Confessions of a Disney Adult: Merchandise, Disney Bounding, and Bob

Variety’s international correspondent is one of a growing number of mature Disney fans – a group the Mouse House is ignoring at its peril.

I am definitely a Disney adult. Whenever he has time (and funds), he goes to one of his six Disney resorts around the world. There, you can feel your problems disappear faster than a Mickey Bar in the midday sun. Excitement fills the air, strangers wave to me from their rides, and suddenly my biggest dilemma is whether to go to the Haunted Mansion or It’s a Small World first.

Unfortunately, we can’t live in a Disney park (we checked), so we did the next best thing and injected all things Disney into our London apartment and wardrobe. There is also a bone china teapot from Mrs. Potts at Tokyo Disneyland. A $400 Lego Cinderella Castle that her husband and I built for her 30th birthday. A Baymax backpack found at a Disney store in Shanghai (which, by the way, gets more compliments than any designer handbag).

I’m not the only one who has been obsessed with the Mouse House growing up. The company is a fast-growing demographic that includes Ryan Gosling, John Stamos, Rebel Wilson, and Kourtney Kardashian (whose recent baby shower was decorated like Disneyland), and the company is willing to take a risk. This is a layer that has been ignored. Disgruntled adults at Disney have complained that former CEO Robert Chapek raised ticket prices and canceled free perks such as FastPass within the parks during former CEO Robert Chapek’s brief tenure. He nicknamed him “Bob Paycheck.” Their dissatisfaction contributed to Mr. Chapek’s ouster late last year, following a series of moves that angered not only brand loyalists but also Hollywood talent.

“Disney is deeply ingrained in every aspect of my life,” says Disney influencer Francis Dominic Garcia. His pop culture and theme park content has earned him a healthy following on Instagram. Garcia has Disney-themed tattoos, a closet full of Disney-approved costumes, and, of course, an annual pass to Disneyland. “I swear to God, if you look at my blood cells, they’ll literally be shaped like Mickey Mouse.”

Leslie Kaye founded Disneybound, a lifestyle company that grew out of a Tumblr blog she started in 2010. Kay and his friends had been begging his parents to take them to Disney World, but without success. “And suddenly we realized we were 22 years old and no one was going to tell us what to do with our money,” she says. While planning her travels, she began posting fashion-forward ensembles online inspired by Disney characters. Within weeks, Kaye created a new movement known as Disneybounding, in which fans went to the parks wearing costumes inspired by the characters. She now regularly collaborates with the company on official projects, including her books and merchandise.

Mr. Kaye’s professional relationship with Disney shows that the company has begun to acknowledge its adult fan base with age-appropriate products, experiences and high-end licensing deals.

“Our adult consumers were looking for a way to connect with our brand through product choices that reflected their lifestyles and personalities,” said Liz Short, Disney’s senior vice president of global soft lines and global strategy. Mr. Reed says. variety. Items like the $600 bridal Minnie ears designed by Vera Wang, the $350 Mickey-print Coach sweatshirt, and the $280 “Beauty and the Beast” cast-iron soup pot from Le Creuset are clearly not aimed at children. . (It also probably won’t include the new Disney x Charlotte Tilbury cosmetics collection, which includes a $100 jar of moisturizer that promises to reduce wrinkles.)

On the fan forum Disboards.com, the site’s nearly 600,000 registered members spend hours discussing everything Magic Kingdom-related, from the latest merchandise to the company’s stock price. And current CEO Bob Iger should also take note. News of the company’s return was initially greeted with excitement on the ground, but sentiment has cooled markedly since then. In a recent thread titled “Trivia and Myopia,” commenters debated Iger’s future. “Mr. Iger could be fired too,” one poster said, noting that former CEO Michael Eisner “considered Mr. Iger indispensable.” Not really. ”

While some may think Disney adults are just scavenging for anything with Mickey’s face on it, fans are often Disney’s harshest critics. “It’s because you truly love something and want to make it better that you can approach it critically,” says Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey in the UK, and a self-proclaimed Disney Adult. Robin Muir says: she admits). Muir, a feminist scholar who has written books about Disney princesses, cites “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a movie that adult fans can both cherish and acknowledge as “problematic.”

Last year, Muir co-founded an international research network for scholars studying Disney in fields ranging from literature to economics. “This is about creating a home for all of us who have never really had a home when it comes to Disney,” she says. Like many Disney adults I spoke to for this article, Francis Dominic Garcia has experienced a “strange negative connotation” to his love of Disney, and I feel confused. “It’s a lot of fun and it’s harmless,” Garcia said. “We’re spending money on mice.”