Madame Alexander Full Page Ad & Doll

For nearly a year, Madame Alexander ran a full page ad on the back cover of Playthings magazine announcing the arrival of their newest doll in conjunction with the release of Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland. The doll is the Maggie doll (in M.A.-speak) and was and is a very popular doll. The doll itself came in 3 sizes, and apart from this ad, there is nothing to indicate that it is a Disney licensed product.

Walt Disney Studio Preview Ticket

This is a ticket for a studio preview of the film, along with the True Life Adventures short subject that ran with it. The date on the ticket is July 12th 1951, 2 weeks prior to its official premiere in London on July 26th. This is one of my favorite pieces of 'sacred paper'.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Kit Envelope

I'm amazed this survived. It is just a plain brown bag - albeit a very large one - with some cool printed suggestions for use on the back, and kit contents on the front. Interesting how the art for the posters as printed on the bag doesn't really match the art on the posters themselves...

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Generic Blank Poster

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.


Alice on a generic blank poster.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Fruit Cocktail

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.


The Mad Hatter and fruit cocktail

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Corned Beef Hash

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

This has got to be nasty stuff...Tweedledee and Tweedledum advertising Libby's Corned Beef Hash (who knew they even made that stuff). Ick.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Peas

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

The Dormouse and peas.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Sliced Pineapple

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

The March Hare and sliced pineapple.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Pineapple Juice

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

The White Rabbit advertising pineapple juice.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Tomato Juice

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

Continuing the set of 8, this one with the Walrus advertising tomato juice

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Peaches!

UPDATE: There is a full set of 8 of these posters in Hake's auction 196 - catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

We're getting near the end (finally!), only 9 more items to go...this is one of the eight 'Product' posters. This one features the Cheshire Cat advertising peaches. I just love the old can graphics.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Bonus picture of the dorky little hat

Ok, so it was the 1950s, and everyone wore hats, even stock boys at the grocery store. Although not listed on the kit, I have come across several of these stock boy hats.

They are very cheap paper hats, but follow the style of the rest of the kit nicely. Also, the line art on these is not seen anywhere else in the kit. A bonus post for the holiday weekend as I will be away until Wednesday.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Giant Poster

UPDATE: There is one of these in Hake's auction 196, catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

They're not kidding. This one is twice as big as the previous, a whopping 44x64.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - All-Purpose Poster

This piece of the kit is identified as the 'All-Purpose' poster. It is about 22x64. I really dig Alice's striped stockings.

The Mad Hatter and Me - Disneyland, Aug '71

Inspired by Jed's excellent post, thought I'd put this up while the idea was still fresh. It's me at Disneyland in 1971 (I was six years old at the time). Check out those stylin' pants. And I still have that Mickey Mouse wristwatch.

Is that Jerry Seinfeld behind me?

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Price Cards

UPDATE: There is a set of these in Hake's Auction 196, catalog listing here - closing on Dec 4, 2008.

Set of 4 "price cards" featuring Alice, Mad Hatter, Walrus, and Tweedledee & Tweedledum.

Libby's Wonderland of Values - Tuck-ins

Two more of the 'tuck-ins', Alice and the March Hare

Libby's Wonderland of Values

One of the largest promotions in conjunction with the original release in 1951 was the one with Libby's Foods. Most people have seen the two-page ad with a myriad of Alice characters commenting on various Libby's products (It's Frabjous!). In addition to this full page ad, there were newspaper ads, and in-store promotional posters. The in-store kit consisted of 8 large posters (about movie poster size) each advertising a specific food product, 4 'price cards' which were about legal size used to advertise a specific price special, one very large window poster advertising the promotion in general (Libby's Wonderland of Values), another generic poster somewhere between the very large poster and the 8 large posters, and 6 'tuck-ins' (about index card size); all in an illustrated envelope. Today's post is one of the 'tuck-ins', featuring the Cheshire Cat.

My kit has 3 Cheshire Cat cards and 3 Alice cards, but I have also seen a March Hare card. One can only presume that they made cards for each of the 8 characters featured on the large posters (the art is the same), but I have not seen the remaining 5 characters. If there is interest, I'll post images of the entire kit. Enjoy.

The Inaugural Post

So, what to do for the inaugural post on this, my Vintage Disney Alice blog. I'll start off by saying that this will probably be sporadic in nature, real world commitments like job, mortgage, child's college tuition etc. being only TOO real. But I will try to post something interesting as often as I can.

For those who know me, they will remember that I'm fairly obsessed with the Disney Alice. And I have managed to gather some cool things over the years. I'm most interested in items from the 1950s, especially from the initial release. In fact, the banner for this blog is one such item, it is a theatre herald from France in 1951/52 (the year it was released in most of Europe, Christmastime in France). The banner is the inside of the herald, the front looks like this:


and the back looks like this:


I've come across two of these over the years (there are probably more about, but I would imagine they are mostly in France), and I think the graphics on this are probably the best movie promotional art I've seen for Alice.

UPDATE: Looks like this is actually from Belgium.

UPDATE #2: Ok, so we now know this is Belgian. The copy I have that is only in French advertises the Eldorado, a famous theatre in Brussels. Thank you Arion for the information.