Ahh the wind. I know what Jim's talking about. Here in CT, there was actually a big accident on I-91 in between Hartford and Springfield that the cops said the wind had a part in, actually blowing a light SUV into another car...

It's still 50 degrees and beautiful during the day, and under freezing at night. Got to love this New England weather...

Actually, what you got to love is the WHY FOR... not weather reports.

I read every day but rarely post but I like WHY FOR and I like THE MUPPETS. They are definately an underused concept aren't they? Hoped they have a resurgance soon. I would rather see them than HANNAH MONTANA, Or HSM.

Bring on some exciting news Jim. Looking forward to it.

Great article Jim! Thanks!! :o)

I'd love to see the new Muppet Channel. Unfortunately Disney is acting like it's China or Afghanistan or a country like those, because the Muppet Channel isn't available outside of the USA. Isn't it great that so called 'world wide web'?

So...uh..Jim? WHYFOR do you live in a place that gets such lousy weather so often? Between the ability to telecommute for this site and the happy weather here in SoCal or in Floriday, whyfornot move closer to the Mouse and further from the SNOW?

"Sander de Regt said:

I'd love to see the new Muppet Channel. Unfortunately Disney is acting like it's China or Afghanistan or a country like those, because the Muppet Channel isn't available outside of the USA. Isn't it great that so called 'world wide web'?"

Agreed. My 2 year old loved watching all the Muppet clips and trailers. But now we can't access it down here in Brazil.

And the same sorta complaint goes for the Disney Stores. "The Walt Disney Company should once again own this worldwide retail chain"? Does "worldwide" mean the 50 US states and maybe Canada and the UK? Because there never was a Disney Store down here. And if it never happened when there were 700, I really doubt it it'll happen when there are 200. Then again, if they're gonna focus on Hannah Montana and High School Musical, I guess we're better off without them...

Aw, I hope the one and only Disney Store in my area doesn't close down!

As for the RATATOUILLE in-joke, that's just cool, on Pixar's part.

Actually, there are Disney Stores in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Japan.  "World-wide" doesn't necessarily mean "on every continent".

I was disappointed to hear that Disney might be taking the stores back over. I think that Children's Place has executed this A LOT better than Disney ever did. When Disney first opened the stores, they had HIGH quality merchandise for equally HIGH prices. Then after awhile they had POOR quality JUNK, for the same equally HIGH prices. Children's Place has GOOD quality merch for REASONABLE prices (I bought a high quality Donald Duck T-shirt for $4.99 the other day!).

It took Disney ages (if ever) to put out merchandise for new characters. The Disney Stores have merchandise for Handy Manny, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, Little Einsteins, Princesses, Fairies, Cars, etc. Heck, the ONLY place you can find Oswald the Lucky Rabbit stuff is at the Disney Stores.

IIRC, Children's Place took over the US stores with the exception of 5th Ave. which now operates under the theme park branch of the company. And the vast difference in what they sell is telling. Through TCP's Disney Stores you could get action figures and a wide selection of other stuff based on Disney's current releases like Narnia and Incredibles and MTRobinsons (Even with 2 other non-exclusive action figure lines, POTC still got a Disney Store-only line). For a while they had WITCH dolls. And I have yet to see the theme parks carry anything of Lumpy.

I sincerely hope that Disney *will* be re-releasing "Fantasia" on standard DVD at some point.  Blu-Ray shows no signs of seriously affecting DVD sales and that movie simply *should* be available for the general public to buy.  (Even if very few of them want to.)

As for the Cheney joke, it's not really much of a *political* joke.  More of a pop culture reference, I'd say.

Jim Hill takes a close look at the retail side of the Mouse House. In particular how Disney Consumer Products is now trying to take a much more sophisticated approach toward the licensing of Pixar's new films