Walt Disney’sThe Little Mermaidwas created out of sheer desperation. The studio hadn’t had an animated hit in two decades (or blockbuster since 1961’s101 Dalmations). The entire ’80s passed them by without even a minor hit—a radically missed opportunity given the era’s optimism (as ch...
Growing up,Halle Baileywas obsessed with “The Little Mermaid,” wearing out her family’s VHS tape watching and rewatching the 1989 Disney animated hit and pretending to be Ariel every time she went swimming. “Her sense of longing, her searching for herself, was something that I could res...
By far the most-popular American icon of any kind was the Colonel—more popular than Ronald McDonald or the Burger King or even the Starbucks mermaid. In terms of garment logos, hands-down the most common was The North Face, maybe because the Europeans still thought it was winter even tho...