The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of New Jersey, and within Hunterdon County, and especially in the city of Flemington people have enjoyed Disney animation with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, California, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates animated short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Flemington.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Flemington is known for animated movies such as Up, Ratatouilli and Lifted.

As of 2013, the studio has produced 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with classic  characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful and its most recent release in Flemington 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 Flemington 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 1920s

The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey cartoon Disney added a sound track.  In the end  the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st cartoon with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular animated film series in Flemington and the United States.  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 first full-color animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a tremendous success so all the Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. The 1933 Three Little Pigs with character of The Big Bad Wolf and Fiddler Pig became a huge box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Flemington residents.

The First Disney Animated Film Feature

In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Doc and Bashful.  Snow White became the first cartoon in English and color.

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

What Flemington parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big success. It cost Disney  a total of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey was the highest grossing film of all time before being de-throned by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the animators  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends including Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.

New Walt Disney Productions

In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Pinocchio, Stromboli and Monstro. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Yen Sid and The Magic Brooms .  It was an experimental cartoon produced 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 Flemington viewers.

Dumbo debuted in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Crow Chorus proved to be a monetary success. The movie only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Gideon  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck and Spring Sprite.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Flemington and we met new friends including Thumper, Flower the Skunk and Mrs. Rabbit.

Also in the 1940s, Walt Disney  released 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 Donald 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 re-releasing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey with Chernabog, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney movies every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Flemington fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Queen of Hearts and The Dormouse.  Parents in Flemington also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy  Darling, Mr. Smee and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Flemington could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Tramp and Boris.