The Little Mermaid: This detail of the poster is not intended for children at all, and luckily no one noticed

Released 35 years ago, The Little Mermaid marks the beginning of Disney’s renaissance in animated cinema. However, due to some pressure from the artist, the painting that appeared in the promotional marketing of the film caused a scandal, and rightly so.

This image appears on posters for countries that released the film theatrically and on VHS in 1989 and 1990.

the artist is “joking”

asking me The anecdote was followed in detail: it all started with Disney artist Dave Woodman, who received the story from animator and producer Steven Worth. As he revealed on Instagram before deleting the post, the artist responsible for the embarrassing detail would be Ron Diaz, who began painting Sleeping Beauty’s backgrounds at Disney in 1959.

Disney ordered the visuals for The Little Mermaid at the last minute, forcing him to work over the weekend, and the artist decided to play a joke and painted one of the towers of King Triton’s palace in a literal sense. Thinking he had disguised himself well, he realized on Monday morning—it was too late to change—that his drawing looked a little like a nose in the middle of his face.

Take a good look at the movie poster

So he alerted the studio managers with his “joke” apparently offering to fix the mistake, but the visuals had to be rushed to the producers for approval first. And after that meeting, Diaz learned that his visuals, while not necessarily suitable for a young audience, were vindicated. With a problematic drawing on it.

Ironically, Ron Diaz would even be promoted to art director on The Little Mermaid animated series. Only a year later, in 1990, the scandal was exposed and the visuals were changed by Disney. But the image remained on the already released American and French VHS posters and covers.

And so the bad joke went… underwater!