White vs. Black Princesses

During our library session this week, I was doing some research on the Disney film Tangled, when I came across an interesting post in Entertainment Weekly (the link is below).  In it, the author stresses the fact that The Princess and the Frog was not a big box office success because it “failed to attract young boys,” so the new film would emphasize the main male character, Flynn Rider.  This is interesting, but it makes me wonder, could it be for other reasons as well, such as the fact that the princess was not white?  There have been studies that show that white Barbie dolls are much more popular than their black counterparts, and there are constantly controversies about the pricing inconsistencies between two seemingly similar dolls, the only differentiating factor being skin color.  This is something I will definitely look into, and blog more about in the future.  In the mean time, the link to the post is below:

http://www.ew.com/article/2010/07/02/tangled-disneys-princess-problem