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Around Los Angeles in 1989, there was a billboard showing a beautiful photo of a woman who had come out of the water, and flipped her hair back. Some kind of advertisement for a spa or resort. I'm not the only one who remembers this billboard and noticed the image appearing in The Little Mermaid. Phyllis Diller once told me, "It's all right to be influenced by somebody", when I looked sheepish about having my work compared to Hirschfeld. Also, my high school art teacher told me, "Nothing is truly original". Everything comes from somewhere. I've searched for a copy of that billboard, seemingly forgotten, while The Little Mermaid shall be enjoyed years after I am gone.

After Triton gives Ariel her legs, she suddenly is wearing a dress and no shoes. If you look closely, when she first emerges, you can see sea foam around her. There just wasn’t time to make it more obvious that her dress is made of sea foam.

The backstory is that King Triton and Ursula are siblings. Ursula wasn't originally an octopus; she was cursed and banished for her behavior. Lee Crowe drawing where she worked out the details before creating her final line drawing of King Triton.

While creating The Little Mermaid at 1400 Flower St, Glendale CA, everyone liked Rasoul Azadani so much that he was put in the movie, dancing.

Michael Swoffard animated these slugs on huge paper! About 2 feet by 3 feet, I believe this is the last time Disney’s multiplane camera was used.

I would never guess her dress is made out of sea foam. That's so nice and fitting!

Also love that she answered questions about how life under the sea would work as well as recognized Ariel as a prolific reader as well.

[Yeah. I remember using that GIF of Ariel opening the book near the end of POTW as part of my Student Teaching websites years ago. One of the big parts of Ariel's character is a desire for knowledge.

Oh I love that! I always like to incorporate Disney myself whenever I can. One time I had a power point project and one of the sections was on either church or the Christian religion, so you can be sure that I used screencaps from God Helps the Outcasts. Ironically enough, my teacher despised Disney even though she loved Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and had some Winnie the Pooh and Tigger memorabilia on her desk that was from the Disney versions, not the classic ones.

My favorite teacher in high school (the one that had inspired me to become a teacher) disliked Disney movies, too. I can't remember the exact way he described them when he referred to them in class once. Something about how they were idyllic fantasies for the masses or something; I can't remember what we had been talking about to get off onto the subject. I mean, he wasn't wrong, but there are great things about Disney films, too.

When I was working for the Bagdasarians, Ron [Dias] was doing freelance for us. When the VHS cover was released everyone was talking about it. Ron came by to drop off some work, and I knew he was mad at Disney for not getting to work on Little Mermaid, so I asked if he had seen it. He said not only had he seen it, he painted it...Disney asked him to paint the cover at the last minute. He only had a weekend to do it and had to work until the wee hours of the morning to finish it on time. He was kind of punchy from lack of sleep towards the end and decided he'd put a little joke in it for himself, if you know what I mean.

He woke up Monday morning and looked at it with fresh eyes and said to himself, "Ohmigosh! That isn't as subtle as I intended it to be... it isn't subtle at all!" But his appointment with the production person at Disney was at 10am, so he didn't have time to revise it. He dashed to the meeting and delivered the painting and pointed it out to the woman and offered to revise it for free. She said that there was a meeting of execs that afternoon to review the cover and she would let him know if he needed to revise it.

Ron didn't hear back for a week and he was sweating that he might have offended them and would never work for Disney again, so he called the production lady and asked if they wanted him to revise it. She said no, the executives approved the cover as is. She said she pointed it out to them and relayed his offer to revise it, but they liked it just as it was. Ron shrugged his shoulders and said, "If they don't care, I guess I don't either." Disney gave him the lead stylist job on the Little Mermaid TV show around that time, so I guess they were happy with it. Maybe it sold more copies that way.

I can't believe Jodi got death threats! Is it for "Kiss the Girl"'s lyrics? Is it working for the company with "the phallus" cover? What is it for?

I never realized that Ariel may have read things from the human world. I thought she learned all human words from Scuttle. If Ariel could really read human words, it does give the question why didn't she write to Eric? Even only saying that she was the girl who rescued him and she lost her voice, and not mentioning that she was a mermaid and lost her voice to a sea witch? But it is true she has a thirst for knowledge and that is a big part of her character!