The characters were in keeping with the original 1950's artwork, and as a child of the 80's, I didn't know or even cared that there was the gap in time--what was important to me was Cinderella herself. However, in the early 2000's, to lift Disney from plummeting sales, I learned that Disney produced a line of Disney Princesses, all of whom received a makeover, below.
The features were softened, friendlier and dresses that seem to drape and flow with movement, but it seemed to keep with the originally established look (at least my thought). However, last class, Amy passed around a small article on sexified book characters, and this also reminded me of the 2012 redesign of the Disney Princesses, below.
My fiance's niece just started to wane shift her interest from Mickey Mouse to Cinderella (and other princesses), so while my fiance and I were browsing for Christmas gifts at the Disney store for his niece last year, I was surprised to see this flirtly rendition of Cinderella character. I didn't know how to react, "Should I like it? Should I not?" I think my purist spirit didn't because of the personal memories, stemming from the original artwork. However, at the same time, young kids these days seem to prefer the the more "animated look" with softer features and brighter colors over the washed out hand-drawn look of the past. We experienced this with his niece two Christmas' ago. We gave her Bambi DVD as part of her gift and not too soon after the DVD started to play, our 2.5 year niece blurted out, "Not very good music!" and took off her headphones and asked to watch Mickey instead. We noticed differences in color, vibrancy, music, and story-telling between these two takes on children's entertainment mediums--interesting takeaway.
