Does Skin And Hair Colour Affect Disney Princesses’ Merchandise Sales?

Dadaviz’s Jody Sieradzki thought that something interesting may came out of crossing the total number of eBay sales by dollar amount of Disney princesses’ merchandise with their skin tone and hair colour. And indeed, while correlation doesn’t mean causation, the resulting graphic seems interesting.



You can argue that the data may be skewed in favour of Elsa since Frozen has been the latest Disney hit, so it’s where demand should be. If you take her out of the picture, however, the white princesses still win by a wide margin, with an oldie like Cinderella capturing the first spot and Snow White following closely.

Then again, you can argue that the correlation may not be related to the the skin and hair colour but to the success of the movies themselves. It would be interested to see the total movie gross income visualized in the graphic too. One thing to consider is that, after so many years, re-runs, ad re-editions, Cinderella and Snow White are more imprinted in pop culture than any other Disney princess ever produced.

So perhaps it’s not the fact that Tiana and Jasmine racial features make their merchandise less popular than Elsa or Ariel, but the fact that the movies of the former weren’t as “good” and successful as the films of the latter.

Or maybe the correlation does mean causation in this case, after all.