The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of West Virginia, and within Lewis County, and especially in the city of Cox Town people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, whose home is in Burbank, California, 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 Cox Town.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Cox Town is known for cartoons such as Monsters Inc., Ratatouilli and Luxo Jr..

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films with the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with unforgettable  characters such as The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Bashful and its most recent release in Cox Town being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Hans and The King and Queen of Arendelle.

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 Cox Town 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 20s

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

The Mickey Mouse series of sound animated films quickly became the most popular animated film series in Cox Town and the United States.  A second Disney series of sound cartoons, 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 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 success and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" also became popular for Cox Town residents.

The First Walt Disney Animated Film Feature

In 1934, Disney started production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy.  Snow White became the first animated feature in English and color.

Tremendous training and development went into the production 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 Cox Town - but we're not sure.

What Cox Town parent would have imagined that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a big hit. It cost Disney  a total of $1.4 million to produce 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 the success of Gone with the Wind a few years later.

While working on 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 Geppetto, Stromboli 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 Chernabog, Yen Sid and Spring Sprite .  It was an experimental cartoon created 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 Cox Town viewers.

Dumbo debuted in October 1941 with characters including Timothy Q. Mouse, The Ringmaster 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 dwarfs including Sleepy and Bashful and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Monstro  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Mickey Mouse, Yen Sid and The Magic Brooms.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Cox Town and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Friend Owl 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 reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Happy Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald, Daisy Duck and Spring Sprite. 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 proved to be a movie success.  Cox Town fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Queen of Hearts and Mathilda.  Parents in Cox Town also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Michael Darling, George Darling and The Crocodile. What dog-lover in Cox Town could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Jock and Boris.