The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of Colorado, and within Baca County, and especially in the city of Two Buttes people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Two Buttes.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Two Buttes is known for cartoons such as Up, Finding Nemo and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films with the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable  characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey and its most recent release in Two Buttes being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Kristoff and The Duke of Weselton.

The studio's catalog of cartoons 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 Two Buttes 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 animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in movie screens during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  Subsequently  the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st cartoon with synchronized sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Two Buttes and the United States.  A second Disney series of sound animated films, the Silly Symphonies, released 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 cartoon 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 major box office and pop culture success and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Two Buttes residents.

The First Walt Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Walt Disney started development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Happy.  Snow White became the first cartoon in English and Technicolor.

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

What Two Buttes parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge hit. It cost Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey was the highest grossing film of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind a few years later.

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

New Disney Productions

In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Pinocchio, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus .  It was an experimental animated film designed 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 Two Buttes viewers.

Dumbo hit the screens in October 1941 with characters including Dumbo, The Ringmaster and The Clown proved to be a monetary success. The movie only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and Gideon  and 2/5 of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and The Magic Brooms.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Two Buttes and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Faline and Mrs. Possum.

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 Duck 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.

Walt Disney also began re-releasing the previous features beginning with the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey Mouse with Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney features every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Two Buttes movie-goers , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Queen of Hearts and Mathilda.  Parents in Two Buttes also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy  Darling, Captain Hook and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Two Buttes could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Lady, Trusty and Tony.