With the recent release of the Hipster Jasmine Pop! Vinyl, the trio of Hot Topic Disney Hipster Princesses is now complete. After a delay of around a year where there was a fear that Jasmine was cancelled, all is right with the world. However, some might ask “Why Hipster Princesses?” Aside from them looking cute, these funky Pop!s originate from a simple meme… a what-now? Well, let’s take a brief look.
February, 2011- Hipster Ariel is born.
In February of 2011, blogger Braden Graeber created the Hipster Ariel image that we all know and love. Graeber, being a red head and wearing raybans, created Ariel in his image and posted it to his social media accounts.
From there, the image spread like wild-fire, where people took to meme-generators to create social commentary on a variety of things. Pretty soon, Hipster Ariel was everywhere.
Meet IRL Hipster Ariel, Traci Hines
Throughout 2011 and 2012, real life cos-players started to take on the Hipster Ariel persona, one of the most notable being Traci Hines, who stood out early on for her spot on portrayal of the Disney Princess.
In addition to having the look, Traci had the voice to back it up, and quickly became a well known You-Tube personality doing Disney song covers and other fun videos, both as Disney Princesses (including Hipster Ariel) and herself. One of her more popular videos, a cover of The Little Mermaid‘s “Part of Your World”, is close to hitting the 4-million view mark. Take a look at the video below, and head on over to this great article by LA Weekly highlighting this talented young woman.
AVByte Presents: Hipster Disney Princess- The Musical
Back in October, 2012, the team over at AVByte released their “Hipster Disney Princess- The Musical” over on YouTube, bringing the hipster look to Belle, Cinderella, and Snow White in addition to Ariel. This cemented what started appearing at conventions and Disney Bound meetups across the nation: the Hipster Disney Princess phenomenon was part of popular culture. Check out their video below, and go to their channel for even more fun parody videos.
Hot Topic + Funko= Hipster Princess Madness
When Hot Topic and Funko teamed up to release Hipster Ariel in late 2013/ early 2014, some out there scoffed at the idea that 1. Funko would create such a “cop-out” variant (I guess forgetting all of the metallics or flocked ones already out there and that 2. Hot Topic would be getting heavily involved in the Hot Topic exclusives market. However, both her, and later Belle, would do quite well, eventually selling out in almost every store. Their popularity brought up the question, “Where is Jasmine?” She appeared on the back of the box as coming; she even had her own number in the line. Rumors circulated that she was cancelled. Funko never confirmed, nor denied it, which ultimately led most of us, myself included, that Hipster Jasmine was never going to appear. Then, on a random weekday in Kentucky, she appeared at a Hot Topic location. In the next few days, she started appearing throughout the country at different stores, and it was confirmed by Hot Topic that she was never cancelled… just never ordered.
Now some are asking, “Will Hipsters Ariel and Belle come back out?” Official word from Hot Topic is this: Depending on how well Hipster Jasmine sells, they might reorder Ariel and Belle. So, it is not a definite “no”, but far from a “yes”.
In the meantime, let’s take a look at a few pics from this weekend, where the Hipster Princesses met up for a garden photo shoot. Enjoy!
I really like this exclusive series, and hope that the other Disney Princesses make it into this series. It’s highly doubtful that they will, but I remain hopeful. If for nothing else, then to get fun pictures like this at Walt Disney World, where Ariel tried to match her look with her “dinglehopper”.
What do you think of the Hipster Princesses? Do you have them in your collection? If not, are you scouring to add them to your collection? Let us know.
Matt Norris