There is a secret war going on as you are reading this. Very little information about it gets into the news media, yet it involves some of the most powerful organizations on the planet. One group dates back to the 1930’s and has been quietly watching and waiting for its competitors to eliminate each other. But it has become too large and too powerful to stay in the shadows and is starting to emerge in the most unlikely place – your granddaughter’s house. Before you get too alarmed,
we should point out that this group of merciless and ruthless individuals are not intent on harming you or your family, just owning you. But they are intent on harming their rivals and they are doing quite a job of it. They go by the collective name of The Princesses.
Here is some background to understand how things got to where they are today. Imagine that it’s 1959 again. The oldest baby boomer females are going to school dances for the first time. The youngest haven’t even been born yet. The ones in the middle, from age 3 to 10, are about to have their world turned upside down. Things will never be the same for them. The dolls they knew and loved are about to be wiped out in a marketing slaughter to rival the St. Valentine’s Day gang massacre of 1929. Only this time there will be no Al Capone and no blood, just boxes and boxes of unused doll clothes to remind mothers everywhere that their babies are no longer just little girls. They are now a target market.
Betsy Wetsy, Chatty Kathy, Toni, Ginny and Tiny Tears will no longer be with us. They will be gone forever, obliterated, removed from memory. There will be a new queen pin on the scene. Dressed only in a brief black and white striped swimsuit and sporting impossibly long slender legs, she will quickly take power and not another doll in sight will be able to stand up to her. Her organization will become a marketing juggernaut and she will reign supreme as the capo di tutti capi of the doll world for the next 40 years. Her name is Barbie.
Fast forward to today. Barbie still rules the doll kingdom with an iron fist but has paid dearly for her power. Her closest friends are gone, eliminated in the power struggles with upstart gangs like the Bratzpack. First to go was Midge, Barbie’s right-hand confidante almost from the start, and Midge’s kid sister Skipper, both brutally snuffed out in a merchandising accident in the late 1990’s. Barbie’s personal life suffered for her career as well. Her long-time lover Ken had to be pushed out of the organization for lack of performance. He currently ekes out a living doing celebrity appearances with off-brand dolls desperate for any kind of publicity. He now goes by the name Sugar Daddy Ken.
The Princesses arrived on the scene at the start of the new millennium. Some of them had already been around since the 1930’s, quietly and patiently watching the doll wars, waiting for an opportune time to strike. And strike they did, like a rattlesnake coiled and ready to sink its fangs into an unsuspecting prey. By 2008, at the height of the conflict between Barbie and Bratz, The Princesses had cleverly outflanked their rivals with a flurry of royalty deals that pushed their organization into the number one retail licensing spot. As far as the eye could see, little girls were sporting Princess backpacks, blankets, sheets, shirts, hats, lunchboxes, toothpaste, hair clips, underwear, books, costumes, toys, movies and just about anything that could support a printed image on it. The Princesses were here to stay.
Barbie has tried to imitate some of The Princesses but hasn’t made a lot of headway. Weakened by her ongoing fight with the ghetto-influenced Bratz mob, Barbie has held on to her tenuous position as the number one doll, but has slipped badly in total license dollars. The Princesses continue to win and hold the hearts and minds of young girls everywhere. They distribute a fantasy drug unlike anything Barbie can offer and they have created an entire generation of addicts who feed on a never ending stream of licensed consumer goods.
Behind this organization is the most secretly ruthless Princess of them all, one who grew up knowing the cruelty of wicked stepsisters and what it was like to live in squalor, covered with fireplace ashes. She is a Princess with a really big chip on her shoulder, one who leveraged her glass slipper into an extensive empire. Her name is Cinderella and she is godmother to the entire Princess mafia, known from the inside as the Cinderfellas, and she is making offers no one can refuse.
The next time you visit with your young granddaughter, do a quick check on how many Princess items she is sporting. You can determine her level of addiction by how many plastic Princess dress-up shoes she owns, and whether her room has Princess sheets, blankets and curtains. If all she wants to do is play Princess and rescue imaginary characters, she might be a candidate for detoxification. But be careful, advocates of de-licensing have been known to mysteriously disappear and Princess recruiting among our young is widespread. The invisible arms of the Princess mafia reach far and wide.
(Note: Annual revenues for the entire retail licensing industry are in excess of $160 billion. Of that, Disney leads with $30 billion in license sales, including $4 billion a year in Princess licensing. The target market is girls, age 3 to 8. Mattel’s Barbie is still the number one doll sold, but the company continues to have legal battles over the Bratz line, started by a Mattel doll designer who left to work for rival MGA Entertainment. In just a few short years, MGA has sold over 350 licenses for annual sales of $2 billion.)
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