The Little Mermaid first hit theaters in 1989, and at that point in time it was the most important cinematic event in our young lives. The mermaids, the hair, the snarfblats—it all had us on the edge of our seats laughing, crying, wishing we had a fin. Go back in time with us for a moment and relive the way we loved The Little Mermaid.
During the intro, we immediately decided we wanted to be merpeople and live in this castle, and that no other lifestyle would suit us.
We used to try to decide which of the sisters we wanted to be based on the colors of their tails…
…until Ariel appeared on screen. Then all we could think about was how much we wanted her hair.
We never did NOT do this if we were in water. Pools, bathtubs, sprinklers: all hair flips, all the time.
And we started brushing our bangs to the side for full “Ariel shelf bangs” effect.
We also took to calling forks “dinglehoppers”…
…and used them to brush our hair, much to the dismay of any adults at the dinner table.
AND THEN we saw Prince Eric for the first time.
And we felt a little bit like this:
But those warm, fuzzy feelings were soon replaced by total fear at how angry King Triton could get. Terrifying.
His temper tantrums definitely had us second-guessing our initial desire to become mermaids.
Luckily Scuttle was there for some comic relief. We cracked up at his Snarfblat demonstration.
Flounder was cool too, and we just wanted to give him a big hug, even though he was kind of a guppy.
We also took to calling all of our toys “thingamabobs,” of course.
And you couldn’t stop us from singing “Part of Your World” all the time, though we clearly didn’t have the same vocal range as Ariel.
We wanted to learn French so we could talk like this crazy guy:
And we were never more frustrated in our entire lives than when Eric refused to just kiss the girl.
Okay, okay, slightly more frustrating than that missed opportunity was everything Ursula did.
Like this:
And this:
So we were cheering in our seats when Ariel’s undersea friends showed Ursula/Vanessa a thing or two.
And in the end, we realized that King Triton wasn’t as scary as we first thought, and that he kind of had a soft side.
And soon after, we were planning our future wedding dresses to include puffy sleeves like Ariel’s.
Then we cried our eyes out for a while.
Then insisted on watching it again!
