The History Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Animation

Throughout the state of Ohio, and within Portage County people have enjoyed Disney animation with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, located in Burbank, California, formerly known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, is an animation studio which creates cartoon short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Portage County.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios alongside Pixar Animation Studios which in Portage County is known for cartoons such as Toy Story 3, The Incredibles and Partly Cloudy.

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 The Prince and the dwarfs including Grumpy and Happy and its most recent release in Portage County 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 Portage County 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, premiered in select theatres during the summer of 1928. For the 3rd Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's 1st animated film with matched sound.

The Mickey series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular animated film series in Portage County and the United States.  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 animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a huge 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 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 Portage County residents.

The First Disney Animated Film Feature

In 1934, Disney started development on of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Dopey.  Snow White became the first cartoon in English and Technicolor.

Considerable development and training 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 Portage County - but we're not sure.

What Portage County parent would have imagined 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 Snow White and the seven drawfs including Sleepy and Dopey was the highest grossing production of all time before the success of Gone with the Wind a couple of years later.

During the production of Snow White, the animators  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting characters 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 Geppetto, Lampwick and The Blue Fairy. Pinocchio won ”Gold Statue” for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Chernabog, Daisy Duck and Jack-in-the-Box .  It was an experimental animated film 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 Portage County viewers.

Dumbo was released in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Jim Crow and Crow Chorus 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 seven drawfs including Grumpy and Dopey and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Honest John and Gideon  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Portage County and we met new friends including Pheasant, Friend Owl 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.

Walt Disney also began re-releasing the previous features beginning with the rerelease of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Doc and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Honest John and The Blue Fairy in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which returned Mickey with Donald Duck, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Zeus. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney movies every 7 years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its release in 1950, Cinderella was a a movie success.  Portage County fans , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to The March Hare, The Cheshire Cat and Mathilda.  Parents in Portage County also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Wendy  Darling, George Darling and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Portage County could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Si and Am, Tramp and Boris.