the Luisa/Isabela merch thing is so funny to me but for reasons not everyone seems to understand. Like, it’s not that people don’t want Isabela merch, it’s that Disney marketed her in (accidentally?) the worst possible way
In case you don’t know, Disney Execs overstocked on Isabela merch as they expected her to be the breakout star of the film, except it’s not selling as well as they hoped. What is selling is Luisa merch– a lot of Luisa merch, actually, they keep selling out! (After this and the Namaari stuff I hope the execs get it through their skulls that buff women are good.) There’s a ton of funny memes about this but a few of the ones I’m seeing are kinda coming off as sexist– “we want the masculine girl and not the feminine one” vibes, ignoring the fact that Luisa is actually pretty feminine in characterization– as well as the fact that people are looking for merch of other feminine characters, such as Dolores and Pepa.
Cause the thing is, it’s not that people don’t want merch of Isabela, it’s that Disney overstocked on the wrong Isabela merch.
We find out in the movie that Isabela doesn’t like being reduced to the pretty one, the flowery one, the perfect one. With how quickly she stains her dress during her song, she doesn’t seem to like the color much either. Isabela is happy when making weird plants– cacti and sundew and “strangling figs,” giant trees and colorful, asymmetrical leaves. This is shown both overtly with her song and implicitly– before her revelation, she’s in a purpleish-pink, while the rest of her side of the family is blue. The more redder shade is likely to imitate Abuela Alma, who is color-coded in red. But after Isabela’s revelation, she first dresses in a splatter-paint dress that seems mainly black, and at the end of the film she excitedly changes into a dark blue dress, now matching her sisters and parents. This visually shows her change, and how she’s shed the image of someone she’s not in order to become herself.
It’s not unusual for Disney not to market spoilery outfits when the movie first drops. If you think back to 2019-2020, those Snow Queen Elsa and Queen Anna outfits didn’t drop for several months. So I’m not saying that the fact she’s in pink in the merch is complete proof that the execs didn’t get the message. The proof, though, is that all of her merch completely relies on the pink and the flowers.
Here’s some stuff I’ve seen everywhere in the last couple months (apparently not selling):
ID: Three images of Isabela merch. The first is a “Isabela Garden Room Playset,” which is colored in nothing but bright pinks and purples, with lots of petals. The next image is a pink t-shirt showing a silhouette of Isabela, with purple flowers overlaid and a cursive spelling of her name underneath her. The shirt is titled “Beautiful Isabela.” The next image is of a white-tshirt of Isabela smiling and holding a purple flower as more flowers surround her, with the text “Magical and Fantastical.” End ID.
See, that’s the thing, it’s not that Isabela is feminine– again, Aurora and Rapunzel are decked out in pink and purple and they still make Disney big bucks. It’s that Isabela, in-canon, does not like being viewed as the beautiful flower princess.
So here’s the thing with people who’ve seen the movie and want to get merch. Kids who like Isabela aren’t going to want her in the flowery appearance because that was when she wasn’t happy– or, if they’re not really old enough to process character stuff, they’ll think of it as “when she was mean.” Adult collectors aren’t going to want her flowery appearance because that was when she was unhappy and constrained, so they’re going to wait for the merch to drop of her in the black or blue dress.
Disney Execs, however, were fully convinced that she was going to sell because she was the pretty pink flower princess. So that’s what’s in all her merch, and that’s why it’s not selling, because that’s not who Isabela is. And then at the same time, they thought nobody would want Luisa merch bc ew girl with muscles… except she’s one of the most popular characters bc she’s a good character. The cousins they aren’t marketing are super popular as well because, oh yeah, this is a good movie with good characters and we like them for that reason and not just because of their appearance.
The best analogy I can come up with for this is: imagine if, in Frozen, we also didn’t know Elsa had ice powers and anxiety until the coronation. After the movie drops, Disney only sells Elsa in her coronation dress, overstocks on that, and ignores every other character. Yeah that’s what they’re doin rn
tl;dr Disney Execs are dumb as shit just start marketing Isabela as the deranged cactus sister and you’ll start seeing an upswing in sales probably
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