Do you ever sit up at night and think about how Disney Parks handles the delicate subject of male nipples on their costumed characters?

I do.

And here's what I've found.

The Disney Nipple Thread

Disney started off with a lot of male nudity in their cartoons. Movies like Peter Pan & Fantasia featured many shirtless male characters. From the Native Americans to the Centaurs, none of them have an ounce of definition outside a random muscle or belly button.

I believe Mowgli was the first main male character animated shirtless in a Disney movie, but his design was relatively simple with no nipples in the cartoon, yet his live meet and greet versions typically are wearing nothing but skin toned shoes and a red loincloth.

While the cold weather version of his costume is more screen accurate, essentially turning his entire body into one smooth featureless surface, his Disney On Ice costume design took the time airbrush nipples onto his skin toned suit, plus a belly button & even the chest line!

The Little Mermaid introduced the next shirtless hero, King Triton, who actually got the nipple treatment in the films, and has managed to keep hold of them in all his costumed character interpretations both parade & ice. Including his stint as an animatronic & certain statues!

Now that Disney had broken the barriers with aquatic mer-nipples, you'd think they'd be brave enough to tackle human dude nips, but the next chest sighting of Gaston yielded us no nips but plenty of chest hair. And the closest we get to this in the parks is a M&G cheeky peek.

Aladdin came shortly after, and while he's pretty much only wearing a vest in most of the movie (I was so concerned for him as a kid in that snow scene) his nipples are no where to be seen (even in the snow scene hahaha).

The parks skirted the issue by giving him a shirt.

Pocahontas tried to throw us off our tracks by giving Kocum some paw prints on his chest, but you aren't fooling anyone with those bad boys. Bear paws aren't nipples.

In the parks, when the tribe appears in HS Fantasmic, they are all fully clothed.

Hercules sort of played it fast and loose with nipples, giving them to the Gods like Zeus (swirly greek nipple designs FTW) but left them off mythical characters like Phil, who is even more definitionless in the parks unless you count poorly patterend loose fabric.

Next is Mulan, where nipples become a pretty major plot point. You can't go about a story where a female character is hiding herself around a bunch of androgynous dudes, so male nipples here were an absolute must. Li Shang's appearances in parks however are usually fully armored.

Finally comes Tarzan, where our hero is fully nipped up from the get go and in the Parks, Disney does absolutely nothing to hold back from this. They go full on nearly nude muscly dude, yet recently he's been seen wearing a sort of vine sash to cover him up.

Milo in Atlantis: The Lost Empire gets a few scenes with nipples, but otherwise the rest of the movie they sort of disappear in place of body paint or wardrobe changes. When he is rarely seen in the parks, he's usually not doing meet and greets in swim trunks.

Lilo & Stitch graced us with a bunch of shirtless males, from Moses to the Ice Cream Guy, but when Moses was translated into Disney On Ice... well... ummm... this happened.

Pixar has dabbled in the male nipple, but usually err on the side of leaving them out, like Spot in Good Dinosaur.

However Young Macintosh from Brave has a partially bare chest, and again... when Disney On Ice got this property... sorry if you planned on sleeping tonight,

In Moana, most of the male villagers are shirtless and sporting nipples, and even Maui, if you look close enough, has them, but in the parks, the horrific version of Maui we were all blessed with leaves them out in place of tattoos.

For now it seems, Disney isnt too afraid to give us nipples in the parks for Marvel, and at the very least have us thinking about nipples while in Galaxy's Edge drinking alien milk.

And thats a good thing...

Cause the Hulk without nipples is essentially the Jolly Green Giant.

NIPPILOGUE (Nipple Epilogue)

Fantastia’s Chernabog also can be seen sporting nipples in the original film, but his park appearances as parade floats have been left nippless.

It’s also worth mentioning that Pixar has dished out some topless toys, like Ken, but it’s not their fault he doesn’t have nipples. That’s on Mattel.

His short stint at WDW was fully clothed.

Interestingly Genie (1993) has no nipples in the movie, BUT when Jafar becomes a genie, there are very subtle hints of nipples in his design.

Both live action Genie & Jenie have nipples.

Neither Kuzco & Pacha have nipples.

Kronk most definitely has nipples but he’s too modest to be topless.

It’s worth noting that if there was one Disney division that is ABSOLUTELY NOT afraid of the male nipple, it’s @disneybroadway.

Live theater FTW.

That said it did take me forever to find an Aladdin nipple, all the press photos his vest is JUST SO perfectly placed to hide them.

Actually I take that back. Looks like @AdamJacobsNYC was not shy about it during the initial character glamour shots when the show opened.