A couple of weeks ago, we went to an antique show in Maryland that is a favorite of ours, and for me the coolest thing there was the metal Disney sign. It was for sale from one of my favorite dealers at the show. He told me that he purchased the sign at a California flea market in about 1970, when he was living there. I suspect that it probably didn’t cost him much at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person he had purchased it from picked it out of the trash. That is how it made it to the East Coast. I did a little research and found that Walt Disney Productions moved to their Burbank studios in 1940, so the sign cannot be older than that – or newer than 1970, the date it was purchased by the dealer. The clue to the actual age of the sign is with the cute little character decals all over it. The decals could have been added later but I doubt it. I think it was Disney’s way of adding a little magic to everything they did, including this mundane sign. There are characters that you don’t see much anymore such as the tortoise from The Tortoise and the Hare (1934) or Hiawatha (1937). The newest characters that I see are Uncle Scrooge and Bongo, the bear who appeared in Fun and Fancy Free. Both date to 1947.

Based on all of this, I think the sign dates to about 1950 – give or take a couple of years. If that is the case, Walt Disney Productions would have been working on such projects as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. This sign may have stood guard when Davy Crockett was being filmed and when Disneyland was in the planning stages. It is also when the great man himself – Walt Disney- was still in charge of his kingdom. There is no shortage of vintage Disney items out there, but I suspect it will be a long time before I see another one of these. Leave it to Disney to find a way to say “Go Away” and make you feel happy about it.

The post Vintage Disney “No Trespass” Sign – Finding a Nice Way to Say “Get Lost” appeared first on The Collector Gene.

As an artist it is always my goal to own original art work from people I admire.  Of course, original art tends to get very expensive.  The two pieces I am showcasing today were relatively inexpensive, probably because they are unsigned, but their provenance is what I liked most.  They are a fascinating snippet of Disney history that a lot of people don’t know about, and kind of go against the family friendly, squeaky clean, Disney image.  This post is a little bit NSFW (Not Safe For Work since we don’t tend to post this kind of stuff on The Collector Gene).  You have been warned.  Don’t blame me if your boss catches you reading this nerdy article (Bet you never thought you would read Disney and NSFW in the same sentence!).

Disney animators worked long hours every day tirelessly animating those classic films of your childhood.  Sometimes those guys needed a break, and what did they do?  They drew pictures for fun.  It’s what working artists do.  They create art for someone else all day, and then in their time off they create art for themselves.  The Disney animators were known to draw caricatures of each other fairly regularly.  They would slip them under each other’s office doors to egg each other on, or comment on the events of a day.  These caricatures are highly sought after by Disney collectors, especially if they come from Disney’s Nine Old Men, his top group of animators from the 30’s- the 60’s.

I do not own one of these caricatures (though I happily would), but what I own is another fun tradition from the studios in the 40’s and 50’s.  Pinup drawings.  We all know the classic pinup girl paintings from the 40’s and 50’s.  Varga girls and Bette Page are well known today.  Well, the young men working at Disney Studios were just as fascinated by these paintings as any other red blooded heterosexual male of the time, but when they just drew them it happened to be with a Disney twist.

This one ain’t too naughty.  Well, on today’s standards it ain’t so bad.

Here’s the NSFW picture.  Again, not too bad on today’s standards but pretty racy for the time.

Okay okay.  Insert cartoon wolf howling and stomping his foot on the floor with his tongue hanging out.  Firstly, you might notice the holes in the edge of the paper.  These lovely ladies were drawn on perforated animation paper.  That’s the paper the guys at Disney had laying around.  These are beautiful quick sketches by a Disney artist who was happy enough with his work to add a little water color as well which makes them that much more beautiful and dynamic.  They have a ton of energy and life to them, where you can almost see their movement as they strike their permanent pose.  Clearly this artist was well versed in pinup imagery.

Unfortunately my Disney pinups are unsigned.  There is reference in the book “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (two of Disney’s Nine Old Men) that references artist Fred Moore drawing pinups in studio, but looking at his work I don’t think these are his.

I have seen a signed Ollie Johnston pinup on eBay once before, so we know more than one artist was drawing these pictures.  In fact the eyes on both of my drawings remind me of the eyes on the Centaurettes in Fantasia, which were animated by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, so it is possible one of them could have done these.  This is probably wishful thinking on my part, but I’ll tell myself it’s a possibility.  I can only attribute the works at this point, but it is fun to think an important animator could have worked on them.

I find these fictional portraits to be very beautiful and well executed.  Frankly, I see most pin up drawings and paintings that way.  I also love that they represent a seedier side to the Disney animator.  Yes, Disney animation is family friendly and made for “children of all ages”, but I don’t think the goal of the artists was ever to make things perfect and squeaky clean.  I think they were artists trying to create the best possible quality of work that was possible at the time they were working.  The family friendly nature of things was more for marketing to make the money to create such elaborate and beautiful animation.  I think just like most young men of their day, they enjoyed thinking about naked women as much as the next guy.  Remember, Playboy didn’t come out until the 50’s, and these drawing seem to predate dirty magazines.  What’s an artistic lad to do but to draw naked women for himself?  It was a simpler time.  No one associates Disney with gratuitous sex, which makes these pieces of Disney history all the more interesting to me.  They are proof that these guys were human and had normal human flaws and needs just like you and me.  I guess when you stare at pictures of cutesy animals all day, you gotta do something to bring yourself back to reality.

The post Disney Pin-ups. appeared first on The Collector Gene.

As a kid of the 1980s, I was inundated by product after product of all the various popular movies, television shows, and toys that a kid had to choose from in terms of entertainment. I didn’t have to see the movie Gremlins to know what Gizmo looked like. His adorable furry mug was plastered on a wide assortment of toys and plush dolls.

But Gizmo was a Mogwai. Those Gremlins (the creatures Mogwai transform into if they eat anything after midnight…I’m assuming Eastern Standard Time) terrified me. Ugly scales, sharp little teeth, evil red glaring eyes…to me, wet little monster puppets are far more realistic than anything anyone will ever be able to recreate with CGI these days. And because I was so exposed to entertainment as a kid, it was difficult for me to differentiate between reality and fantasy. So I knew that if I avoided watching either of the Gremlins movies, I wouldn’t have to fear them when the lights went out at night.

Here’s the thing: my fear of Gremlins is exactly what the filmmakers of the 1984 movie wanted me to experience. Not just anyone can create a piece of cinema where you can completely lose yourself in the moment even though you know that you’re watching puppets. As such, Gremlins holds up quite well today.

Several toy companies are churning out Gremlins collectibles in large quantities, and they’re all quite popular. In many cases, items that were released as collectibles in the last 15 years (as opposed to items contemporary to when the movies were released in 1984 and 1990) are quite a bit more valuable and desirable than their vintage counterparts.

However, my eyes have been focused on finding vintage Gremlins toys in the last couple of years, and there is some truly amazing merchandise that was made for the two movies. I would say a good 90-95% of the merchandise is based around Gizmo, and that makes a lot of sense, since he’s literally the cutest fictional character in a horror movie ever and easily marketable to children.

Today, I’m spotlighting a pair of plush toys that, as far as I can tell, were only available in the United Kingdom. It’s a set of plush dolls of Mohawk and Daffy, two of the evil Mogwai that were spawned when Gizmo gets wet in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and the first Gremlins movie (1984), respectively. Like I said, the vast majority of Gremlins merchandise was based around Gizmo with a couple of items based on Stripe from the first film, so it’s nice to see Gremlins toys based on other Mogwai. There are an awful lot of plush Gremlins out there, so it’s not as though these are standouts, right?

Wait. Bear with me. It gets a whole lot better.

See, according to the rules established in the movies, if you feed a Mogwai after midnight, that’s when they transform into the titular Gremlins. Even though these are plush toys, you can pretend that these little guys got out of hand by literally pulling them inside out and exposing their true, horrific nature.

Yes, these plush toys are reversible, which allows you to transform Mohawk and Daffy back and forth between Mogwai and Gremlins. These. Are. INCREDIBLE. I was simply doing a search for vintage Gremlins toys on eBay and these popped up. I had no idea they existed. The auctions for the two plush dolls were both were in the United Kingdom, and as far as I can tell, every other example of these that I’ve been able to find has only been for sale over there, leading me to believe they’re an overseas exclusive. Much like the Japanese JUN Planning toys from the late 1990s, it seems like the best merchandise is never available in the market where it makes the most sense.

Plush toys are a tough call in the collecting world, since they’re not something that can easily be displayed on a shelf. However, once I knew these existed, I knew I had to own them, proper display space be damned. To my knowledge, they are the only transforming Gremlins toys ever made, and in this case, it makes perfect sense. The “action feature” of these toys is built around what happens to Mogwai in the films.

To my UK readers, be thankful that you have a pretty easy shot of getting these. For everyone else, time to add a saved search to eBay!

The post Reversible Plush Gremlins (Mohawk and Daffy) appeared first on The Collector Gene.