Where have all the mermen gone…?

 

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!

 

Barbie Color Reveal – a failed attempt at ballerina magic?

 

Some thoughts on Color Reveal dolls in general

Personally, as an adult, I was never overly attracted to the line of Color Reveal Barbie dolls. (Yes, spell checker, I know you're set to UK English, but Barbie's from the other side of the Atlantic and that's part of the official name. Leave her “color” be. Ahem.) The idea of having something as big and as (comparatively) expensive as a Barbie doll drawn randomly doesn't really appeal to me. I know it's a trend – but not one I like. I reckoned, unless we really like all the dolls in a given Color Reveal series, better to buy opened ones second hand. Also Color Reveal dolls tend to have a lot of painted and moulded parts, which is the current trend overall, but particularly frequent in Color Reveals. I don't like plastic bodices and legs painted to be tights, because they limit the ways in which the doll can be redressed, and some of them even have moulded plastic hair, which I really, really dislike.

So we bought a few used Color Reveal mermaids, and they were quite pretty, though the fact that their semi-transparent tails couldn't bend for them to sit was annoying, so for the time being, we stopped even that. We did buy two Pop Reveal Barbies, but they have two major advantages over the Color Reveal series. Firstly, they have much better bodies: bendable elbows and even Made to Move legs, and I really like that amount of poseability. Secondly, despite everything being wrapped in bags on the inside, they're not really random: the packaging clearly shows which doll you're buying. And I think that's a lovely middle ground! (Of course, they had to mess it up with the Chelseas in the same line being random, but you can’t have it all. At least they’re cheaper.)

Because, of course, as much as an adult may find it annoying or too expensive to keep buying random reveal toys to get the one(s) they want – with many potential doubles in the process, if you're aiming for a whole collection – many children love that mystery part, and that's precisely what the toy companies are aiming for. My daughter loves opening all the little bits in the Pop Reveal Barbies, or, say, Playmobil EverDreamerz, even though it's not really a mystery what you'll get in there - but it feels like one. Not to mention Magic Mixies and their potion-brewing and special effects! But Mixies, like many brands, do have different codes on the bottoms that you can look up online to see what you're buying (and more obvious ways, like gem or eye colour on the packaging, for the bigger toys), thus letting you have the mystery if you want it, but skip it if you're looking to buy a particular toy. From what I understand, Mattel also used to have that for the Color Reveal Barbies, but then they deliberately removed it: now all packages of a single line have the same codes, and random is the only way to go. Not surprising, though annoying.

 

Here comes the ballerina

And, of course, then comes the part when my daughter really, really wanted us to buy a Color Reveal Barbie from this year's ballerina series in a store. I had previously looked at them and wasn't impressed, but at least they had real hair. (Polypropylene, no doubt, but just add them to the list “they'll be bald before I'm old” and move on.) I showed my daughter what they looked like online, she looked at the pictures and said she liked them all, so we bought one.

Image of all available dolls from youloveit.com

We got the blonde Barbie (with the Millie face) in the pink outfit. On the one hand, that was the most common face, so others may have been better – but on the other, she has the cutest head accessory in my opinion, a French beret. (More on accessories soon.) My daughter likes her, and now her name is Martha and she has joined the ranks of ballerinas in our Barbieville. My own impressions, however, are mixed.

 

Terrible (lack of) poseability

To be honest, I'm a little spoiled lately. More and more dolls come with at least regularly bendable elbows and knees, not to speak of the wonderfully poseable Made to Move bodies (and their equivalents in other brands). So, for me to buy a doll with just the good old shoulder and hip articulation, that doll needs to be special – and these just were not. They were cute, but I could think of so many better ones.

However, what came as a really unpleasant surprise in that respect was the fact that the doll has much less poseability than even the regular Barbie! First of all, she can't sit straight. She can only be reclining. Her back can't be lifted to a 90-degree angle, more like a 40-ish one.

Yes, this is her “sitting”. The best that she can.

Needless to say, then, she can't nearly do a split or lift one leg high up – the best she can do is a sort of broad stride. Her thighs are simply shaped so that they collide with her torso and can't move beyond a certain point.

So, a doll who is supposed to be a ballerina is now the least mobile doll of all the Barbies we own. (Well, not counting the utterly unbendable mermaids and the Barbie Starlight with Pupcorn, who is all in one piece because of the electronics inside.) That’s quite a disappointment.

 

Accessories, ballet and balletcore

By the way, is she really supposed to be a ballerina? The thing that initially left a bad impression on me was that the shoes of dolls in this line have the (plastic) ribbons you would associate with ballet shoes… but also high heels. Looking them up online, I saw that the dolls were “inspired by balletcore”, a relatively young fashion trend of wearing ballerina accessories such as tutus, leg warmers and so on – as a fashion statement. That explains the heels: she's not a ballerina, she just likes dressing up as one because she thinks it looks good. Apparently, I’m not the only person who didn’t get this at once, as there are confused questions regarding the heels on the internet.

Balletcore as such (unrelated to Barbie) has sparked some controversy: while some see it as a harmless trend showing admiration towards ballet, and maybe even beneficial for promoting the aesthetic of classical ballet in everyday life, others see the use of professional ballet accessories by people who aren’t dancers as insulting. But even if we view it in a fully positive light, I can’t help but wonder if it was the best choice for a Color Reveal Barbie. The random draw and reveal mechanics are both primarily aimed at smaller children. The average little girl doesn’t know what balletcore is: she looks at this doll and sees a ballerina. Hmm, okay, she has high heels on her ballet slippers – maybe some modern ballerinas do? That was approximately my daughter’s thinking, and I presume many little girls think that way. When I explained to her the balletcore idea and the heels, and suggested that Martha perhaps could be, well, just a girl dressed that way (because she definitely can’t do any advanced ballet moves), she adamantly refused to make her anything other than a ballerina. So… if little girls like ballerinas, why not give them a proper ballerina? And older girls and adult collectors could possibly be thrilled with a balletcore Barbie – but one done with more details and without the moulded plastic clothes.

But things are as they are. Let’s see what we get in the set. The dolls are all of different skin tones and hair colours, which is nice, and each has matching shades of pink (or, in the case of the pale vaguely Asian girl, light purple) for her outfit and accessories, as well as the coloured strands in her hair. They have plastic moulded leotards with simple straps, that can work as sleeveless shirts for various outfits, and could work as swimsuits, too, were it not for the decision for them to also have painted hard plastic legs to represent tights. Don’t know about you, but I usually don’t wear tights to the beach. ;) While this does tie the colour scheme in nicely with the rest of the outfit, I would have greatly preferred them to have bare legs, if actual, removable fabric tights weren’t an option.

As is frequent with Colour Reveal dolls, the ballerinas also have colour change features on their faces, triggered by heat or cold: removable makeup, including little designs painted under their eyes. (Martha has hearts, others have flowers and maybe butterflies, not sure from the pictures.) To be honest, I’m not too thrilled with their position – they sort of distract attention from the eyes, and I would have preferred, say, a discreet design on the forehead, like some mermaids have. But it’s alright. The eyes may be slightly pixelized, but only very slightly.

Let’s have a look at the removable accessories. The aforementioned shoes have heels and platforms, and criss-cross ribbons supposedly tied with a bow around the middle of the calf. There a small design in the front of the shoe – ours is just a thin little bow, not sure if the others are different. Overall, they are cute, and the ribbon of the bow falling more to one side is a nice detail.

Then, there are the skirts: each doll has a different design on her skirt; two are shaped more like tutus and two like more conventional short skirts. They are also fairly transparent, which would be quite fine for a ballet performance, but if this is supposed to be balletcore, maybe too transparent? I’m not sure most girls would go out into the city in a very short, very thin transparent skirt that doesn’t really cover much. On the other hand, they do somewhat resemble the glittery skirts often sold as costumes for little girls, so I guess they might appeal to them… though those usually have underskirts. :)

The head accessories differ most of all. Two dolls have hairbands (one with a bow and one with roses), one has headphones (or are those ear muffs?), and ours, as stated, has a beret, with a big bow on it. I really like the beret, so I am happy that we got that one. The only issue I have with it is that it slips from the doll’s head very easily when it is put on properly… but when it is put upside down, with the bow on it seemingly defying gravity, it fits much better. Generally, you have to push it forward a bit too much if you want it to stay on.

And the final accessory is…a brush. A cute brush with a plastic bow, but still… that feels sort of lazy. Days when all Barbies came with a brush are long gone and, to be fair, nobody needs a designated brush for every doll. Couldn’t they have had a piece of jewellery? (Not even going to mention removable tights, except that I just did.) In addition to that, the box prominently says that there are six surprises inside, which means either that the colour change mechanic counts as one of the surprises, or that each of the shoes counts as one. With that and the brush, I feel like we were cheated out of two potential accessories.

 

The bottom line

In the end, my impressions are mixed. The dolls are cute, but I dislike the general trend of plastic, moulded parts on Color Reveal (and some other) Barbies, and I think the accessories could have been a bit better. I also would have preferred a proper ballet outfit – I know there are many Barbie ballerinas, but you can never have too many! (We love ballet in the house – my daughter watches performances of the Nutcracker practically as frequently as Disney movies.) And a more carefully done balletcore doll, or a series of them, could have been done better outside the Color Reveal line. And the worst drop for me personally is her terrible inability to sit: I really can’t see an excuse for that.

Then again, my daughter likes her, so… I guess they hit the target for little children? But I still think she would have liked a proper ballerina more. This is somewhere in between: it doesn’t quite hit the target for either the ethereal magic of ballet or cool modern fashion. Maybe it would have been better to separate the two?

In the end, when you add a proper skirt and a jacket onto her, I can really imagine her going out into the city to meet some friends.

I just hope they find her a nice reclining armchair to sit in. :)