User blog:Berrybrick/What's wrong with Elsa's Sparkling Ice Castle?
(This blog was originally published as a part of To Rant Or Not To Rant. It still exists over there with some interesting and not-so interesting articles if you are interested or not so interested.)
Happy snow time (for those of us in the norther hemisphere, anyway)!
I was just reading a review of 41062 Elsa's Sparking Ice Castle and there were the usual complaints, things like stickers, you know, and then more custom tailored ones about how there is an ice cream parlor and how there are bits of green and flowers thrown into the set (which I think actually makes a bit of sense, even if it isn't in the movie. Elsa flash froze everything, so there would be flowers and greenery under the snow.) But one, or several I suppose, that really stuck out to me were that the reviewer was complaining about the set including exclusively colored parts. Admittedly, the castle does seem to have a lot going on with the different colors in a setting that does not accommodate them very well. The staircase is aqua, there are orange flowers around the base, a green tree to the side, pink jewels placed in more orange flowers, there are flames in golden candles, and then the entire thing is topped off with a giant purple snowflake. And this is, of course, in addition to the castle's main scheme of white, transparent blue, and lavender.
This is an issue in sets from time to time, but it seems especially jolting in "girl" sets because the colors are always so pastel. Why is this? And why with this set, especially? Some of the Princesses' worlds really do lend themselves to color, like Ariel's undersea kingdom, the markets and palaces that make up Jasmine's Agrippa, or the Asian gardens Mulan spends time in. Frozen is a beautifully animated movie (there, I said it, I like Frozen. The cold shoulder never bothered me anyway....) and the ice castle is a hard thing to translate. I do kind of like the set for what it is, aside from the color disparity that I mentioned, but when compared to the actual castle from the movies, it does kind of fall short. That's to be expected though, I mean, just look at that thing. The designers did have some sense when selecting the palette though, using lavender as the tertiary color was a good call, even if it might not be in the right places to evoke the shine and sparkle that the movie version has. Aqua was another sensible addition, though it does only appear on the stairs. If I were to add another color, it would probably be azure.
Looking at the movie version of the castle, a strange pudginess becomes apparent. This, again, has kind of become a staple of the girl themes and while Elves appears to mostly steer clear from it (and even some Disney Princess sets) it is pretty prominent in Friends. While I don't personally take issue with this, it isn't a bad aesthetic most of the time (it helps to give Friends buildings some life that the rare City ones often lack) I find it strange that Elsa's Castle got this treatment. The bulbousness appears to me to be a style that would be selected because it is not so rough and almost makes it cute, yet, what I at least thought was so captivating about Elsa's castle in the movie is that it is imposing and powerful, yet beautiful and majestic. It really does capture the imagination and since I was once told that symbolism is more up to the consumer to find and not so much the writer to place, I could even try and make a case to say that it has literary value (just because I'm cruel like that). With the popularity of Elsa, her castle, and all things Frozen really, I do not particularly see why the castle needed this treatment, and perhaps it does remove some value from the setting's translation, more than the candles, flowers, and even ice cream parlor do, I think.
But hey, the set is only $40, has two amazing mini-dolls, and I even like Olaf and don't think that the set is as bad as the review made it out to be. Perhaps if Disney Princesses becomes evergreen or at least gets an extended run like Harry Potter we will see more Frozen sets, certainly with the sequel, including a rendition of the ice castle which can hopefully overcome not only the design challenges presented by the budget and color palette, but also the design standards which seem to plague this side of the toy aisle.
Anyway, that wasn't actually what I wanted to talk about, I just sort of did. Complaining about parts in new colors...really? "Back in my day, legos only came in black, white, red, blue, and yellow. We didn't have no fancy colors like 'magenta' or 'transparent chrome orange'. If you wanted color on your legos, you had to paint them, sir. No stupid grays making our castles look boring...."
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