The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Desires

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of Kentucky, and within Knott County, and especially in the city of Pippa Passes people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Walt Disney Feature Animation, is an animation studio which creates animated short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Pippa Passes.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Pippa Passes is known for cartoons such as Cars 2, Finding Nemo and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable  characters such as The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful and its most recent release in Pippa Passes being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Elsa, Kristoff and Grand Pabbie the Troll King.

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 Pippa Passes 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 Cartoons in the 1920s

The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, premiered in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney included a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Pippa Passes 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 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 Fifer Pig became a major box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Pippa Passes residents.

The First Walt Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney began 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 Technicolor.

Tremendous training and development went into the creation 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 Pippa Passes - but we're not sure.

What Pippa Passes parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Walt Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to create but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Bashful was the highest grossing movie of all time before being de-throned by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the designers  continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey 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 released Pinocchio with characters such as Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck and Zeus .  It was an experimental animated film 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 Pippa Passes viewers.

Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Dumbo, Casey Junior and Mr. Stork proved to be a monetary success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and The Blue Fairy  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Chernabog, Daisy Duck and The Magic Brooms.

In August 1942, Bambi was premiered in Pippa Passes and we met new friends including Thumper, Faline 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 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 Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Lampwick and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey Mouse with Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Disney features every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Pippa Passes movie-goers , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The Mad Hatter, The Queen of Hearts and The Dormouse.  Parents in Pippa Passes also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy  Darling, Mary Darling and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Pippa Passes could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Trusty and Aunt Sarah.