Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Most Popular Fairy Tales According to SurLaLune

As promised yesterday, here are the most popular fairy tales according to their visitor traffic on SurLaLune in the past month.  I decided to go with a top 12 for the month of September.

12. Jack and the Beanstalk
11. Rumpelstiltskin
10. Goldilocks and the Three Bears
9. Rapunzel
8. Hansel and Gretel
7. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
6. Three Little Pigs
5. Little Mermaid
4. Sleeping Beauty
3. Little Red Riding Hood
2. Beauty and the Beast
1. Cinderella

And here is the list for the past year for which I did a top 20:

20. Six Swans
19. Thumbelina
18. Ugly Duckling
17. Twelve Dancing Princesses
16. Armless Maiden
15. Goldilocks and the Three Bears
14. Princess and the Pea
13. Puss in Boots
12. Snow White and Rose Red
11. Rumpelstiltskin
10. Little Mermaid
9. Three Little Pigs
8. Sleeping Beauty
7. Rapunzel
6. Jack and the Beanstalk
5. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
4. Hansel and Gretel
3. Little Red Riding Hood
2. Beauty and the Beast
1. Cinderella

And there is a huge gap between 1 to 20. Six Swans and Thumbelina each received less than 12% of the traffic Cinderella achieved. Little Red Riding Hood received less than half of what Cinderella did, 46% percent actually. Only Beauty and the Beast comes anywhere close at 67% of Cindy's traffic.

Those top three have remained pretty consistent over the years while the rest fluctuate according to pop culture influences--Puss in Boots had a big spurt when Shrek 2 was released years ago with a minor spike with Shrek 3, for example.

Now I am curious to see what happens to Rapunzel with the new Disney release in November. As you can see from this list, The Princess and the Frog didn't influence Frog Prince enough to get it into the top 20, showing just how disappointing a representation of a fairy tale it must have been to audiences. And, no, this isn't scientific beyond SurLaLune site's statistics.  But Frog Prince has been more popular in past years, making it into the top 20 quite easily.  That it didn't touch the top 20 in a year when a big theatrical release should have bumped it up says something...

So Cinderella wins the day....as usual. She always gets to be the Homecoming Queen and Prom Queen and Queen of the Universe in general.

4 comments:

  1. No real surprises, I suppose. Have to get to the lower reaches of the twenty before anything that your man on the street would not recognize as a fairy tale.

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  2. I'm not surprised either, just about everyone knows those stories. And they are good ones, I like them all a lot, even though I have others that are my favorites ^-^

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  3. Hey - I guessed the top three correctly - not quite in the right order, but still not too shabby ;-)

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  4. I think the Goose Girl should have made the list, but at least Six Swans is on there. :)

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