Disney’s Peter Pan Lenticular Image

1966 seems to have been a banner year for the W. C. Jones Publishing Co. out of Los Angeles, CA. This was the year they released a slew of licensed lenticular images based on Walt Disney productions. Lenticular printing is a technology in which an array of magnifying lenses are used to produce printed images with an illusion of depth, or 3D. One of the nicest of these W. C. Jones images we have come cross is this 20 cm x 25 cm example of Peter Pan flying over Captain Hook’s ship! Most of the lenticular images released by W. C. Jones were postcards, only about 13 cm x 18 cm, and did not include a plastic frame. The fact that this item has survived with its frame for more than fifty years, while showing very few signs of wear, is remarkable!

Peter Pan is a 1953 animated fantasy-adventure film produced by Walt Disney and based on the play ‘Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up’ by J. M. Barrie. It is the 14th Disney animated feature film and was originally released on February 5, 1953, by RKO Radio Pictures. Peter Pan was one of Walt Disney's favourite stories and he had intended for Peter Pan to be his second film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However he could not get the rights until several years later, after he came to an arrangement with Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, to whom Barrie had given the rights to the play. Peter Pan was praised by most critics during its initial release, and Peter Pan is today considered one of Disney's animated classics.

Walt Disney's Seven Dwarfs figurines

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature in motion picture history. The film premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, to a wildly receptive audience, receiving a standing ovation at its completion from a star-studded audience that included such celebrities as Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, Clark Gable and a host of others. RKO Radio Pictures put the film into general release on February 4, and it went on to become a major box-office success, making four times more money than any other motion picture released in 1938. Further, noted critics and filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin, praised Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a notable achievement in cinema.

Frank Seiberling, founder of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, so named in honor of Charles Goodyear who invented vulcanized rubber, also founded the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. In 1933, Tom Casey, the company's Vice-President, happened to catch a showing of Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs at a local theater and, according to a 1938 newspaper article, ventured out west to secure the rights to produce rubber figurines based on characters from the Three Little Pigs. Casey also believed Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarf's was going to be a huge hit, so much so that his factory produced 40,000 of the figurines in anticipation of the film's success. The figures appeared in the marketplace two months prior to the film's premiere, and although sales may have been slow to start, when Walt Disney's feature went into general release in 1938, Snow White mania swept the nation. Unfortunately, most of Seiberling's toys have fallen victim to oxidation, leaving collectors hard pressed to find examples in anything better than very good condition.

Disney's Aladdin Promotional Theater Cup

On the original theatrical release of Disney’s Aladdin in  1992, this theater cup was part of a promotional “Combo” that could be purchased from the theater concession. The cup itself has a beautiful full color image of the heroes from Disney’s Aladdin, as well the name of the promotion’s sponsors on the reverse side. The cup lid is a light blue, 3D plastic sculpt of the Genies head, which has a hole in the top to allow for a straw. The total height of the cup and lid is 26.5cm.

Aladdin was the 31st animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, and was part of the Disney film era known as the Disney Renaissance. Following the success of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin was released on November 25, 1992 to positive reviews, and became the highest-grossing film in 1992, and the highest-grossing animated film up until that time.