Archive for the 'Disney/Disney-like' Category

Hotel Hightower: Tokyo Disney Sea’s Architectural E-ticket

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

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The latest version of Disney’s Tower of Terror attraction opened this past fall at their Tokyo Disney Sea park in Japan and the façade is frickin’ amazing. Like the other Towers of Terror it’s just under 200’ and features a free-fall attraction inside. But who cares about that – the exterior is the show. This top-heavy architectural mélange of Moorish, Gothic, and Victorian styling clearly appears to be the work of a wealthy eccentric, and it was, according to the attraction’s storyline.

The official attraction website is exhaustively elaborate but heavy on back-story. For photos, like the ones I stole above, see here and this site for tons more info and full video of the attraction and grounds.

Just for fun, I’ve put together a comparison of Tower of Terror attractions from around the world in descending order of aesthetic appeal.

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Demonic Mickey, The Clash, Warhol, Mao, and Pirates!: Odd Disney Vinyl

Monday, March 19th, 2007

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The super cute one is from Medicom.

The rabid Runaway Brain figure from Span of Sunset comes in a few colorways.
…Also a couple different colorways for Andy Mouse, a figure based on a Keith haring collaboration with Andy Warhol.
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Span of Sunset also has a Cheshire cat series. Here’s the punk, Haunted Mansion, and Pirate versions.

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Shag has a Pirates of the Caribbean Boy vinyl, and Medicom has a great Pirate Mickey to be released this spring.

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Freshnessmag revealed Roen’s Mickey figure inspired by the iconic Clash cover art.

And lastly, My favorite, Mickey Mao by Frank Kozik.
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Hook Kills Peter Pan and Mickey’s Got a Gun: The Latest in Disney Subversion

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

I don’t know what Peter did to deserve it but it’s for sale in Asia from Mishka. (Pictures from a Taiwanese auction which has ended.)
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What is it with Mickey in Iraq? Now we have this gun-totin’ Mickey tee From Krudmart .
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Operation Magic Kingdom: Fake Stamps Commemorate Disney Troops in Iraq

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

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From the Cautese Nationál Postal Disservice website:

“2007 operation surge to crack down on insurgent activity in Iraq has failed. The Pentagon tries one last tactic. 400,000 leaflets are dropped into the suburbs of Baghdad; the message reads ‘Believe The Magic. Children and parents maimed or injured by US forces will be given Disney vouchers worth $120.00. (Conditions apply).’
The U.S. led ‘Operation Magic Kingdom’ moves into Baghdad adopting the UK’s ‘Winning Hearts And Minds’ tactic by wearing masks portraying loveable and friendly Disney characters in a bid to gain the confidence of the Iraqi people. The rules of engagement have been changed to include ‘try and be more fun before firing’.â€?

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In other words, British artist/musician Jimmy Cauty, has created a series of billboards and spoof stamps commenting on the Iraq war. Produced under the organization name Cautese Nationál Postal Disservice (CNPD), past stamps included the queen in a gas mask, a sleeping pope with the phrase “GOD IS BORING,� and my favorite, the “AMERICA SHUT UP� series. Prints are sold out but a sheet of stamps is 21 $US.

Americans are probably more familiar with Jimmy’s earlier, more musical work, as one half of the “justified and ancient� duo, the KLF.

See my Disney Subversion tag for more of the same.

More Subversive Disney Shirts: Gas Mask Mickey

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

It’s by Know1edge and sold out in most places. C-apsule has some though.
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Interesting aside: In the 1940’s Walt Disney allowed use of his Mickey character in the creation of creepy gas masks for children. The hope was kids would keep the masks with them and view protection from chemical attacks as a game and not the terrifying concern it was.

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Jeremy Scott Gets Mickey Hard I Guess

Monday, February 5th, 2007

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott’s spring ’07 collection “Right to Bear Arms,” included models wearing mouse-eared helmets and some Care Bear art. Cute – was probably some comment about the war. And then there’s the pics of Jeremy wearing a tee with Mickey sporting wood, and another of him beside a similarly tumescent sculpture. I emailed a rep asking if the shirts are available anywhere but no response yet. None of this is terribly interesting to me, I’m only posting it because I’ve inadvertently begun chronicling subversive uses of Disney iconography, so, here you go. The third pic came from yoox.com.
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Disney’s Piglet Removed From Kid’s Book by Saudi Censors

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Muslims aren’t supposed to eat pork, but apparently viewing pork in cartoon form is also forbidden in the Middle East. I assume this means Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham is out too. Charlotte’s Web? Babe? From QatarLiving.com.020107PigletCensored.jpg

Disney Parks Shot By Other Famous Photographers

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Yes the Leibovitz pics are nice, but here’s a couple other photog’s takes on the parks. Diane Arbus and her 1962 “A Castle in Disneyland,� and David LaChapelle does Florida and Disneyland Paris. Anyone know of other examples?
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1970’s Disneyland Shopping Bag Art is Now Desktop Wallpaper - Yay!

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Due to the response from the brilliantly designed 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag seen in my previous post, I’ve dug out this beauty. If you, like myself, were an aesthetically astute child who visited Disneyland in the 70’s, then you’ll remember how captivated you were by this print and how you didn’t care what souvenir you got as long as it came in this bag. Because I like you, I’ve scanned and created a big desktop wallpaper version of it.

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Battle of the Theme Park Ad Campaigns: Universal’s Hitchhiking Tourists VS. Disney’s Leibovitz Fantasies

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Here in LA, Universal Studios has launched a new ad campaign seemingly inspired by hitchhiking, panhandling, and homelessness. The billboard on the corner of their property at Barham shows a family holding a sign reading “A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES” – a bit unclear if that’s what the family was looking for, or had already achieved (and felt the need to tell you by scrawling it on cardboard?). When I saw it I thought it had to be the all-time worst ad I’d ever seen for a theme park. But after scanning their site for a photo of the billboard (because I HAD to blog about it) I discovered they’d shot a whole commercial with the “people holding cardboard signs” concept – only, the people in the commercial look gloomy and we never see a vehicle or magic Universal Studios bus come to pick them up, the camera simply drives past as if they were just another Mexican selling oranges in the median.

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So I shlepped down the hill in the rain to photograph the billboard when – oh heaven – there was an actual homeless person standing on the corner holding his own cardboard sign in front of the fake family holding their cardboard sign. His name was Ruben and he hadn’t noticed the ironic nature of the composition he was part of. (I took his pic then gave him five bucks.)

Which brings me to the moment when I offer Universal Studios my own free bad PR idea: Go guerrilla marketing with this and pay the panhandlers of LA to hold your cardboard signs. They’re already standing at the busiest intersections, only now, instead of spare change, they’ll be begging to be taken to the “Jurassic Park River Plunge” – and just like the people in the commercial, everyone will ignore them.

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In other theme park advertising news, Disney, wisely deciding to take their campaign in a more upscale direction, hired Annie Leibovitz to shoot celebrities playing dress up in designer versions of Disney character costumes. (A $325,000 Harry Winston tiara and Steuben glass slippers for Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella.)

It’s a smart idea and the execution is brilliant. Mostly so because they’re a tad dark in tone but also because the celeb’s expressions are more complex than the beaming smile one would’ve expected in such an ad. Look at Beyonce in the spinning teacup, she’s not squealing like a little girl, she reclining in a VIP lounge, teasing you with that hand on her lap. Granted, I don’t see a conceptual reason it had to be celebrities, but it does ensure more press and one can hardly fault a company for trying to get that.

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The print versions will run in Conde Nast publications including Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue, with the aim of attracting an older more sophisticated audience.

The decision to represent the Disney parks as high-end adult amusements is not a new idea though.
John Hench, Herbert Ryman, and other designers of the original Disney parks consistently saw a day at Disneyland as such. In a 1960’s Hench rendering of the Circlevision 360 theater in Tomorrowland, women clutch their furs as if it were a night at the opera. And a late 1970’s Ryman concept painting suggests a visit to Epcot was worthy of nothing less than your Sunday best, then in 1988, he painted formal evening attire on those watching the fireworks over Euro Disneyland.

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But my favorite example of promoting Disney parks as more adult fare is a 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag (it hangs framed on my wall) with a spectacular graphic design featuring Mickey (the walk-around version, not the cartoon) and the castle, but not a single child. There’s a couple clinking wine glasses over lobster, a chef, jazz musician, hula dancer, and nightclub singer, a man golfing, a couple in a canoe,  a woman on horseback, another playing tennis - and everyone riding Dumbo and Space Mountain, they’re all adults.
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Interesting aside: When Walt was planning the Florida parks, which he didn’t live to see, he’d imagined they’d be visited primarily by a sophisticated east coast clientele which would require a more elegant theme park experience than the casual west coast atmosphere of Disneyland. Boy was he wrong about that one.

But that’s a whole other tangent, so I’ll just say, I hope the Leibovitz promos do change any perception that the Disney parks are all cotton candy and culturally empty calories because there is an elegance, maturity, and complexity built into those parks (maybe not always maintained, but there nevertheless) and it’s refreshing to see it acknowledged again.

Infamous Disneyland Orgy Illustration Now a Shirt

Friday, January 12th, 2007

…although not for long I’d guess.
Wally Wood created the original Illustration in 1966 shortly after Walt’s death for Paul Krassner’s publication The Realist, and Paul still sells posters of it on his site. Did Paul license the artwork to SITUATIONORMAL who made the shirt? I’ll find out in the morning. If not, then he’ll be the one issuing the “Cease and Desist.” For now they’re available at Krudmart.

The subject matter reminds me of a conversation I had with the late John Hench, one of the original designers of Disneyland. He was wondering if the success of the Disney parks wasn’t partly due to humans having a “genetic memory of the garden of Eden or some other paradise” and our desire to return to that paradise, or as he put it, “a land of free love and all the bananas you could eat.” At which point he nudged me and said, “but I don’t know what the ladies thought of it.”

UPDATE: SITUATIONORMAL did not license the artwork from Paul Krassner and has been sent the “Cease and Desist” letter as expected. I’m cuirous, whose will arrive first, the one from Disney’s Lawyers or Paul’s?

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See my Disney/Disney-like tag below for more subversive Disney whoo-ha.

David Herbert’s Disneyland Inspired Sculpture

Monday, January 8th, 2007

This is Last Stand at Big Thunder Mountain, a large-scale model of Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attraction, on display through February 3 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica.

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It’s hardly a faithful representation, it lacks the exposed dinosaur bones and western town, but the inclusion of plasma balls in a tinfoil-lined cave is a vast improvement. And frankly, I think the world could use a few more models of Big Thunder Mountain.
Here’s past work I found on his site - also low-end materials - also fabulous.

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