General

Don’t Touch That Dial! Disney’s TV Commercial Connection

Jim Korkis returns with more entertaining insight into animation history. This time around, Jim reveals the Mouse House connection to two 1950s advertising icons, Fresh Up Freddie and Tommy Mohawk.

Published

21 years ago

July 7, 2003

Jim Korkis

In my personal collection, I have video copies of Fifties commercials where Dumbo is shilling for Canada Dry, Alice in Wonderland (in Kathyrn Beaumont’s voice) is proclaiming the joys of Jello, B’rer Rabbit hawks American Motors cars and Jiminy Cricket urges viewers to drink Baker’s Instant Chocolate. The Tinker Bell commercials for Peter Pan Peanut Butter deserve a special column of their own especially since Miss Bell is celebrating her 50th birthday this year.

One of the greatest Disney storymen of all time, Bill Peet, tells a wonderful story in his autobiography of how when he butted heads with Walt Disney on a segment of SLEEPING BEAUTY, Peet discovered that the “next day, I was sent down to the main floor to work on Peter Pan Peanut Butter tv commercials, which was without a doubt my punishment for what Walt considered my stubbornness. I toughed it out for about two months on peanut butter commercials then stubbornly decided to return to my room on the third floor whether Walt liked it or not.”

Some Disney fans are aware of those commercials and may even be aware that doing commercials helped keep the Disney Studio financially solvent after the World War II years and provided some of the money for the building of Disneyland.

Disney veteran Harry Tytle who worked at the Studio for over forty years in a variety of capacities including producing the weekly television program stated in his autobiography: “Commercial work answered our prayers, as it supplied badly needed capital. Advertising work clearly helped keep the studio intact. But while the studio made money with this type of product (and I mean BIG money)it was not a field either Walt or Roy were happy to be in. Their reasoning was sound. We didn’t own the characters we produced for other companies; there was absolutely no residual value. Worse, we were at the whim of the client; at each stage of production we had to twiddle our thumbs and await approval before we could venture on to the next step.”

Wait a minute. What does Tytle mean when he says “we didn’t own the characters”? Didn’t I just write about famous Disney characters appearing in television commercials? And that listing didn’t even include Donald Duck who sold Cheerios and Donald Duck Orange Juice along with dozens of other products.

Well, a little known Disney secret is that the Disney Studios added money to its sadly depleted bank account by creating characters and commercials for other companies. Today, let’s look at two of the most popular ones.

At Disney in the Fifties, veteran animator and director Charles Augustus “Nick” Nichols was in charge of the studio’s television commercial unit, developing such original characters as “Bucky Beaver” for Ipana Toothpaste, “Fresh Up Freddie” for 7-Up and Tommy Mohawk for the Mohawk Carpet Company.

Nichols (1910-1992) began as an animator on the Disney shorts and had most of the responsibility as a director on the Pluto cartoons from 1944-1951. He animated the coachman in PINOCCHIO. He was the co-director of TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK AND BOOM (1953). He later worked at Hanna-Barbera from 1959 through the Eighties on everything from their features like THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE to their Saturday morning series like Secret Squirrel, Scooby Doo Where Are You, Herculoids, Mighty Mightor, and many others. From 1988 until his death in 1992, he was a director with Disney TV on The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Goof Troop and Bonkers.

Commercials provided much needed income for the Disney Studios. “They (7-Up) spent two and a half million dollars on their tv commercials, ” remembered Paul Carlson, who was Nichols’ assistant in the unit, when he talked with animation historian Michael Mallory. “I think they did 26 one-minute commercials at $100,000 apiece. And we usually handed out the animation to the staff artists at Disney, but they would do the work at home.”

Seven Up was introduced in 1929 as “Bib Label Lithiated Lemon Lime Soda”. It was called the “Uncola” because it lacks the brownish coloring used in Coca-Cola/Pepsi Cola.

Fresh Up Freddie was the mascot created by the Disney Studios for the soft drink company. He was a cocky animated rooster who looked like a mixture of Panchito the Mexican rooster and the wacky Aracuan bird who both appeared in THE THREE CABELLEROS (1945). Freddie demonstrated how to plan successful parties and picnics by having plenty of 7-Up on hand. He dressed in a variety of different human clothing depending upon the commercial including a bow tie, vest, slacks, and soda jerk hat when necessary. Leo Burnett created the Fresh-Up Freddie ad campaign in 1957.

By 1958, Freddie made his debut in the commercials in the popular Disney TV series, ZORRO. He spouted phrases like “Fresh Up with 7-Up”, “You Like It, It Likes You” and “Nothing Does it Like 7-Up”. Freddie was supposedly named in honor of Seven-Up bottler Fred Lutz Jr. In the beginning, Freddie didn’t have a name but with his connection with the successful ZORRO, television series, the rooster became a celebrity and 7-Up began merchandising the character and featuring him in their monthly ZORRO newsletter to their dealers. They printed nearly 10,000 copies of their newsletter a month. In the newsletter and print ads, Freddie sometimes dressed in a Zorro costume or posed with stars from the series.

Merchandise included a Fresh Up Freddie Figure (mail order painted vinyl figure), a Fresh Up Freddie Ruler (promotional printed clear plastic 6 ¼” by 2″ ruler with bicycle safety rules), a pinback button and a Fresh Up Freddie Stuffed figure. Many of these items pop up in eBay auctions today.

Bill Cotter, the author of the terrific book THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY TELEVISION (and you should immediately go to his website www.billcotter.com to order a very reasonably priced CD he has put together of 256 additional pages about Disney television that do not appear in his extensively researched book), states on his outstanding Disney Zorro website that:

“Zorro had two sponsors, the 7-Up soft drink company and the AC Spark Plug Division of General Motors. Walt had gone all out in his effort to obtain 7-Up’s backing, including an appearance in a film made for the soft drink bottlers and their distributors. Cracking Zorro’s whip for emphasis, Walt explained the premise of the series, using models of the as-of-yet unbuilt outdoor sets, as well as samples of the costumes. The sales pitch was successful and 7-Up agreed to participate in a series of joint promotions with Disney, not all tied in with Zorro. For example, Annette and Roberta Shore were seen promoting The Shaggy Dog with a toast of 7-Up.”

“Although there were two sponsors, each had wanted to be specifically identified with the series, so Disney took a unique approach. Instead of having commercials from both firms each week, the sponsors alternated weeks, with a brief word from “your alternate sponsor” making sure that each company shared in the weekly success. Almost forgotten today are the AC characters, Alan Cranbroke and Cynthia Aldrich. This animated couple was joined by live spokesperson Gordon Mills, who settled their domestic arguments and just happened to throw in a mention of AC’s products in the process.”

In my video collection, I have three different one minute Fresh Up Freddie commercials. In one, Freddie wears a party hat and is setting up for a big party with a table and decorations. Then the commercials cuts to a live action segment with a woman who looks like she stepped out of the DONNA REED show preparing 7-Up for her party guests. Then it cuts back to Freddie who urges viewers to get the twenty-four bottle pack. The second commercial is more inventive where Freddie dressed as a soda jerk does a soft shoe shuffle with a live action male teenager before it cuts to a boy and girl teenager enjoying the delights of the soft drink. The third commercial has Freddie as a tv sportscaster asking “What does a sports champion drink?” and then various versions of Freddie as a prize fighter, a female swimmer (with a mermaid tail) and a lanky basketball player attribute their success to 7-Up.

Tommy Mohawk was another commercial character created by Disney. Walt signed a contract in 1951 to produce a series of eight animated commercials for Mohawk Carpets. Since its beginning in 1878, Mohawk is one of the most recognized carpet brands in history. The Fifties were a time of expansion for Mohawk with the construction of new manufacturing facilities and then the merging with Alexander Smith, Inc. to form Mohasco Industries which made it the largest carpet manufacturer in the world.

The contract refers to the character as “Tommy Hawk” so the name (or close enough to it) was already decided fairly early in the creation process. The spots themselves were all animated in 1952. The Mohawk Carpet Company on its website states that “we consider Tommy’s birthday to be 1955 when the commercials ran on television”.

The commercials were directed by Nichols. Most of the animation was done by Phil Duncan, Volus Jones and Bill Justice. Duncan and Jones left the studio shortly after working on the Mohawk commercials and joined a new animation studio called UPA which would make animation history. Disney Legend Bill Justice was very well respected at the time for his animation on the Donald Duck and Chip ‘n’ Dale cartoons.

The titles of the commercials from the Disney production files were: Tommy Tests Carpets, Tommy Supervises Weaving, Tommy Plants Carpet Seeds, Tommy Designs Carpets, Tommy Falls for Minnie, Tommy Gives Animals Sleeping Carpets, Birds Use Waterfall for Loom, Tommy Harvests Carpets.

Apparently the Disney Company files doesn’t have a copy of what the Disney version of Tommy looked like which is slightly different than the version that appears on the Mohawk Carpet website. Thanks to Mark Kausler who is the best friend animation scholarship has ever had and whose generosity of his knowledge and resources have added significantly to every important book about animation written in the last two decades, I was able to see about four years ago a Xerox of a Xerox of a stat of a model sheet that was in the collection of the late Amby Paliwoda. Paliwoda, who passed away at the age of 89 in June 1999, worked as a Disney animator from 1933 up through the early Sixties (one of his last Disney credits was as a character animator on 101 DALMATIANS). He later found work at other animation studios including Hanna-Barbera, Filmation (where he worked on Superman and Batman cartoons), Sanrio, Bakshi-Krantz, Duck Soup and many others.

On Paliwoda’s stat from 1952, it is labeled “Mohawk Tommy, Chatter and Minnie”. Tommy is roughly three heads high and his expression is very similar to other young Disney characters of this time period like the young Pecos Bill. Tommy has a high forehead with a Mohawk haircut with a lone feather stuck into the back of it. He also has two parallel horizontal stripes of warpaint on his forehead. He has a square loincloth that reaches to just above his feet, wears moccasins and carries a tomahawk that looks like a triangular piece of rock with two crisscrossing straps holding it to a simple wooden handle. From his positions on the model sheet, he is obviously a very enthusiastic young boy.

Minnie, by contrast, is a demure Indian maiden with two dark haired pigtails, a plain headband and a single feather. She wears a plain dress with rounded fringe on the arms and bottom which reaches to her knees. Chatter looks like Dale from Chip ‘n’ Dale except with a smaller nose and a squirrel tail. He also wears a plain headband and a single feather and the oversized headband keeps dropping comically over his eyes. Obviously, Bill Justice’s experience on Chip ‘n’ Dale helped him animate the character.

The character of Tommy does not look like Little Hiawatha from the Disney 1937 Silly Symphony although there are some superficial similarities which probably helped the animators. Little Hiawatha had a series of comic book adventures in the back pages of the comic book Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories until well into the 1950s so that design may have helped influence the animators on Tommy.

Walt loved the character of the little Indian boy and even though he never liked doing sequels, he allowed his artists to develop some possible story ideas for other uses of the character. One of those artists was Walt Kelly who later went on to create the well loved POGO comic strip. He even helped design a cute little girlfriend named Minnehaha for Little Hiawatha for a possible sequel and that design may have influenced the design for Tommy’s Minnie.

On e-bay, in the Disney section, someone auctioned off nine 30 second radio spots made by Mohawk Carpets in 1957. In those radio commercials, Tommy Mohawk invited listeners to visit Walt Disney’s new magic kingdom in Anaheim which had only been open for a year and a half. The final purchase price of those radio commercials was fairly outrageous and I have never seen them offered for resale.

I have never seen an animated Tommy Mohawk commercial and I know for a fact that none exist in the either the Disney or the Mohawk Company archives. While some homemade videotapes of animated commercials popped up at various conventions in the Eighties with at least two volumes devoted solely to the output of Jay Ward and Bill Scott and several volumes devoted to animated characters promoting breakfast cereal, there was no videotape devoted to Disney commercials. Perhaps someday “Ed Finn” might produce one if Duane is a reader of this website. Commercials were simply another disposable commodity and I suspect it never occurred to Walt that almost fifty years later anybody would be talking about them. Officially the Disney Studios closed its TV commercial division in the late Fifties. However, when Walt Disney World opened in 1971, it got involved with having Bob Moore design the Orange Bird who is fondly remembered by early visitors to the park.

And perhaps the next time Jim Hill and Nancy come down to this neck of the woods to visit, we can all visit where they make Donald Duck Orange Juice in Lake Wales. It is the oldest surviving Disney participant and maybe we can all try to figure out what a duck has to do with citrus drinks.

General

Seward Johnson bronzes add a surreal, artistic touch to NYC’s Garment District

Published

9 years ago

June 23, 2015

Jim Hill

Greetings from NYC. Nancy and I drove down from New
Hampshire yesterday because we'll be checking out
Disney Consumer Products' annual Holiday Showcase later today.

Anyway … After checking into our hotel (i.e., The Paul.
Which is located down in NYC's NoMad district), we decided to grab some dinner.
Which is how we wound up at the Melt Shop.

Photo by Jim Hill

Which is this restaurant that only sells grilled cheese sandwiches.
This comfort food was delicious, but kind of on the heavy side.

Photo by Jim Hill

Which is why — given that it was a beautiful summer night
— we'd then try and walk off our meals. We started our stroll down by the Empire
State Building
…

Photo by Jim Hill

… and eventually wound up just below Times
Square (right behind where the Waterford Crystal Times Square New
Year's Eve Ball is kept).

Photo by Jim Hill

But you know what we discovered en route? Right in the heart
of Manhattan's Garment District
along Broadway between 36th and 41st? This incredibly cool series of life-like
and life-sized sculptures that Seward
Johnson has created.

Photo by Jim Hill

And — yes — that is Abraham Lincoln (who seems to have
slipped out of WDW's Hall of Presidents when no one was looking and is now
leading tourists around Times Square). These 18 painted
bronze pieces (which were just installed late this past Sunday night / early
Monday morning) range from the surreal to the all-too-real.

Photo by Jim Hill

Some of these pieces look like typical New Yorkers. Like the
business woman planning out her day …

Photo by Jim Hill

… the postman delivering the mail …

Photo by Jim Hill

… the hot dog vendor working at his cart …

Photo by Jim Hill

… the street musician playing for tourists …

Photo by Jim Hill

Not to mention the tourists themselves.

Photo by Jim Hill

But right alongside the bronze businessmen …

Photo by Jim Hill

… and the tired grandmother hauling her groceries home …

Photo by Jim Hill

… there were also statues representing people who were
from out-of-town …

Photo by Jim Hill

… or — for that matter — out-of-time.

Photo by Jim Hill

These were the Seward Johnson pieces that genuinely beguiled. Famous impressionist paintings brought to life in three dimensions.

Note the out-of-period water bottle that some tourist left
behind. Photo by Jim Hill

Some of them so lifelike that you actually had to pause for
a moment (especially as day gave way to night in the city) and say to yourself
"Is that one of the bronzes? Or just someone pretending to be one of these
bronzes?"

Mind you, for those of you who aren't big fans of the
impressionists …

Photo by Jim Hill

… there's also an array of American icons. Among them
Marilyn Monroe …

Photo by Jim Hill

… and that farmer couple from Grant Wood's "American
Gothic."

Photo by Jim Hill

But for those of you who know your NYC history, it's hard to
beat that piece which recreates Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photograph of V-J Day in Times Square.

Photo by Jim Hill

By the way, a 25-foot-tall version of this particular Seward
Johnson piece ( which — FYI — is entitled "Embracing Peace") will actually
be placed in Times Square for a few days on or around August 14th to commemorate the 70th
anniversary of Victory Over Japan Day (V-J Day).

Photo by Jim Hill

By the way, if you'd like to check these Seward Johnson bronzes in
person (which — it should be noted — are part of the part of the Garment
District Alliance's new public art offering) — you'd best schedule a trip to
the City sometime over the next three months. For these pieces will only be on
display now through September 15th.

General

Wondering what you should “Boldly Go” see at the movies next year? The 2015 Licensing Expo offers you some clues

Published

9 years ago

June 10, 2015

Jim Hill

Greeting from the 2015 Licensing Expo, which is being held
at the Mandalay Bay
Convention Center in Las
Vegas.

Photo by Jim Hill

I have to admit that I enjoy covering the Licensing Expo.
Mostly becomes it allows bloggers & entertainment writers like myself to
get a peek over the horizon. Scope out some of the major motion pictures &
TV shows that today's vertically integrated entertainment conglomerates
(Remember when these companies used to be called movie studios?) will be
sending our way over the next two years or so.

Photo by Jim Hill

Take — for example — all of "The Secret Life of
Pets" banners that greeted Expo attendees as they made their way to the
show floor today. I actually got to see some footage from this new Illumination
Entertainment production (which will hit theaters on July 8, 2016) the last time I was in Vegas. Which
was for CinemaCon back in April. And the five or so minutes of film that I viewed
suggested that "The Secret Life of Pets" will be a really funny
animated feature.

Photo by Jim Hill

Mind you, Universal Pictures wanted to make sure that Expo
attendees remembered that there was another Illumination Entertainment production
coming-to-a-theater-near-them before "The Secret Life of Pets" (And
that's "Minions," the "Despicable Me" prequel. Which
premieres at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival next week but
won't be screened stateside 'til July 10th of this year). Which is why they had
three minions who were made entirely out of LEGOS loitering out in the lobby.

Photo by Jim Hill

And Warner Bros. — because they wanted "Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice" to start trending on Twitter today — brought
the Batmobile to Las Vegas.

Photo by Jim Hill

Not to mention full-sized macquettes of Batman, Superman and
Wonder Woman. Just so conventioneers could then see what these DC superheroes
would actually look like in this eagerly anticipated, March 25, 2016 release.

Photo by Jim Hill

That's the thing that can sometimes be a wee bit frustrating
about the Licensing Expo. It's all about delayed gratification. You'll come
around a corner and see this 100 foot-long ad for "The Peanuts Movie"
and think "Hey, that looks great. I want to see that Blue Sky Studios production
right now." It's only then that you notice the fine print and realize that
"The Peanuts Movie" doesn't actually open in theaters 'til November
6th of this year.

Photo by Jim Hill

And fan of Blue Sky's "Ice Age" film franchise are in for an even
longer wait. Given that the latest installment in that top grossing series
doesn't arrive in theaters 'til July
15, 2016.

Photo by Jim Hill

Of course, if you're one of those people who needs immediate
gratification when it comes to your entertainment, there was stuff like that to
be found at this year's Licensing Expo. Take — for example — how the WWE
booth was actually shaped like a wrestling ring. Which — I'm guessing — meant
that if the executives of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. didn't like
the offer that you were making, they were then allowed to toss you out over the
top rope, Royal Rumble-style.

Photo by Jim Hill

I also have to admit that — as a longtime Star Trek fan —
it was cool to see the enormous Starship Enterprise that hung in place over the
CBS booth. Not to mention getting a glimpse of the official Star Trek 50th
Anniversary logo.

Photo by Jim Hill

I was also pleased to see lots of activity in The Jim Henson
Company booth. Which suggests that JHC has actually finally carved out a
post-Muppets identity for itself.

Photo by Jim Hill

Likewise for all of us who were getting a little concerned
about DreamWorks Animation (what with all the layoffs & write-downs &
projects that were put into turnaround or outright cancelled last year), it was
nice to see that booth bustling.

Photo by Jim Hill

Every so often, you'd come across some people who were
promoting a movie that you weren't entirely sure that you actually wanted to
see (EX: "Angry Birds," which Sony Pictures Entertainment / Columbia
Pictures will be releasing to theaters on May 20, 2016). But then you remembered that Clay Kaytis —
who's this hugely talented former Walt Disney Animation Studios animator — is
riding herd on "Angry Birds" with Fergal Reilly. And you'd think
"Well, if Clay's working on 'Angry Birds,' I'm sure this animated feature
will turn out fine."

Photo by Jim Hill

Mind you, there were reminders at this year's Licensing Expo
of great animated features that we're never going to get to see now. I still
can't believe — especially after that brilliant proof-of-concept footage
popped up online last year — that Sony execs decided not to go forward
with production of Genndy Tartakovsky's
"Popeye" movie. But that's the
cruel thing about the entertainment business, folks. It will sometime break
your heart.

Photo by Jim Hill

And make no mistake about this. The Licensing Expo is all
about business. That point was clearly driven home at this year's show when —
as you walked through the doors of the Mandalay
Bay Convention Center
— the first thing that you saw was the Hasbros Booth. Which was this gleaming,
sleek two story-tall affair full of people who were negotiating deals &
signing contracts for all of the would-be summer blockbusters that have already
announced release dates for 2019 & beyond.

Photo by Jim Hill

"But what about The Walt Disney Company?," you
ask. "Weren't they represented on the show floor at this year's Licensing
Expo?" Not really, not. I mean, sure. There were a few companies there hyping
Disney-related products. Take — for example — the Disney Wikkeez people.

Photo by Jim Hill

I'm assuming that some Disney Consumer Products exec is
hoping that Wikkeez will eventually become the new Tsum Tsum. But to be blunt,
these little hard plastic figures don't seem to have the same huggable charm
that those stackable plush do. But I've been wrong before. So let's see what
happens with Disney Wikkeez once they start showing up on the shelves of the
Company's North American retail partners.

Photo by Jim Hill

And speaking of Disney's retail partners … They were
meeting with Mouse House executives behind closed doors one floor down from the
official show floor for this year's Licensing Expo.

Photo by Jim Hill

And the theme for this year's invitation-only Disney shindig? "Timeless
Stories" involving the Disney, Pixar, Marvel & Lucasfilm brands that
would then appeal to "tomorrow's consumer."

Photo by Jim Hill

And just to sort of hammer home the idea that Disney is no
longer the Company which cornered the market when it comes to little girls
(i.e., its Disney Princess and Disney Fairies franchises), check out this
wall-sized Star Wars-related image that DCP put up just outside of one of its
many private meeting rooms. "See?," this carefully crafted photo
screams. "It isn't just little boys who want to wield the Force. Little
girls also want to grow up and be Lords of the Sith."

Photo by Jim Hill

One final, kind-of-ironic note: According to this banner,
Paramount Pictures will be releasing a movie called "Amusement Park"
to theaters sometime in 2017.

Photo by Jim Hill

Well, given all the "Blackfish" -related issues
that have been dogged SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment over the past two years, I'm
just hoping that they'll still be in the amusement park business come 2017.

Your thoughts?

General

It takes more than three circles to craft a Classic version of Mickey Mouse

Published

9 years ago

June 9, 2015

Jim Hill

You know what Mickey Mouse looks like, right? Little guy,
big ears?

Truth be told, Disney's corporate symbol has a lot of
different looks. If Mickey's interacting with Guests at Disneyland
Park (especially this summer, when
the Happiest Place on Earth
is celebrating its 60th anniversary), he looks & dresses like this.

Or when he's appearing in one of those Emmy Award-winning shorts that Disney
Television Animation has produced (EX: "Bronco Busted," which debuts
on the Disney Channel tonight at 8 p.m. ET / PT), Mickey is drawn in a such a
way that he looks hip, cool, edgy & retro all at the same time.

Looking ahead to 2017 now, when Disney Junior rolls out "Mickey and the
Roadster Racers," this brand-new animated series will feature a sportier version
of Disney's corporate symbol. One that Mouse House managers hope will persuade
preschool boys to more fully embrace this now 86 year-old character.

That's what most people don't realize about the Mouse. The
Walt Disney Company deliberately tailors Mickey's look, even his style of
movement, depending on what sort of project / production he's appearing in.

Take — for example — Disney
California Adventure
Park's "World of Color:
Celebrate!" Because Disney's main mouse would be co-hosting this new
nighttime lagoon show with ace emcee Neil Patrick Harris, Eric Goldberg really had
to step up Mickey's game. Which is why this master Disney animator created
several minutes of all-new Mouse animation which then showed that Mickey was
just as skilled a showman as Neil was.

Better yet, let's take a look at what the folks at Avalanche Studios just went
through as they attempted to create a Classic version of Mickey & Minnie.
One that would then allow this popular pair to become part of Disney Infinity
3.0.

"I won't lie to you. We were under a lot of pressure to
get the look of this particular version of Mickey — he's called Red Pants
Mickey around here — just right," said Jeff Bunker, the VP of Art
Development at Avalanche Studios, during a recent phone interview. "When
we brought Sorcerer Mickey into Disney Infinity 1.0 back in January of 2014,
that one was relatively easy because … Well, everyone knows what Mickey Mouse
looked like when he appeared in 'Fantasia.' "

"But this time around, we were being asked to design
THE Mickey & Minnie," Bunker continued. "And given that these Classic
Disney characters have been around in various different forms for the better
part of the last century … Well, which look was the right look?"

Which is why Jeff and his team at Avalanche Studios began watching hours &
hours of Mickey Mouse shorts. As they tried to get a handle on which look would
work best for these characters in Disney Infinity 3.0.

"And we went all the way back to the very start of Mickey's career. We began
with 'Steamboat Willie' and then watched all of those black & white Mickey shorts
that Walt made back in the late 1920s & early 1930s. From there, we
transitioned to his Technicolor shorts. Which is when Mickey went from being
this pie-eyed, really feisty character to more of a well-behaved leading
man," Bunker recalled. "We then finished out our Mouse marathon by
watching all of those new Mickey shorts that Paul Rudish & his team have
been creating for Disney Television Animation. Those cartoons really recapture
a lot of the spirit and wild slapstick fun that Mickey's early, black &
white shorts had."

But given that the specific assignment that Avalanche Studios had been handed
was to create the most appealing looking, likeable version of Mickey Mouse
possible … In the end, Jeff and his team wound up borrowing bits & pieces
from a lot of different versions of the world's most famous mouse. So that
Classic Mickey would then look & move in a way that best fit the sort of
gameplay which people would soon be able to experience with Disney Infinity
3.0.

"That — in a lot of ways — was actually the toughest
part of the Classic Mickey design project. You have to remember that one of the
key creative conceits of Disney Infinity
is that all the characters which appear in this game are toys," Bunker
stated. "Okay. So they're beautifully detailed, highly stylized toy
versions of beloved Disney, Pixar, Marvel & Lucasfilm characters. But
they're still supposed to be toys. So our Classic versions of Mickey &
Minnie have the same sort of thickness & sturdiness to them that toys have.
So that they'll then be able to fit right in with all of the rest of the
characters that Avalanche Studios had previously designed for Disney Infinity."

And then there was the matter of coming up with just the
right pose for Classic Mickey & Minnie. Which — to hear Jeff tell the
story — involved input from a lot of Disney upper management.

"Everyone within the Company seemed to have an opinion
about how Mickey & Minnie should be posed. More to the point, if you Google
Mickey, you then discover that there are literally thousands of poses out there
for these two. Though — truth be told — a lot of those kind of play off the
way Mickey poses when he's being Disney's corporate symbol," Bunker said.
"But what I was most concerned about was that Mickey's pose had to work
with Minnie's pose. Because we were bringing the Classic versions of these
characters up into Disney Infinity 3.0 at the exact same time. And we wanted to
make sure — especially for those fans who like to put their Disney Infinity
figures on display — that Mickey's pose would then complement Minnie.

Which is why Jeff & the crew at Avalanche Studios
decided — when it came to Classic Mickey & Minnie's pose — that they
should go all the way back to the beginning. Which is why these two Disney icons
are sculpted in such a way that it almost seems as though you're witnessing the
very first time Mickey set eyes on Minnie.

"And what was really great about that was — as soon as
we began showing people within the Company this pose — everyone at Disney
quickly got on board with the idea. I mean, the Classic Mickey that we sculpted
for Disney Infinity 3.0 is clearly a very playful, spunky character. But at the
same time, he's obviously got eyes for Minnie," Bunker concluded. "So
in the end, we were able to come up with Classic versions of these characters
that will work well within the creative confines of Disney Infinity 3.0 but at
the same time please those Disney fans who just collect these figures because
they like the way the Disney Infinity characters look."

So now that this particular design project is over, does
Jeff regret that Mouse House upper management was so hands-on when it came to
making sure that the Classic versions of Mickey & Minnie were specifically
tailored to fit the look & style of gameplay found in Disney Infinity 3.0?

"To be blunt, we go through this every time we add a new character to the
game. The folks at Lucasfilm were just as hands-on when we were designing the
versions of Darth Vader and Yoda that will also soon be appearing in Disney
Infinity 3.0," Bunker laughed. "So in the end, if the character's
creators AND the fans are happy, then I'm happy."

This article was originally posted on the Huffington Post's Entertainment page on Tuesday, June 9, 2015