Good morning,

This Fem Friday is themed around childhood toys and veers from the professionally interesting to the quite personal.

It will not surprise you to learn that Disney makes an enormous amount of money from its princesses; it might surprise you to see how much. This is mainly a piece about branding, but branding that affects many lives and expectations:

Since Walt Disney lumped Sleeping Beauty, Belle, and its other poofy-dressed ladies together under the brand Disney Princess in 2000, the market for all things pink and sparkly has skyrocketed. Princess merchandise—dolls, clothing, games, home décor, toys—is a $5.5 billion enterprise and Disney’s second-most-profitable franchise, after Mickey Mouse. […] That doesn’t even include Frozen, which came out in 2013 and which Disney measures separately.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-disney-princess-hasbro/

I also wrote about a loved toy this week, this is probably the most personal thing I have ever written so as soon as I send this email I am going to set my phone to “Do Not Disturb”, buy a new toothbrush and live in a yurt for the next six months or so:

My mother […] did not limit herself to her specific area of collecting, which was (if you are interested) Shelley crested china. She also bought a lot of just… stuff, for me, when I was at university. Sometimes this was stationery and sometimes it was books and — in one case — it was a bookish bear from a series of books I had enjoyed a lot as a child. This bookish bear is Charles, [the subject of this piece]

https://medium.com/@Vincennes/bookish-bear-8b82384e2c7#.mt1ww7f6t

Have a lovely weekend,

Alex.