Live Action The Little Mermaid Ariel by Disney

Okay, so I know that Disney live action remake movies are not everyone's cup of tea.  I have a few of the naysayers in my own family--and I agree with some of their points.  For example, I'll happily admit that some of the autotune singing in Beauty and the Beast is cringey.  Still, I can't help but get wrapped up in the excitement of seeing these beloved stories re-told.  I mean, there could be a new movie version of Cinderella every year and I would not object.  But because of my mixed feelings about re-makes, as the release date for the live action Little Mermaid came closer and closer, I wasn't sure how excited I would be.  Finally, last week, I took a minute to find a trailer online.  I watched it, riveted, with tears in my eyes.  When I heard the snippet from Halle Bailey's rendition of Part of Your World, I straight-up cried...and I knew exactly how excited I was about this movie: very excited.  Very.

I wasn't quite excited enough to head to the theaters on Friday night, release day, but I was there first thing Saturday morning.  The movie is incredible.  In fact, I think it's the best live action re-make so far (even considering my Cinderella bias).  Halle Bailey is luminous, Melissa McCarthy is brilliant as Ursula, and I love Daveed Diggs' take on Sebastian.  In addition, the hair animation is mind-boggling, and the underwater scenes are immersive...and breathtaking.  I think my husband will love this movie simply because of the diversity of sea life that's depicted during Under the Sea.  I feel like the end dragged on for too long and was a bit awkward, but that's a small complaint.  The movie as a whole was magical and I can't wait to see it again.

Unfortunately, even when Disney has a hit with these remake movies, the accompanying dolls aren't necessarily good.  The Disney Store's interpretations of Belle and Cinderella were strange, and ultimately disappointing.  This time around, both Mattel and Disney have released a collection of The Little Mermaid dolls, and the promotional photos look very promising.  So, today I'll review the Disney Store's version of Ariel, and next time I'll compare and contrast her to Mattel's deluxe Ariel doll.  And I'll tell you right up front: I am even more excited about these dolls than I was about the movie trailer:

Live Action The Little Mermaid Ariel doll by Disney, $34.99.

One nice thing about this doll is that her price is exactly the same as the other live action movie dolls I've reviewed over the years: $34.99.  That's not cheap, but it is consistent.  And it's also about $10 cheaper than the Mattel doll that I will review.

In addition to the Ariel in this review, The Disney Store also offered a gorgeous 17-inch limited edition version of the doll ($149.99, now sold out):

The price on this doll felt high to me (usually these releases are $99, from what I can remember), but her face looks really pretty, and she doesn't have crazy-long eyelashes like some other limited editions.

There's also a plush version of Ariel ($26.99):

This $99 sister set was available on the Disney site for a while:

But the sister set is made by Mattel and so I'll talk more about it when I review the Mattel doll.  All I'll say for now is that the sister characters were in the movie for like 30 seconds, so unless you're in love with their (unique) head molds, I wouldn't plunk down $100.

It's strange that Disney does not offer Eric or Ursula dolls.  I would have been very interested in them.  Maybe dolls like that will be released later?  In the meantime, Mattel fills in those gaps with a few budget dolls.

Ariel comes in a compact cardboard window box.  In fact, I was surprised by how small the box is.  For some perspective, here's the Disney doll next to the Mattel doll's larger box (with Lena for scale):

Mattel's deluxe Ariel doll (left) and Disney's singing Ariel doll (right).

I enjoy the economy of the Disney packaging.  Ariel is arranged next to her land outfit, with her red hair fanned out next to her:

The plastic window wraps around both edges of the box, so it's possible to peek in and see the doll from several different angles:

The back of the box has a hole cut into it that allows you to test out Ariel's singing feature:

I knew that the song featured with this doll is Part of Your World because the credits are printed on the back of the box:

For some reason I didn't test out the song right away.  I like to keep that kind of thing as a bit of a surprise for when the doll is out of the box and in my hands.

There's not much else of interest on the back of the box, just a bunch of warnings in different languages:

Ariel comes attached to a cardboard backdrop with a simple underwater design:

I think her hair is supposed to look like it's flowing out to her side as she swims underwater, but it's a little weird.

She has a lovely face, though:

She doesn't look a lot like Halle Bailey to me (her eyes are too small, for one), but some features are reminiscent of the character.  And she's very pretty.  Whew.  Not another face mold fail, at least.

The backdrop has this slip of paper taped to it, and I found it fascinating:

All of that information about interference is required simply because the doll has an electronic component.  Who knew!

Ariel herself comes attached to the backdrop with some wire ties, rubber bands, and yes--four plastic ties in the back of her head.  She also had a ton of tiny little plastic ties all throughout her dress and tail fin.  These were hard to see and easy to rip out by accident:

I used my small scissors and went through all of the fabric with great care so as not to make holes in the dress.

Here's everything that was in the box:

Ariel comes with a full land outfit which I'll look at in a little while.  She does not come with a stand, though, which is disappointing.  Mermaid dolls need stands to compensate for their lack of feet, so I had to borrow an ill-fitting stand from my stash:

I appreciate that this doll does not have a permanent tail; her tail is fabric and slides on over regular legs.  

Many of the Mattel Ariel dolls have plastic tails, and this really makes no sense with the story.  Who would want to play a Little Mermaid game if Ariel had no chance to get her legs and live on land with Eric?  The transformation has to be possible, if you ask me.

I was surprised to see all of the detail on the back of the fabric tail:

I don't remember this particular design from the movie:

I think the size of those back fins was smaller in the movie and so they didn't stand out as much as they do here.

Ariel has gorgeous red hair, in keeping with the older version of the character:

The color here is more red than how the hair looks in the 2023 movie, I would say, but certainly less red than it looks in the animated 1989 movie.  I really love the color, of course.

The hair tries to replicate the partially twisted/partially straight style that Ariel has in the movie, and it's somewhat successful:

Here's a closer look:

I found it difficult to get the hair arranged nicely at first.  It felt a bit lopsided.  So I took a moment to examine the rooting pattern and see what was going on:

The twists, which are made out of a fine yarn, are rooted in among the straight hair.  The twists are all rooted towards the top of the head, though, just below the center part:

Here's another view:

The rooting density is very high at the top of the head, where both types of hair are present, and then thinner at the back of the head:

Overall, I think the hair feels great and looks pretty good.  In order to be completely movie-accurate, there should be more twists, but I suspect that would have caused too much bulk on such a small head.

Ariel has a distinct face with side-glancing brown eyes:

I had a bit of trouble getting her to look at the camera sometimes, but it's possible:

She has Ms. Bailey's wide-set eyes and big smile, and the shape of her nose looks right, so I think the lack of resemblance comes mostly from what I said before: the eyes are too narrow.  It'll be fun to see what repaint artists can do with this mold:

I love how she smiles with her eyes.  Not a lot of dolls can do that.

The face-up is otherwise nice.  I like the toothy smile and the elegant red lips with their faint lined detail, although the color seems less natural than the shades I noticed in the movie:

I feel like the color of Ariel's eyes is too light, but the paint job is good, with crisp lines and no pixelation.  My doll has a bit of dripping glaze at the edge of her right eye, though:

There's some fine hair detail in the eyebrows, and the painted wisps of hair at the edges of the face are a nice addition.  I also love that Ms. Bailey's beauty mark was not forgotten!

Here's a look at Ariel's profile, with her highly-detailed ears and rounded jawline:

Overall, I really like Ariel's face.  She might not be a slam-dunk portrait of Halle Bailey, but she's unique and engaging, and makes a wonderful doll.

Okay, this is a tangent that might veer towards over-sharing, but it was at this point in my photography progression that I put my right arm through a glass window.  Yep.  I did that.  Why, you might ask?  My stepmother assumed it was because my windows were too clean and I didn't see the glass.  Haha.  She doesn't know me well enough to know that being too clean is not a problem for my five-dog, two-cat household.

What happened was this: my dogs go outside to do their business and I tend to keep an eye on them through a window in my back door.  I keep an eye on them because they like to, shall we say, consume undesirable substances while they're out and about.  They eat their poop, okay?  Well, two of the rescues do this, anyway--they're all kinds of messed up.  And then they try to kiss me.  Blech.

My "solution" to this is to watch out the window and if they start to eat poop, I bang on the window.  This startles them and they stop their nasty snacking.  So you get the picture: I banged, the 60-year-old window broke, and now my arm is all mangled.  Serves me right.  My hand was spared, thank goodness, but the whole thing slowed me down.  I'd planed to publish this review on Friday night, when The Little Mermaid came out, but my arm injuries made that impossible.

Also, the accident caused me to lose track of where I was in my photo sequence, and so once I was back in action, I floundered around for a while and took some photos that feel a little repetitive.  Like this next one.  Why did I take this?

Probably just because I like photographing Ariel's pretty face.

Let's pretend that this next picture was meant to be an introduction to the outfit:

Ariel's outfit consists of a bikini top and a fabric tail.  The top is made out of an iridescent scale-patterned fabric, and has clear rubber straps and a fin-like lace trim:

The purple stitching along the bottom seam is a bit crooked, but overall, this is a good-looking piece that is movie-accurate:

On the flip side, you can see that the edges are not finished, but this type of stiff vinyl fabric is not prone to unraveling:

The tail has a shiny scale pattern that's complimentary to the top.  It has the white fin detail in back and two large chiffon-like tail fins:

The tail has a small velcro square in back and is extremely easy to take off and put back on again:

Here's another look at the fin detail:

The tail fins are especially pretty and flowing, but they don't have the level of detail and majesty that Ariel's tail has in the movie:

For those who haven't seen the movie, I tried to grab a few screenshots of Ariel's tail fins from the trailer, but this was hard because she swims around really fast.  Here are my best efforts:

In general, the fabric fins are fine for a play doll, but since Ariel's outfit does not have the same level of complexity as, say, Belle's ball gown, Disney could have gone a little further here and made the tail more fancy and accurate to the movie.  There's really no other part of the outfit that would benefit from greater attention to detail.

Also, fish fins should be stiff, otherwise they don't help much with swimming.  So a wire armature in the tail fins would have been epic, but I understand the safety limitations.

I can't claim to be fully up-to-date with Disney's doll bodies, since I haven't purchased a Classic Princess doll since 2021, but I was surprised to see what Ariel's body looks like!

She has the regular Disney torso with purple underwear, and fifteen points of articulation, but look at her knees!

Those are legit double-jointed knees.  Finally!!  I mean, we saw double-jointed knees on the ily 4EVER girls, sure, but those are not traditional Disney dolls.  Also, the ily knees are vinyl and warped and the dolls can't balance well.  Ariel has plastic legs and balances like a champ.

It's funny that Disney figure out the legs with this Princess--the one who can't balance on land very well.

On her back, Ariel has a small speaker (which is also the button that activates her song), and a battery compartment with a small metal screw:

Here's a closer look:

The button is very conspicuous, and is not covered by Ariel's clothing.  It's also big enough that it's constantly getting bumped and setting off the song clip.

Fortunately, there's a switch on Ariel's left side that can be thrown to deactivate the song feature completely:

There's no copyright date on Ariel's back, just the words "Disney" and "China."

'Nuff said.

Even though I was very eager to play with Ariel's double jointed knees (squeee!) I paused to look at her other joints, too.

She has a nicely-articulated head.  She can look up and down, and from side to side:

She can also tip her head back and forth a little bit:

Her shoulders are rotating hinges, so they can lift straight up away from her body:

And spin around:

Ariel's arms look really long to me.  They're skinny, which accentuates their length, but I also think they're too long.  Her hands hang down to her mid thigh region:

My hands stop higher up than that.  Maybe I'm the strange one?  Maybe mermaids need longer arms for all of that swimming??

Anyway, Ariel's elbows and wrists are also rotating hinges.  Her elbows can bend to 90 degrees, but her wrists have less flexibility:

She's not able to touch her face, unfortunately, but she can touch the top of her head:

And she can rest a hand on her hip:

Ariel has really nice hands, with a mold that does not look familiar to me:

The fingers are in a graceful, relaxed pose and even have little molded fingernails:

Ariel's hips have what I suspect is a ball and socket design, but it does not allow her to slide into side-to-side splits:

She can do excellent front-to-back splits, though:

And she can sit upright on the ground with her legs close together:

Okay!  Now let's take a look at those fancy knees.  They are, in fact, double jointed, but there's no rotation at the knee, and not much rotation at the hip, either, so Ariel's leg mobility is noticeably worse than that of a Made to Move Barbie.

But still, she can kneel on one knee:

Or on two knees!  And the double joints collapse well:

The legs and knee joints are made out of plastic, which means that the legs are nice and straight, and they hold poses well.

At first, I was dismayed because the lack of rotation in Ariel's legs makes sitting inelegant.  It's like Disney dolls have poor sitting posture in their genetics or something.  They can't escape it:

What did you expect, Emily?

But with a little extra effort I was able to improve the situation slightly:

Ariel's ankles are rotating hinges, so they can spin around, and also flex and extend:

Ariel's joints allow her to strike some great action poses:

Up where they walk...

Up where they run...

The lack of rotation in the legs is disappointing.  Adding in a rotational joint would have made Ariel's articulation truly outstanding.  But let's give credit where credit is due: this is the best-articulated Disney doll I've seen in a long time.  She can easily play all day in the sun.

Here's Ariel alongside the last Classic Princess I purchased: Elsa from 2021:

Classic Elsa from 2021 (left) and live action Ariel from 2023 (right).

These two have the same torso, but different legs (Elsa has rubbery legs with click knees), and different hand molds.

The only other articulation variety that Disney is offering right now, as far as I know, is the hinged-legged Princesses and the ily 4EVER girls.  The hinged-legged dolls include Encanto's Mirabel, and also the ballet series that I think might be discontinued:

Other Disney articulation options: ily 4EVER Tiana and hinge-legged Tiana.

On the surface, Ariel's articulation is a lot like the ily articulation, but I'm much happier with Ariel's balance and movement.

Here's Ariel alongside Lena, so you can see the differences in their bodies:

Live action Ariel by Disney (left) and Signature Looks Barbie by Mattel (right).

Not only does Lena have rotation in her legs (at the thigh) but she also has double-jointed elbows with rotating arms--and a torso joint.  These little things make a big difference.

Ariel is about the same size as Lena, though, so the two can share clothing.  Ariel makes a really pretty regular girl, too!

Speaking of regular girls, this feels like a good time to take a closer look at Ariel's human outfit:

The design of the blue dress is faithful to the movie, with some simplifications that make sense for a play doll outfit.

The dress still has several pretty details, like the ruffled trim along the neckline, the puffy elasticized gauze sleeves, and the corset-like bodice:

The dress opens in the back with velcro, and the bodice is lined:

The skirt is made out of a lovely draping chiffon-like material, with delicate gathered details and a nearly-perfect hem:

There's a partial satin underskirt, which I suppose is to keep the lightweight overskirt from revealing Ariel's dark underwear:

The outfit also includes a pair of light pink molded boots.  These do not have much painted detail, but there's a small white scallop shell at the bottom of the laces:

The last item of clothing is a coral-colored headband.  This is made to look like it ties in place, but there's actually a velcro connection:

I took these photos before I saw the movie, so at first I put the headband on with the tied part on top, like this: 

It looks silly because this isn't how it's meant to be worn:

After watching the movie, I got my act together and put the headband on the correct way, which looks great:

This outfit captures Ariel's land look from the movie really well.

I think it's funny that Ariel only ever gets this one dress to wear while she's staying at the palace.  She has to wear it again after she falls into the lagoon...and then again after it gets torn up in the ocean.  At least it's a cute outfit.

I like how Ariel looks with the blue dress and no headband, too.  It's a little easier to play with her this way:

I know Ariel's greatest wish is to be a human, and I'm glad she got her wish.  But both in the movie and with this doll, I prefer her mermaid form:

So does her dad.

She doesn't have enough body flexibility to do the classic mermaid pose:

But she can lounge around in other positions:

Before I forget, I should share a little movie of what Ariel's singing feature is like.  The sound clip is really short (I'd hoped that there was a short test clip and then a longer version that could be accessed with a switch--like with Mirabel), but the section of song that plays while Ariel is in the box is all that you get:

This is long enough to give you an idea of how amazing Halle Bailey's singing voice is, at least.  Both she and Melissa McCarthy can SING.

This doll might not bear a perfect likeness to Halle Bailey, but I find her totally charming and beautiful.  And the song feature is a great memento from the movie.

I had a fun time taking a few last portraits of this ocean princess:

She wanted to tidy up her hair with one of Lena's dinglehoppers:

But then she was ready for the camera!

I wish I'd had this girl with me on St. John when I was photographing the other mermaids underwater, but I did my best to make her seem afloat in my drab studio:

I try not to get too carried away with Photoshop, but since I still somehow have my free trial, I'm going to give Ariel an ocean background for one picture.  Just one:

Under the sea!

Now I'll stop.

Here's another normal picture to finish things up:

Bottom line?  I tend to approach Disney Princess reviews with a bit of trepidation--especially Disney live action movie doll reviews.  There have been a lot of disappointments in that arena.  But maybe the tides are turning for Disney, because I was quite happy with Mirabel, and Ariel is even better.

Ariel is not perfect, but her list of issues is small.  For one, she does not look very much like Halle Bailey. It's clear who she's meant to be, though, and I think the lack of resemblance comes down to a few face-up decisions, like the size and color of the eyes.  However, I think Ariel has a beautiful face, and I'd much rather have that than what happens when designers try really hard to make a perfectly realistic replica of an actor...and fail.  You know which dolls I'm talking about.

I'm also surprised that Ariel doesn't come with a stand.  Unless mermaid dolls can balance on their tails (like some of the Mermaze Mermaidz or Monster High's Sirena Von Boo), they need stands.  Without a stand, it's hard to display Ariel in her beautiful mermaid form.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I know that the deluxe Mattel Ariel comes with a stand, and it's an intricate water-shaped stand, too.  That's a really smart decision and something that's conspicuously absent from this set.

The last issue is that even though Ariel has double-jointed knees and plastic legs, which is truly revolutionary for a Disney Princess, she has no rotation in her knees or thighs, so her leg movement is not as good as a Made to Move or Rainbow High doll.  I'm trying hard not to get too focused on this detail, though.  It shouldn't overshadow the advancement that is represented by Ariel's legs.  More of this, please, Disney.

For the most part, I'm extremely happy with Ariel.  I love her gorgeous red hair, with its twisted accents and dense rooting.  I find her face charming, joyful, and unique.  She radiates a lot of personality and is a delight to photograph.  And she has good articulation and balance, especially for a Disney doll.  I enjoy both of the outfits; they're well-made and I think they capture the movie costumes accurately.  I wish the tail was fancier, but that's a small critique.  I even like the sound feature, although the clip is too short!  I can't get enough of that song--especially when Ms. Bailey is singing it.  I was enjoying this doll even before I saw The Little Mermaid movie.  In fact, when I first got Ariel out of her box, I kept thinking to myself, I hope the movie is as good as this doll!  But then I ended up loving the movie even more than I thought I would.  So now when I look at (and listen to!) Ariel, I get to enjoy a great doll, and also reminisce about my favorite scenes from the movie.  And that, for me, is the Disney experience at its finest.

It'll be hard for Mattel to top this, but I'll be back as soon as possible to see how their version of Ariel measures up!