Toy Noize

Mickey Mouse Isn’t Paying The Bills Anymore

Have you noticed the recent of appearance in Disney in all sorts of new places? I know I have. It seems like Disney is attempting to branch out. After 90 years, someone realized it was time to mix it up. And this makes sense too. Traditionally, Disney’s target demographic has been children age 0 – 14 (or some where in the early teens). Courtesy of iPods, xbox and a shorter maturation time span, this target demographic window is shrinking. Instead of 0-14, Disney is lucky if they can hold onto 0-11. I’ve walked by a few Disney stores (the ones that didn’t out right shut down), and I would have to say the average age of the end consumer is getting lower and lower. I’d guess it is close to 4 lately (I think princesses are one of those Disney saviors).

This shrinking window must have forced execs to start thinking outside the box. In this post, I hope to give you a glimpse into this window. And oddly, most of these items are NOT in the usual toy range …

Lets start off with this lip gloss from MAC makeups. Yeah, not the typical item you would see branded with Disney characters. I’ve walked by enough Macy’s makeup counters and Sephoras to realize that makeup is big business. Disney execs can see this too. It seems everyone these days is getting into the health good collaborations from Kat Von Dee to Pharrell Williams. Makeup is big. And who’s bigger in a young ladies life than good old Daisy Duke. Seems like an easy transition product for tweens and teens.

Over to the mens counter, a few street brands have had success collaborating with Disney. These ones really struck me as odd. No disrespect to the brands Hundreds or Supreme, but the lifestyles portrayed by these crews seems very un-Disney. I believe The Hundreds kicked it off 2-3 years back. They did a big “Lost Boys” themed style drop. It worked, it even made sense. The Lost Boys were always the riff raff of the Pan world. I’m sure The Hundreds feels the same way.

Then Supreme (the king of collaborations) dropped these Mickey Mouse tees. You wouldn’t look at them twice if you saw someone wearing one on the street. They look like every other Mouse tee you’ve ever seen. Except these are branded with the name SUPREME. And that turns a $15 shirt into a $75 shirt. Good luck to the seller of this particular one …

Now I know what you are thinking. You didn’t come to this post to read about makeup and tshirts. Where the toys at??? Settle down, we’re getting to my favorite piece right now.

What you see here is the Kaws X Disney Pinocchio & Jiminy Cricket Set. These pieces dropped on August 28, 2010 (just a few days back, mind you) over in Japan at the Original Fake store. Kaws has been going hard with art, beer bottles … and massive sculptures lately so I was very excited to see him get back into the toy market (doesn’t it feel like the kaws dissected figures came out a million years ago already??).

This one has classic KAWS styling. X’ed up hands, slashed mouths and tons of great details. Jiminy Cricket stands about as tall as a 100% Be@rbrick, where Pinocchio is more like a 400% Be@rbrick. Again, these would look great in my living room. Hook it up!

ps. Did anyone see this ridiculous “Kaws figure lot”? Whoooofffffff. Does this kid know how ebay works?? I’m guessing not.