BoomerZoo Almanac for January 28-February 3, 2007: The Prince’s Diaries
Long before Pixar, Harry Potter and Ren & Stimpy, Walt Disney was the name of the game in cartooning (which is what we used to call a certain form of animation) for Baby Boomers. By the time Sleeping Beauty came out in January of 1959—not one of the best of his animated features, by the way—he had already built Disneyland and a vast fortune. These days we use Mickey Mouse to refer to something small and insignificant, but for the Disney empire that definition was completely off the mark. It was Mickey Mouse, all right, but it was also Donald Duck, Goofy and a lot of princesses. One of my favorite childhood memories is of my brother Karl, who had only just learned how to read, telling us that Walt Dis-Sneeze (emphasis on the last syllable) was on TV. The Disney brand is just that, but Walt! Ah, he is Walt Dis-Sneeze.
Even though Sleeping Beauty didn’t show quite the skill of some of his earlier films, I still loved it. I got the companion book as a birthday present, which just goes to show that this idea of marketing adjunct products when movies are released is hardly something new. Matter of fact, Michael Eisner, former head of Disney, told Advertising Age in 1989 how the Disney Corporation's activities all worked to reinforce each other: "The Disney Stores promote the consumer products which promote the [theme] parks which promote the television shows. The television shows promote the company." [Quoted in Marketing to Children by Sharon Beder, 1997.]
Ok, it’s not just Disney these days that is clamoring for the attention and spending power of our children, (www.mediachannel.org/originals/kidsell.shtml) and it’s certainly cause for concern, but maybe it was always cause for concern. Maybe the reason we agree to take our children to fast food restaurants and purchase those special kids meals is because we so wanted to have all those characters on our shelves when we were little.
Still, I wish I’d kept that book. Aren’t all those things worth a fortune now? OK, maybe not. Lucky for us, these days we can check on eBay to find out what those lost treasures are really worth. Looks like I could snap up a copy for $2.75. Probably cost twice that for the shipping, then I’d have to find a place to put it in our house, which is already full of stuff we don’t need. But if you’re interested, go for it!
(search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=1959+Sleeping+Beauty+book)
