsa doll's worth £500 at Harrods are being offered at almost thee times that amount, with numerous auctions for the doll starting at over £1,000.



A set of both Elsa and Anna dolls are being sold for £2,899, and a set which includes two versions of each doll, a DVD and lithographs, is being sold for £5,831.

Close to 40,000 items linked to the Disney movie Frozen are being sold on the UK eBay site, with 2,600 listing alone for dolls of the character Elsa, seen above

While the disneystore.co.uk website only has 25 listings for Frozen merchandise, the UK version of eBay has over 39,934 listings as sellers aim to cash-on on the frenzy.

More than 2,600 Elsa dolls are being sold on the site where even a box that the sought-after doll came in is has been listed for sale.

More basic Anna and Elsa dolls that retail for £20 are being snapped-up for £40 online and Elsa tiara's worth £10, are selling for £20.

Disney has said they are regularly re-stocking UK shops to meet demand and in May they confirmed a second shipment was on its way here after shops sold out.



Limited edition versions of the Elsa and Anna dolls which were originally being sold for £500, are being sold on eBay for more than £1,000 each, with a pair being offered for £2,899 A set featuring two versions of each doll from the Disney movie are being sold for close to £6,000

One eBay user has even offered some plain, unwanted, packaging from an Elsa doll for sale

In America Disney imposed quotas on some items, allowing shoppers to only buy a single item at a time. Retail experts there compared the demand to that of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of the 1980s.



Members of the parents website Mumsnet reguarly swap advice on how on how to track down items like the Elsa dress.



One user wrote: 'I can't get one anywhere!! All sold out and ebay selling for £150!!! Anyone seen any reasonably priced ones?'

Dolls of the Frozen character Anna, voiced in the Disney movie by Kristen Bell, are also in high demand

Another user spoke about buying the dress from Amazon for £15 and seeing it being offered a short time later for £95.



Mumsnet members spoke of 'stalking' the Disney Facebook page to find out about when new shipments were arriving.

Frozen, based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, overtook Toy Story 3 in March to become the highest grossing animated film of all time, raking in £644.5million at the box office.



It was in the UK box office top 10 for more than three months and now ranks as the 10th highest grossing film in cinema history.

