Once upon a time, you could buy Snow White-themed bleach and ammonia
Beyond Mickey, Disney’s most iconic characters are probably the Disney princesses.
From Cinderella and her missing slipper to spunky mermaid Ariel, the Disney princess is a Disney staple, despite not officially being codified into a “Disney Princess” brand until the 2000s. The criteria for who gets to be a Disney Princess is nebulous (for instance, though Anna and Elsa are both royalty, they’re technically not Disney Princesses since they’re the face of their own brand). But one thing’s certain: Disney’s princesses have always been mega popular.
In Disney Princess: Beyond the Tiara, author Emily Zemler explores the Disney Princess phenomenon, diving into the films that introduced the characters, the actors behind them, and their cultural legacy. Polygon is happy to share an exclusive excerpt about the princess who started it all.
You might attribute Disney’s ever-growing lines of merchandise as a 21st-century phenomenon, but it was actually Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that kicked off Disney’s aggressive product marketing. In an unprecedented move for the time, Snow White tie-ins began to roll out before the movie came out. Overall, there were about 2,000 Snow White-themed products out there — which is a lot, even by today’s standards. Read below for a glimpse at the strange Snow White merch that the Disney adults back in the day sought out.
In 1932, Walt and Roy O. Disney hired Herman S. Kamen, an advertising executive known as Kay Kamen, as the merchandising man for Mickey Mouse. Over the next three years, Kamen oversaw the creation of thousands of pieces of Mickey Mouse merchandise, from wristwatches to breakfast cereal to figurines. He worked with manufacturers as well as department stores to ensure that Disney
Read more on polygon.com
