The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of Pennsylvania, and within Montgomery County, and especially in the city of Willow Grove people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, California, formerly known as Walt Disney Productions, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Willow Grove.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Willow Grove is known for animated movies such as Cars, The Incredibles and A Bug's Life.

As of 2013, the studio has produced 53 feature films with the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with notable  characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful and its most recent release in Willow Grove being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Elsa, 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 Willow Grove 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 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in movie screens during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  In the end  the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first animated film with synchronized sound.

The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Willow Grove and the U.S..  A second Disney series of sound cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, debuted 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 animated film 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 big box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Willow Grove residents.

The First Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Walt Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful.  Snow White became the first cartoon 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 animators and artists from other fields.  Some may have even come from Willow Grove - but we're not sure.

What Willow Grove parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to create but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy was the highest grossing production of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

While working on Snow White, the artists  continued work on the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends 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 Geppetto, Honest John and Monstro. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Donald Duck, 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 Willow Grove viewers.

Dumbo premiered in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Elephant Catty proved to be a financial income success. The film only cost half the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spring Sprite.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Willow Grove and we met new friends including Pheasant, Flower the Skunk and Great Prince of the Forest.

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 reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald, Tyrannosaurus Rex and The Magic Brooms. This led to a tradition of re-releasing the Disney movies every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Willow Grove fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Cheshire Cat and Mathilda.  Parents in Willow Grove also took their childres to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Mr. Smee and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Willow Grove could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Trusty and Jim Dear.