Disney's 'Frozen' ruined my life

Thanks, Disney! So far that freebie has cost me maybe $900.

I have two little girls, ages 6 and 2, and each of them has seen Frozen at least four times as many times as I ever saw Star Wars. Our apartment is bursting with Frozen storybooks, Frozen colouring books, Frozen dolls, Frozen stickers, Frozen games, Frozen puzzles, Frozen costumes and Frozen nightgowns.

We have three of those nighties - for two kids. How did that happen? Among the many, many Frozen books in the house are two different Frozen Little Golden Books - long version and short version. (As I write this, the shorter one is the No. 5 best-selling book on Amazon.)

To paraphrase Roy Scheider confronting a similarly all-consuming menace in Jaws, we're going to need a bigger apartment.

Sometimes when my 2-year-old wakes up, 'Elsa?' is the first thing she says in the morning. It's a simple one-word request meaning, 'Fire up the 'Frozen' DVD and nobody gets hurt.'

And when it's time to go to bed, she refuses to stop caterwauling until her mom comes in and sings 'Let It Go.' (She sings along, sort of: 'Awww gooooooooooo! Awwww gooooooo!')

For a mandatory encore, my wife sings, 'Do You Want To Build a Snowman?' (Our daughter doesn't know any of the words in the song, but never fails to hit her cue for imitating the tick-tock sound Anna makes when she's under the grandfather clock.)

The kid has a vocabulary of maybe 20 words - and two of them are 'Elsa' and 'Anna.' (Last night, she added a 21st: 'Dizzy,' for Disney.)

Last Sunday, I found my attention wandering away from a pretty exciting football game because I got a ping about a sweet deal at Target for an Anna-and-Elsa comforter ($29.99!). Target's website offers 196 Frozen items. We don't have all of them. Yet.

In theory, we buy our kids all the crap they want to keep them happy - that is, sedated in a Disney stupor - so we can relax and watch a football game.

But Frozen has turned my sweet daughters into mad merch-munching dragons who get all the hungrier the more we feed them.

A few weeks ago our family went to what we thought would be a nice dinner party on. Our toddler spotted a small hole in the deck and wondered if her tiny, freshly purchased 2-inch Elsa doll would fit through it. It did!

As she wailed, I spent the next hour trying to fish the thing out with a fondue fork covered with sticky tape. I've had more fun raking leaves than I did at that party. And when we went back to Target to get another tiny Elsa doll to replace the one now permanently entombed under a beach-house deck? Sold out. Screaming ensued.

Both girls, natch, want to be Elsa for Halloween. We already have the costumes. Which may be worn out by then.

What is with the Elsa obsession, anyway? Anna is way cuter, braver and more honourable (she runs toward her responsibilities; Elsa runs away from them). She has a better sense of humour and is much less of a beeyotch than Elsa - the Anna Wintour of the fjords. Are my daughters destined to grow up into ice-hearted loners who think a sparkly Windex-blue dress and a haughty air are appropriate responses to having magical powers?

As we embark on Year Two of the Frozen Era, Disney is no doubt gearing up to release a new batch of Elsa merch in time for the holidays. And my bank account is dissolving fast.

Girls, sorry about that college fund we keep meaning to start for you. And here's my advice for coping with the job market of the future without a college degree: Seek help from those magical trolls in the forest.

This article originally appeared on The New York Post.

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