Who Is LinaBell And Why Is She A Big Hit Among Chinese Girls?
“A new female celebrity”, “a top celebrity”, “a big hit”… These are phrases when people refer to LinaBell or Lina Beier (玲娜贝儿).
One month after she appeared publicly, she was on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board more than 32 times. That popularity is something that not many celebrities or KOLs are able to achieve in their entire career. Yet LinaBell made it just in one month.
Who is she? What makes her a huge superstar among Chinese people, especially girls? What commercial plans are hiding behind her?
New Member of the Duffy Family from Disney: LinaBell
LinaBell is a fox! She’s a new member of the Duffy Family from Disney, introduced in September. Here is her cute background story. So Duffy was playing around in a forest and he got lost. When he was about to panic, LinaBell showed up with her iconic magnifier, and guided Duffy out of the forest.
Her character is set to be brave, outgoing and she’s a fox with endless curiosity to explore the world. She loves adventures.
Currently, you can only find LinaBell in Shanghai Disneyland. She will be introduced in Hongkong and Tokyo Disney in the near future.
What Makes LinaBell a Huge Celebrity?
Her Popularity
On the first launching day of LinaBell’s products, people had to wait in line for seven hours so as to get one. And to take a picture with LinaBell, people often line up for three hours.
LinaBell’s products are ALWAYS out of stock, including her dolls in different sizes and her blankets. People’s crazy desire to get her products are often taken advantage of by “Huang Niu” or scalpers. A keychain of LinaBell doll which is 119 RMB, is sold at nearly 2,299 RMB on collectible resale platform Dewu.
On November 24, Shanghai Disney published the announcement that the Christmas collections of Duffy Family would be launched on November 29, along with LinaBell’s dolls! That’s a big news for LinaBell’s fans and the scalpers. Immediately, scalpers were hiring people in WeChat groups, looking for people to rush to Shanghai Disney on the launch day.
Some people go the opposite way to produce fake LinaBell merchandise. There are people on social media platforms to help LinaBell’s lovers to identify the authenticity of their dolls.
Cute Look of LinaBell
LinaBell is cute. She is a fox with a soft pink color and fluffy clothes. Her big and seemly-warm tail also makes girls scream every time she turns her back to the audience and shakes it. But obviously, what makes LinaBell’s popularity last long and continue to increase is her character.
LinaBell’s Brave Character
Unlike many other Disney characters, the setting of LinaBell’s personality is different. She has many dimensions. Sometimes she is being cute, shy, and sometimes she’s being angry to show her dislike.
When visitors say something that she doesn’t like, she would pretend to pull out her sword. When she sees handsome boys, she becomes shy and wants to hug them. She’s also very sporty, showing fans how she lifts dumbbell to strengthen her body. When fans are complaining that her products are often out of stock, she pretends to write letters to the manufacturer and call related people. She even starts to thread the sewing machine and pluck out her own fur to shape a small LinaBell.
She’s alive for fans.
Disney’s Commercial Plan behind LinaBell
Creating Idols without Film and Television Works
Think about classic Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or Simba, they all have movies to complete their personalities. Yet, the Duffy Family doesn’t. They were created and rely on people who play inside the costumes to make them alive.
Duffy’s story is a good example for LinaBell. He first showed up in an American Disneyland in 2004, and he wasn’t even had a name back then, and was called “Disney Bear”. After he was introduced to the Tokyo Disney, the local team proposed a new name for him: Duffy, and put him in sailor suits. Together with fabricated stories behind the bear, Duffy quickly gained huge popularity and it continues nowadays.
Disney realized that a character doesn’t necessarily need to appear in movies, a character just needs a personality.
Following Duffy, we see more and more family members being created. So now, the Duffy Family has seven members, or “idols”. Those characters help Disney make great revenues by selling their peripheral products. It is estimated that the amount of StellaLou, the purple rabbit in the Duffy Family, sold by Shanghai Disney in three years is equal to 119 Mount Qomolangma if you pile them up. This rabbit even has its own color named by its fans, which is called the StellaLou Purple.
An Effective Weapon against the Beijing Universal Studios
The opening of the Beijing Universal Studios in September 2021 definitely drags away lots of traffic from Shanghai Disneyland. What might also become threatening for Disney is that, the Megatron in the Universal Studios is so talkative when taking photos with visitors, and thus, he has attracted many people to go to the park and interact with him. He is popular as well.
StellaLou is still popular and yet, people were not as crazy as before. Disney needs a new character to give visitors more reasons to come and spend money on its products. According to The Paper, the revenue of Disney’s tickets only takes up 30% of its total revenue, and the park largely depends on second consumption, which is by selling its IPs’ products.
A nice try, Disney!
Our Thoughts
Though without film works, an IP has a lower threshold for fans to get to know them. What it requires for them to become popular is mostly their looks. However, without background television works, fans might not have as deep engagement with those IPs as they have for Mickey or Donald Duck.
(But with LinaBell in Disney, I am planning to buy an annual card of the Shanghai Disneyland and to visit her frequently!)
