Funicello's popularity grew further thanks to the series of "beach party" films she made in the 1960s with fellow teen idol Frankie Avalon, for the enterprising low-budget studio American International Pictures. These were largely unseen in the UK but successful in the US, where they coincided with the fashion for surf music, and Funicello's figure and her revealing swimsuits attracted attention in the early 1960s, when on-screen female nudity had not yet become commonplace. Her stardom peaked in this period and declined thereafter, although she did make a comeback tour and film with Frankie Avalon, parodying their earlier work, in 1987.