The headline news at D23 Expo 2015 was the announcement of
upcoming Star Wars and Avatar-inspired attractions at the Disney theme parks.
That information is all over the ‘net, but I want to tell fellow Disneyphiles
and collectors about some of the upcoming products and merchandise I discovered
while meandering around the exhibition floor.
One of the must-haves is an upcoming release of the music
from all 75 of Walt Disney’s Silly
Symphony cartoons—on vinyl! That’s right: this 8-hour collection is being
released in a handsome slipcase edition of 16 long-playing records by Walt
Disney Records and Fairfax Classics. There is something wonderfully
insane—or should I say insanely wonderful—about this concept that I find
appealing. (And if you’re the kind of person who wants to keep your collectibles
in pristine condition, your purchase will include a digital download.) You can
learn more HERE.
Disney Editions has some juicy new books on tap this fall,
including David A. Bossert’s long-awaited Dali
and Disney: Destino, the complete story of the seemingly-unlikely
friendship between these two cultural titans. The book features all of the
surviving artwork from their aborted 1940s collaboration, which finally bore
fruit as an Oscar-nominated short subject a half-century later. A special
limited edition will include a small, super-thin video screen on the inside
front cover that plays the Destino short
in its entirety.
The brilliant artist and animator Eric Goldberg has rendered
delightful pen-and-ink portraits of 200 Disney characters—the kind one might
have found on the walls of The Brown Derby restaurant—for a collection called An Animator’s Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draws
the Disney Characters. And in All
Aboard: The Wonderful World of Disney Trains, Dana Amendola chronicles Walt
Disney’s lifelong love of railroading and how the legacy has been taken up by
John Lasseter (who not only provides a foreword but appears on the cover of the
book, as engineer of the train that once belonged to legendary Disney animator
Ollie Johnston).
At the Hallmark booth my wife Alice spotted an item she knew
we had to have: a miniature praxinoscope of Mickey Mouse as the conductor he
portrayed in the classic short The Band
Concert. By inserting batteries and sliding a lever, one can watch Mickey
come to life in a revolving series of mirror images as the band plays excerpts
from “The William Tell Overture” and “Turkey in the Straw.” This irresistible
item was sold in Hallmark Stores in 2013, but for D23 a limited number (825, to
be exact) were repainted in shades of black, white and gray. We even got to meet
the talented fellow who created it, Ken Crow, an official Hallmark Keepsake
Artist. He has other ingenious pieces in their new fall line including an
animated ornament inspired by Mickey’s
Fire Brigade.
Needless to say, there were hundreds—possibly thousands—of
other pieces on display at D23, by individual dealers as well as other official
Disney outlets. I wish I’d had more time and energy to browse, but as a
collector who’s out of shelf space it’s probably just as well I didn’t
encounter more temptation.
