The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of North Carolina, and within Guilford County, and especially in the city of Terra Cotta people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, California, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Terra Cotta.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Terra Cotta is known for cartoons such as Toy Story 3, The Incredibles and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has produced 53 feature films starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with notable  characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Bashful and its most recent release in Terra Cotta being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, Kristoff and Grand Pabbie the Troll King.

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 Terra Cotta 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.

Older Cartoons in the 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, 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 included a sound track.  Subsequently  the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Terra Cotta 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 1st full-color animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a major 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 tremendous box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Terra Cotta residents.

The First Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Bashful.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and color.

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

What Terra Cotta parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge success. It cost Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to create but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Bashful was the highest grossing movie of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the artists  continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends among them Mickey'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 Monstro. Pinocchio won Oscar for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Yen Sid and Zeus .  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 Terra Cotta viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Dumbo, Casey Junior and The Clown proved to be a financial income success. The movie only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Happy and less than a 1/3 of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Monstro  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Mickey Mouse, Yen Sid and Zeus.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Terra Cotta and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, 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 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 re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and The Magic Brooms. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Disney features every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Terra Cotta movie-goers , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Queen of Hearts and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.  Parents in Terra Cotta also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Captain Hook and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Terra Cotta could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Jock and Jim Dear.