We’ve currently delved quite into the mystical and astonishing realm of Disney. Yet no matter how exhaustively we dig, we still find bizarre nuggets of trivia just below the veneer. Below are 10 more odd Disney facts, from stinging business avarice to drug working and shared underpants.
10The Tale Of Menstruation
Within the years after World War II, Disney transitioned from making propaganda films like 1942’s Victory Through Air Power to a few instructional shorts. Titles included these types of gems as Tuberculosis and Cleanliness Brings wellness.
For women adapting with their developing bodies, Disney produced 1946’s the storyline of Menstruation, commissioned by International Celucotton (the organization that will later come to be Kimberly Clark). This 10-minute movie had been distributed extensively and was seen by tens of scores of schoolgirls really to the 1960s. Becoming a Disney item, the sanitized movie portrays menstrual fluid as white and limits anatomical researches to bare cross-sections.
Even though the brief continued to win the Good Housekeeping stamps, it had been really a bit more than an ad for Overseas Cellucotton’s Kotex brand of female health services and products, which was using a beating from Procter & Gamble’s Tampax tampons.
9Self-Destructing DVDs
Photo credit: Obsolete Media
About ten years ago, Blockbuster is at its top, with 9,000 brick-and-mortar stores. Two years later, it had lost 75 percent of the market price, savaged by technologies that did not include late charges. One innovation had been self-destructing Flexplay EZ-D DVDs, distributed by Disney through various outlets including 7-Eleven convenience stores.
The DVDs had been sold in vacuum-sealed bundles that, when exposed, left the disk playable for 48 hours. Afterwards, the playing surface would oxidize, therefore the disk is trash.
Even though they cost only accommodations, plus the system spared purchasers the effort of coming back discs, the public never truly embraced Disney’s gambit, possibly because of its spectacular wastefulness. In 2007, Netflix started supplying streaming services, most likely heralding the ultimate demise of this DVD industry altogether.
8The Family Photograph
Picture credit: Voutsinas Family
An excellent range separates coincidence and miracle, which tale could leave you thinking when you look at the latter.
Whenever engaged couple Alex and Donna Voutsinas started sifting through family snapshots immediately before their particular marriage, they came upon a many interested image. The 1980 Disney World vacation chance showed five-year-old Donna posing along with her siblings beside Mr. Smee, Captain Hook’s very first partner. In the background, a man with a distinctive white shock of hair is seen pushing a two-year-old in a stroller. The man when you look at the baby stroller ended up being Alex.
Chances of the coincidence are incalculable. At that time, he and Donna weren’t also residing in the same country—Alex ended up being Canadian, Donna had been from the US—and it will be another fifteen years before they met. Alex’s mom corroborated the tale, pulling out snapshots of her family members’s own Disney getaway that revealed Alex’s daddy in the same ensemble showcased in Donna’s picture.
The couple today live in Boynton Beach, Florida. They frequently visit Disney World, and their particular three kids make a practice of finding future partners when you look at the photographs they just take there.
7Hannah Montana Was Almost Alexis Texas
Picture credit: Walt Disney
Although Hannah Montana would be among Disney’s hit franchises, the tv show underwent an evolutionary procedure, with a number of different actresses considered for main personality. Whenever Miley Cyrus came, after that understood only as the daughter of nation songs star Billy Ray Cyrus, she was really auditioning for part of the main personality’s buddy. But producers liked this lady adequate that she they provided her the lead part.
A few names had been considered ahead of the program decided on “Hannah Montana,” including “Alexis Tx.” The name Alexis Texas wouldn’t normally head to waste. It was reported briefly after that by a porn star (look her through to Twitter if you must) whom began the woman job in 2006, equivalent 12 months the program went into manufacturing. Alexis has actually since proven a tireless employee, shooting more than 500 movies.
6Character Coverage
Disney has long been incredibly safety of its brand name because its products are so well-known and easily counterfeited. In a number of instances, the organization moved to unreasonable plus disgusting lengths to protect copyright.
In 1989, three day-care facilities in Florida had murals of beloved Disney characters to their walls, while the business threatened appropriate retribution if the paintings weren’t removed. Witnessing the potential for great publicity, Hanna-Barbera Productions, creators of Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear, rapidly jumped on possibility to offer their figures free of charge usage.
In 2006, upon learning that the moms and dads of a stillborn child in England desired to have the character Winnie the Pooh engraved to their child’s headstone, Disney threatened to sue the stonemason included. Needless to say, this type of pointless business greed did not sit well using public. Questioned, a Disney spokesman backpedaled, claiming, “Our deepest sympathies go out to the household today. We’ve Been touching all of them and are also undergoing satisfying their particular initial demand.”
5Disney’s Housekeeper
Thelma Howard was created into a life of tragedy—when she had been only six, the woman mom passed away giving birth, along with her sis was burned to death cooking supper on a woodstove. The woman family had been bad, and though she aspired in order to become a legal assistant, she didn’t can pay for to finish business school together with to drop-out.
In 1951, she became employed as a live-in housekeeper when it comes to Disney household. She ended up being a dedicated employee, beloved because of the family members, and she served them for 30 years. During her tenure, Walt Disney will give Thelma shares of stock inside the business as getaway gift ideas. At that time, they certainly were well worth pennies, but throughout decades, they rose astronomically in price.
Thelma retired in 1981 and died in Summer 1994. Although she’d existed most of the woman life as little significantly more than a simple housekeeper, she left out an amazing legacy. Her property had been worth over $9 million. Half went to the woman child Michael, therefore the partner went along to gain homeless and disadvantaged children.
4Escape From Tomorrow
As previously mentioned, Disney fiercely safeguards its intellectual residential property, but filmmaker Randy Moore’s avant-garde guerilla project Escape from Tomorrow flies facing all that. The nightmarish surrealist film, that was shown during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, was filmed entirely in Walt Disney World—without the park’s authorization.
It uses the final day’s a family’s Disney getaway. Before making the playground, daddy Jim White receives a call notifying him which he was laid off from their job. He keeps this a secret and visits the park together with his partner, son, and daughter. While exploring the different trips and landmarks, Jim descends into a madness of psychedelic imagery.
Disney could not allow such a movie to-be created on its reasons, therefore Moore took great lengths to prepare the project so he could shoot privately. He even mapped from position associated with the Sun days in advance. Though Disney’s military of attorneys probably might have repressed the film, the organization alternatively made a decision to take a different approach. They took no action, looking to reject the movie any more promotion.
3Homeless Staff Members
The roads of principal Street USA might smell of freshly cooked chocolate processor chip cookies, although not everything at Disney World is all sunshine and rainbows. Those earning Disney’s beginning minimum wage of just $8.03 an hour or so ($16,702.40 annually before fees) discover even spending money on an apartment nearly impossible, leaving some employees homeless.
The median rent in Osceola County is $800 each month. This might appear low when compared with some urban facilities in the us, but once you element in the cost of securing the apartment—laying down a security deposit and offering a couple of months’ rent in advance—the sum becomes hopelessly unrealistic for low-level workers.
Numerous Disney staff members along with other low-income employees get by sharing cheap motel spaces on a week-by-week basis. Such areas may be had for less than $39 every night. This is certainly affordable, if several grownups share the room—though that typically violates resort occupancy guidelines.
2Mickey Mouse The Drug Dealer
Photo credit: Walt Disney
We’ve mentioned before that the historical Mickey Mouse could be a bit of a jerk, and in one 1951 comic, he becomes something of a medicine supplier. In “Mickey Mouse and the medication Man,” a mini-comic distributed along with General Mills Wheaties, Mickey and Goofy discover a fresh medicine called “Peppo.” The thinly veiled amphetamine is indeed effective it offers all of them crashing to the roof and running in sectors.
Impressed, Mickey chooses the medication is a great get-rich-quick system, and then he draws near Peppo’s manager about obtaining a distribution territory. They’ve been given the totality of Africa, which can become just the kind of extravaganza you may expect, complete with crocodiles, a monkey, and spear-clutching natives.
The town they visit is held underneath the sway of the local doctor, who spikes everyone’s food with type of sedative to make certain that he is able to take the area’s diamonds for himself. Naturally, Mickey and Goofy save the afternoon, dosing the slumbering master with Peppo and deposing the villainous medication guy.
1Communal Underwear
Disney firmly controls all facets of the parks’ operations to the level of fixation. For decades, this intended an extremely unsettling uniformity among staff members who portray characters—those clad in Goofy, Pluto, and Mickey Mouse matches. With their costumes, the actors had to wear company-issued undergarments because individual underwear could bunch up-and come to be visually noticeable to visitors.
While some unappealing, this however wouldn’t have been a big deal, but these undergarments were provided among performers. After a shift, the actors would submit their particular costumes and underwear, of allowed to be washed in hot water each night. However, workers started complaining that the undies they certainly were released was filthy and smelly. Even worse nonetheless, there were instances of pubic lice and scabies becoming transmitted.
In 2001, Disney finally achieved an agreement utilizing the stars’ union, letting them just take their particular undergarments home for washing.
