Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
The Disney film "Frozen" is the highest grossing animated film of all time, raking in over $1 billion. But what about the merchandise? How important is it for a film that's been such a big hit?
"In the grand scheme of the entertainment business it's just as important, because it's the long term relationship that people have with the content and characters. Not just the time that they spent in the theater," says Sasha Strauss, brand strategist and founder of Innovation Protocol.
Parents and kids are also going crazy over Disney's merchandise related to the film. Just check out the Disney Store Facebook page. Different pieces are sold out online and in stores. They've even spawned a submarket of folks trying to sell things like limited-edition Anna and Elsa dolls for as much as $1,700 on eBay, which normally go for around $100 dollars.
Could a toy scarcity turn off fans from the products?
"As long as the content continues to be high quality, entertaining, memorable, songs that we all love, characters we identify, we'll deal with these pain points and turn back to Frozen as an icon in our youth to the point where these children will grow up with these Frozen characters as archetypes of the types of people we want to be, the friends they want to make, this is good business."
How does Disney get people so invested in their products?
"[Disney is] assessing scripts every single day. And they're not just assessing, "is this fun or memorable," but they're asking themselves, will a father attending with his young daughter enjoy this. And then they develop the characters and story line and supplemental content so that everybody gets what they need from it."