The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of Utah, and within Utah County, and especially in the city of Santaquin people have enjoyed Disney cartoons with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Santaquin.   It took on its present name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Santaquin is known for cartoons such as Cars 2, Finding Nemo and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has released 53 feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with unforgettable  characters such as The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Dopey and its most recent release in Santaquin being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as The Snow Queen, Olaf 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 Santaquin 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 Animation in the 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey Mouse cartoon Disney included a sound track.  Subsequently  the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st animated film with synchronized sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Santaquin 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 1st full-color cartoon 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 huge box office and pop culture hit and the theme tune "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Santaquin residents.

The First Walt Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney started development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and color.

A lot of 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 Santaquin - but we're not sure.

What Santaquin parent would have guessed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge hit. It cost Walt Disney  a total of $1.4 million to produce but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey was the highest grossing film of all time before being de-throned 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 Mouse 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 premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Pinocchio, Lampwick and Monstro. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spring Sprite .  It was an experimental cartoon produced to accompanying an orchestral arrangement.  Fantasia also caused the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of Santaquin viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, Jim Crow and The Clown proved to be a financial income success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Bashful 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 Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck and Spring Sprite.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Santaquin and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, 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 Goofy 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 the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Dopey Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and Gideon in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald, Daisy Duck and Jack-in-the-Box. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney features every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a movie success.  Santaquin movie-goers , also saw the premier Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Cheshire Cat and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.  Parents in Santaquin also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet John Darling, Captain Hook and Jeffrey Silver. What dog-lover in Santaquin could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Trusty and Aunt Sarah.