Franklin Mint Princess Diana Doll Mail Advertisement

An advertisement for the pre-order of the 1998 Franklin Mint Princess Diana of Wales Porcelain Portrait doll. This poster gives a description of the doll to be sold and at one point included an advanced reservation form to pre-order the doll.

The poster is full of rhetoric that is meant to give the product a collectible, one-of-a-kind feeling. This poster sways the consumer to buy this “exclusive”  doll while they can as it won’t be around for long and the demand is seemingly high. Some 25 years later, we can see that many of the so-called collectible items of the time did not in fact gain value over the years. But the advertisements of the time, like this one, could be seen as pretty convincing that they would.  The metallic gold treatment of the title  and “plaque” in the bottom left convey an elegant quality. The detailed script of the title  resembles an invitation to a formal event, lending to its “exclusive” feeling, and the overall color palette of blues and golds is of course to lend to a royal theme. 

After the Death of Princess Diana, her Memorial Fund refused to grant rights to Franklin mint for doll production. This doll was subsequently produced anyway and a very costly lawsuit followed between Franklin Mint and the Princess Diana Memorial Fund. As the death of Princess Diana and the allocation of her funds to charities was very public, many people did not like the fact that so much of the memorial fund was going toward a lawsuit over her likeness. 

In the end, to remedy this, the two parties settled out of court with a $13.5 deal to be paid by both parties to various charities.

This scandal, as one might see it, drove up the visibility and therefore the demand for this doll, resulting in mailed advertisements to consumers to get their hands on the “sought-after collectible”. 

Sources: 

Datar, Rajan. “Business | Diana’s Lost Millions.” BBC News, May 13, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4537799.stm. 

“Frequently Asked Questions.” theworkcontinues.org, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120327044725/http://www.theworkcontinues.org/page.asp?id=131. 

“UK | Diana’s Fund in Legal Settlement.” BBC News, November 10, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4000867.stm.