
Disney Renaissance
The 90s were the years of the so-called "Disney renaissance" in which the studios were chaining successes after the premier of The Little Mermaid in 1989. Children and adults liked the musical format of their feature films with those characters taken from classic stories that were asking to materialize in the form of dolls for us children to project through play the ideas and dreams that the movies had left us.
This renaissance was preceded by a time of great darkness for Disney after Walt and Roy died, but suddenly in the late 80's it seems that all the genius minds came together and among them Howard Elliot Ashman was "the man who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul " because with his lyrics and his vision he gave life to the stories and inspiration to the animators. Unfortunately he died of AIDS after The Beauty and the Beast, although he was still able to do the most iconic Aladdin songs.
So much talent together gave birth to a Disney-Mattel deal to produce the toys for the movies, after the initial rejection of the Little Mermaid line that allowed Tyco to make the dolls for this first movie until '92 and with pretty good taste. The fact is that the Disney-Mattel relationship left us memorable doll collections with Barbie bodies and facial molds made in the likeness of the characters that delighted us, the children of that time, and characters like Beauty and the Beast , Pocahontas or Tarzan among many others, filled our rooms with stories that we continued. With a single object we could be flying over Agrabah or in the Imperial China.
No need to say that these items are now prized objects for collectors and nostalgics as they still retain that ability to transport us to "whole new world" but this type of spell does not expire and continues to seduce children and grown ups generation after generation.
by The Barbiest.