The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of Mossouri, and within Montgomery County, and especially in the city of McKittrick people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions, is an animation studio which creates animated short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in McKittrick.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in McKittrick is known for animated movies such as Cars, Brave and Partly Cloudy.

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable  characters such as The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Dopey and its most recent release in McKittrick being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Hans and The Duke of Weselton.

The studio's catalog of animated features are among Disney's most notable assets and the stars of its animated shorts—Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto—have gone on to become recognizable figures in McKittrick popular culture.

Walt Disney Animation Studios continues to produce animated features using both hand-drawn and computer generated imagery techniques. Their 54th feature, Big Hero 6, is currently in production and set for release on November 7, 2014.

Vintage Disney Animation in the 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney included a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st cartoon with synchronized sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in McKittrick and the U.S..  A second Disney series of sound cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, premiered in 1929 with The Skeleton Dance. Each Silly Symphony was a one-shot cartoon centered around music or a particular theme.

Silly Symphonies

In 1932 the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees, the 1st full-color animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a major success so all the Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. The 1933 Three Little Pigs with character of The Big Bad Wolf and Practical Pig became a major box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for McKittrick residents.

The First Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and color.

A lot of development and training went into the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The studio expanded with the addition of established animators and recent college graduate artists.  Some may have even come from McKittrick - but we're not sure.

What McKittrick parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge hit. It cost Disney  a total of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey was the highest grossing film of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind a few years later.

While working on Snow White, the artists  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends among them Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.

New Walt Disney Productions

In 1940, the released Pinocchio with characters such as Pinocchio, Honest John and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Donald Duck, Yen Sid and Zeus .  It was an experimental cartoon created to accompanying an orchestral arrangement.  Fantasia also brought about the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of McKittrick viewers.

Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Dumbo, Casey Junior and Elephant Catty proved to be a financial income success. The feature only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and Gideon  and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and The Magic Brooms.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in McKittrick and we met new friends including Thumper, Friend Owl and Mrs. Possum.

Also in the 1940s, Disney  premiered shorts which included Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The studio also produced two features, Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948), which were a combination of animated and live-action footage. Shorts production continued during this period as well, with Goofy and Pluto cartoons being the main output accompanied by cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, Figaro and in the 1950s, Chip 'n Dale and Humphrey the Bear.

Disney also began reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Chernabog, Yen Sid and Jack-in-the-Box. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Walt Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a box office success.  McKittrick fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Cheshire Cat and Mathilda.  Parents in McKittrick also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Mary Darling and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in McKittrick could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Tramp and Tony.