Some Thoughts About the Walt Disney Company

A few months ago, I took my daughter to Walt Disney World for a long weekend. We used to do these trips a lot, when she was younger, but we hadn't gone since Brett and I separated, and now she's nearly an adult. We had a great time, but that's not what I'm thinking about today. Instead, I'm thinking about what a valuable asset it must be for a corporation to have so many iconic characters, from so many decades, that it can use however it wants. One example: the Wishes firework show at the Magic Kingdom features the voice of Jiminy Cricket and the song "When You Wish Upon A Star" (from 1940's Pinocchio) and starts off with Tinker Bell flying over Cinderella's Castle. Another example: the upcoming video game Disney Infinity, which allows players to mix and match characters and props from about a dozen different movies (Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story, Fantasia, etc.). People see these iconic characters and immediately associate them with Disney. What other corporation can do that? Warner Brothers has the great Looney Tunes characters, but what have they done with them in recent decades? Universal Studios has pushed hard to create a Harry Potter world in the Islands of Adventure theme park, but who looks at Harry and Hermione and Ron and thinks "Ah, yes. Universal Studios. They also gave us Lon Chaney films and Jaws." Does anyone outside the industry know who the original United Artists were?

So, back to Disney and their roster of easily recognizable iconic characters. Purely for my own amusement, here's a selection (by no means complete) of their bigger player, sorted by decade.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

 

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Holy crap that's a lot. And it's by no means complete. Granted, not everyone would know all these characters, or what movies they were in, but they're pretty damn recognizable, and most people who do recognize them would know what company created them. Which says a lot for Disney's ability to stay on point, decade after decade. Regardless of your opinion of massive ever-expanding global corporations, you gotta respect that.

And oh yeah, one more thing. They recently added another iconic figures to the roster: