1951 Walt Disney Character Merchandising Division Catalog

I've mentioned this item in several previous posts, thought I'd devote a post entirely to it - the Character Merchandising Division Catalog.

This is another one of those things that most people don't believe exists. And in a sense they are correct, it is not a traditional Kay Kamen catalog - his death bringing about an end to that era - but rather an internally produced merchandising division catalog, or as it says on the cover, News About Walt Disney Character Merchandise. Even still, so rare that it was thought not to exist, although there is a photo of the cover in the TOMART condensed edition on page 280.

I have only seen two of these ever - mine (which I got from the estate of a Retlaw employee) and one that Disney sold on eBay a few years back (when the Disney Auctionears was still in operation). Mine is a folder (like a Pee Chee for those who remember them) containing a large number of loose leaf, 3-hole punched pages. The one from Disney auctions was spiral bound, but I imagine it was similar, probably the folder was cut down to page size and then the whole thing bound. I do remember that the spiral binding was a little odd in that the spiral was longer than the actual height of the catalog by a couple of inches.

This is an invaluable tool, with tons of illustrations of rare, and sometimes unproduced, character items. It is not limited to Alice in Wonderland, but rather is a snapshot at what was planned for the 1951 season. Of course Alice dominates the catalog. Also included is a listing of the licensed manufacturers, unknown how complete this list is though. Its target audience was, I presume, the toy retailers.

I have been slowly scanning the pages, usually in support of a specific post on an item listed in the CMD. Posts with scans of pages from the catalog are tagged with the CMD tag. At some point I will consolidate the scans, perhaps making a PDF of the entire thing. But that is for another time.