Thursday, March 29, 2018
The Evolution of Disney Character Costumes
Disney Dan has a series of videos he's made over the past several years that trace the evolution of costumed Disney characters. Mickey Mouse was making public appearances decades before Disneyland opened, and he is the first character to get a deep dive into the costume. You'll learn some stories you haven't heard before, like how the first Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland were borrowed from the Ice Capades because Walt didn't have any cast members or costumes.
My kids were excited to meet Mickey in 2002 at Walt Disney World. If we'd waited a couple of years, he could have spoken to them, but by then my daughters would have been older and not as thrilled. There are 14 videos in this series, covering Donald Duck, Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, Dumbo, and more. Eventually, he'll get around to doing videos on the Disney Princesses. (via Metafilter)
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote an article for Natural History that pointed out that the successive images of Mickey and Donald, etc. followed the same trends as animal morphology does as a species becomes domesticated :
ReplyDeletereduction in the lenght of snout and size of teeth
shorter arms and legs relative to body
larger head relative to body
larger eyes relative to head
All these are, of course, the signals for "baby mammal", and are the things that make us go "Awwwwww".