Let's be fair, when talking about merpeople, most (land) people think mermaids, not mermen. We can trace the roots of that all the way to antiquity, with all those sailors, who were very often exclusively men (remember, in many places even having a woman on board a ship was thought to be bad luck) encountering or believing they have encountered all sorts of beautiful water-maidens. Who might have only intended to drown them as a bit of fun, but were beautiful without exception. Most such myths and legends don't specify if male versions of those creatures even exist, or maybe they are just water spirits taking the shape of lovely women to seduce sailors; and even when both sexes are mentioned to exist, the only man who is important is usually a powerful sea king, more akin to a water god then just a conventional male denizen of the deep. Fast forward a few millennia, and Hans Christian Andersen seduces the world with his beautiful yet tragic Little Mermaid. Again, it is all about the female heroine, and a little about her sisters and her grandmother, and, alright, her father as well. Fast forward again to Disney, who gives the little mermaid a name, red hair and a rebellious nature she never had in Andersen's fairytale (and unforgivably omits the grandma!), as well as a happier ending, and, well, you know the rest. At least since then, little girls love mermaids and there are lots of mermaid books, cartoons and dolls around.
Still, Disney's Little Mermaid did show, at least in glimpses, a normally populated underwater society with merpeople of both sexes in it: Ariel and her sisters may have been the stars, but it doesn't seem like female mermaids otherwise vastly outnumber the males. And various less widely known fictional universes, including a number of tabletop roleplaying games, have merpeople/merfolk as a normal race inhabiting their worlds. (Some of those merfolk may be a little fishier in appearance, but that's beside the point.) And, come to think of it, I will have to write another post dealing with the narrative side of all this later, as it is very interesting – but today, our subject are dolls.
So, a little girl, an adult enthusiast or anyone in between may desire to have a number of dolls to represent a beautiful underwater society, be it that of Disney's Atlantica or some other. And there, of course, we run into the same problem as when we want male dolls of more or less anything: there may be mermaid dolls aplenty, but mermen are few and far between. Let's have a look at what we have on the market! I'll focus on the 1/6 scale (the equivalent of Barbies and similar dolls, around 11" / 30 cm in size) as the most frequently collected and having the most mermaids to begin with, but the situation is hardly better in others (and most probably worse).
First of all, of course, Disney gave us King Triton. Minor differences in models of the cartoon doll aside, you know him – the old wise king with the grey hair and beard. Plastic hair and beard, alas, but still, he's a good start. I have the old one with the plush tail, and he's sadly significantly shorter than the modern mermaids, but he's still pretty good nevertheless. Who says a king can't be short.
There is also a 16" version in a very expensive collector's set with Ariel that may be a bit too big to combine with 11" dolls, but that is theoretically useable if you want to aim for a god-king idea. He could nicely be a Poseidon type, towering over other merpeople. Price aside, alas.
The new live-action Little Mermaid film, as inferior as it may be in writing to the original cartoon, at least provided us with a King Triton doll sufficiently different from the old one – darker-skinned, somewhat younger-looking (middle-aged rather than old) and armoured. Personally, I dislike the combination of rooted hairs and plastic beards: on some dolls it can look acceptable (I'm fine with the Dumbledore and Hagrid from the Harry Potter line), but here it just leaves an incongruent impression, perhaps because of the colour differences as well. So, we have two older mermen. While you are unlikely to need two kings (unless you're making two kingdoms), remove the crown off one of them and they could be an old king and his younger, armoured general, or, vice versa, a middle-aged king and an old wise advisor or wizard. Or one can just be someone's father or grandfather, of course.
If you want a young king or prince, there are also two very impressive, albeit expensive, dolls: Mattel's King Ocean Ken, and the Mizi Adonis Poseidon. They may not both be to everyone's taste – Ken's looks are more masculine, despite the fact that his colour is pink, while Poseidon has a somewhat androgynous face combined with a more neutral white and green colour scheme. (Mizi dolls are also somewhat taller than Barbies, 13-14”, so count on him being unusually tall, but not quite a giant.) But, if you like them and can afford them, either would make a fine addition to your ocean court.
"But enough with the court!" you may say. "I'm covered there. I want a bunch of regular, civilian mermen to be the brothers and husbands of my regular mermaids!" I hear your plight, but, alas, doll companies do not. For the regular-looking young merman, we have a grand selection of five dolls, and to add insult to injury, four of those all look almost the same.
First and simplest, there is the Dreamtopia merman Ken. Short blond hair, blue tail, a seashell necklace and bracers. I didn't initially like him, but we got him as, well, the market is scarce, and I do have to admit that he looks better in real life than in pictures.
A few years before that, though, we had a Ken merman from Barbie the Pearl Princess. He only comes in a double set with Barbie, and he has a plastic removable tail and moulded on armour.
Then, along the transformable lines, there is the Dreamtopia prince Ken who can turn into a merman using his cloak which becomes a tail. I didn't put him among the royalty as he looks fairly underwhelming to me compared to the others there... and he looks almost the same as the regular Dreamtopia merman, all with the bracers and a pink shell necklace. Still, if you want a removable tail, i.e. if you want a merman who can become a man by magic, these two are the only options on the market. Though, to be honest, he looks a little funny, as the feet are visible beneath the fins. You'd be better off custom-sewing a tail and applying it to a Ken with ankle joints, who could straighten out his feet while keeping them inside the tail.
Outside of Mattel, we have a lovely Simba mermaid family set, featuring a pregnant Steffi mermaid with a removable baby, and her husband who... is so obviously a cheaper copy of the Dreamtopia merman Ken. Sigh... I could theoretically see myself buying the set because it has a pregnant mermaid and a baby one (though I dislike the fact that she has a moulded-on bra top – why would a newborn baby need one?), and, yes, because male mermen are few, but he is really not particularly impressive on his own.
The only different one among them is the only Color Reveal merman. Yes, in all the Color Reveal Mermaid lines (not even sure how many there were, but there were multiple waves), there was a total of one Ken. I really like his silvery colours and long hair (though I would have preferred it without the undercut), and I would generally like to obtain him, but I do have to warn you of one flaw of all Colour Reveal mermaids: for whatever reason, they don't bend at the waist. They can move their arms and heads, but no sitting, realistic swimming poses, zip. As if it’s a conspiracy to make all Color Reveal dolls as un-poseable as possible.
To be fair, there is also one fairly irregular-looking merman, and that is Monster High’s Finnegan Wake. (Yes, of course his name is a pun on the famous novel. Practically all the MH names are puns of some sort.) He won’t quite fit in the standard fairytale merfolk society, as his skin is blue, he has a tall mohawk and is tattooed as well – but maybe a young punk mer-teen is just what you want? (I emphasize teen, as Monster High dolls are a little smaller than Barbies. However, he makes up a little with his tall mohawk.) He can not only sit down, but his tail bends at the middle, roughly where a human’s knees would be. And while in Monster High he does have a disability (a problem with his tail), overall, lots could be done with the idea of putting merfolk in wheelchairs (in a modern setting) for when they wish to visit land, and tails-to-legs magic either isn’t easily available, or they’re sceptical about it.
Finally, to lighten up the grim situation, we do have two merman boys in the Chelsea line. One was a Color Reveal doll, and one bought in a regular non-random package... and they're both dominantly green (with a bit of blue). Because, I guess, it's not enough that they're few, let's top it by them looking alike. OK, they are visibly different enough that you wouldn't confuse them outright, but why couldn't one have been, say, purple or red?
So, that's it. Two (and a half) old kings, two young (and expensive) kings or princes, one long-haired sitting-impaired young merman, one punk-styled blue one, four more short-haired blond ones who might as well be brothers, if not outright quadruplets, and two fairly similar green boys. A total of a dozen dolls might not be terrible, but it's still pretty bad when you think of the fact that three of those are above most people's doll budgets, and of the remaining ten, three or four adults and the only two boys are very, very similar. Compared to the vast numbers of female mermaid dolls out there, it's really pretty sad.
I don’t think I’ve missed anyone, have I? I originally thought Mattel might have had an older Ken with a removable tail (maybe in the 90s), but I can’t find any trace of one. There are several modern mermaid doll lines (Mermaze, Mermaid High…), but as far as I know, they only have girls. I’ve seen people on the internet make quite impressive customs – the Dreamtopia merman with a head swap being the easiest way to go – so that’s definitely an option for an individual collector, but, personally, I’d really prefer to see more merman dolls on the market, available to everyone. What do you think?
Edit: another potential merboy!
Courtesy of ThunderStruck on the Alluring Dollz Discord server, we have another honourable mention. Namely, the ChuChu Mermaids dolls, while envisioned as little mermaid girls, have removable bow bras – and little girls’ flat chests might as well belong to boys. Here is an official image of the line with their bras removed:
While my reflex personally would still be to view them as girls, I admit that in the manga/anime aesthetic that they’re made in, a gentle-featured young boy is perfectly plausible, particularly if dolls with shorter hair are used, e.g. the yellow or blue one. So, if you like this style, I guess there are some more options for little mermen!
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