Mickey Mouse Weekly #620 from England - March 29th, 1952

Issue 620 finds Mickey and Goofy still clown-bent.

Our Alice story continues, with the Walrus evading capture through clever use of glue,

and the Lion and the Unicorn are finally set to duke it out.  Shh...don't tell Sean Connery.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #619 from England - March 22nd, 1952

Issue 619 continue the Clown Island story on the cover.

Our next Alice installment finds Alice looking for help from Old Father William, but alas, he shoos her away.

Next she visits Humpty Dumpty (most people forget that he and Alice know each other), but as expected, he falls and breaks.  And the Walrus, who is apparently strapped for cash, reappears!

Mickey Mouse Weekly #618 from England - March 15th, 1952

We're in the home stretch now folks.  Issue 618 continues the clown-spiracy story with Mickey and Goofy.

The Red Knight and the White Knight fight over Alice as she flees the scene, only to encounter some more old friends, the Walrus and the Carpenter.

The Walrus is obviously guilty of larceny, but I think Alice is about to meet a good egg.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #617 from England - March 8th, 1952

Issue 617 continues the Clown Island story on the cover (it seems to go on forever).

Our story continues with Alice escaping the battle-minded Unicorn, and encountering the White King and Red Queen again.

The White Knight makes his first appearance!  He certainly looks like Sir Giles from The Reluctant Dragon.  And the Red Knight also appears to be scrapping for a fight.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #616 from England - March 1st, 1952

On we blindly stumble with issue 616 from March 1st (1952 being a leap year you know), and bad puns were apparently all rage (a Mic-KEY indeed).

Alice watches as the Tweedles prepare for battle, but the Unicorn wants in as well.

I swear that cape makes the Unicorn looks more like Capt. Unicorn, or Super 'Corn, or some other silly superhero name.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #615 from England - February 23th, 1952

On we march with issue 615.

For some reason, the serialization has been rename to just Alice beginning with this issue.  Perhaps the less than accurate adaptation prompted it, but more likely because it is just shorter.

Alice has finally made it to the train - which looks a lot like Casey Jr. from Dumbo - and is now rocketing towards square 8, but wait, the Unicorn has other ideas.  And, we meet some old friends.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #614 from England - February 16th, 1952

We continue our story in issue 614, Goofy and Mickey are still clowning around.

Alice finally gets to the train station on her way to square 8, only to find a recalcitrant train!

Will she make it?  Stay tuned!

Mickey Mouse Weekly #613 from England - February 9th, 1952

Issue 613 continues our story, Mickey and Goofy are undercover as clowns.

Alice encounters the Red Knight and the Unicorn, who's itching for a fight.

Will Alice catch the train in time to warn the Lion?

Mickey Mouse Weekly #612 from England - February 2nd, 1952

Our story continues in issue 612 with more Clowns on the cover.

We seem to be tracking fairly closely with the story, we see the chess board in the countryside but there are a few oddities...

Mickey Mouse Weekly #611 from England - January 26th, 1952

Our story continues in issue #611

Alice encounters the chess pieces and is told of the Unicorn!

Mickey Mouse Weekly #610 from England - January 19th, 1952

When I first encountered this, I was completely blown away.  Immediately following the feature film serialization in MMW, in the very next issue they followed it up with a entirely new Alice serialization, titled Walt Disney's Alice Through the Looking Glass. 

Cover still features Mickey and Goofy clowning around,

and we begin our new serial as the Carroll book begins, with Alice in her home playing with her kittens, and entering through the large mirror over the fireplace.

Let's see how well it tracks throughout the serialization.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #609 from England - January 12th, 1952

Clowns, blah, blah, shenanigans, blah, blah, let get on to the Alice story, shall we?

Alice beats a hasty retreat from Castle Heart through the maze and back home.

Oh no, its the end of the story! Or is it...

Mickey Mouse Weekly #608 from England - January 5th, 1952

Happy New Year!  Whatever.  The shenanigans continue with Mickey and Goofy headed of to certain doom on Clown Island.

Meanwhile, Alice is in a real pickle, as the entire pack of cards attacks her, with the Cheshire Cat provoking everyone into madness.

Alice better get back home as soon as she can!

Mickey Mouse Weekly #607 from England - December 29th, 1951

Hey look, it's Christmas time!  Oh, yeah, I fell behind didn't I...well Merry Christmas just the same.  And what could be more yuletide-y than a story about creepy-ass clowns.

On the lighter side, Alice is about to be decapitated.  Film at 11.

Ok, not really, but she is a mile high, in direct violation of rule 42.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #606 from England - December 22nd, 1951

This issue begins a long running serial on the cover, Clown Island with Mickey Mouse and Goofy.

Our story continues with the arrival of the Queen of Hearts (and the king), and vigorous croquet ensues.

Just don't have the temerity to win.

Mickey Mouse Weekly #605 from England - December 15th, 1951

Onward and upward with issue 605, this time featuring daredevil Donald taming the lions (but not the chihuahua).  Poor Donald.

Our story continues as Alice has left the Mad Tea Party, and is headed directly for the Queen of Hearts' castle, with a little help from the Cheshire Cat.

She skipped right over the Very Good Advice sequence with all the Tulgey Wood critters, can't say that I blame her in the least.  But, I'd stay away from those card painters if I were you...

Mickey Mouse Weekly #604 from England - December 8th, 1951

Ok, I've got some catching up to do.  Remember, waaaay back in 2011, I was doing a series of posts on the Alice in Wonderland serialization in Mickey Mouse Weekly, and it stopped (twice)?  Well, I'm back on it now folks, so get ready for the rest.  Now with larger images, so you can actually read the text!

We restart where we left off, at issue 604 featuring a cover of Goofy and Mickey, and Goofy is of course up to mischief.

Our Alice story continues at the Mad Tea Party, "Twinkle twinkle little bat...".

Hasbro Nurse Kit

Last, and certainly not least, is the most bizarre of all, the Alice in Wonderland Nurse Kit.  Alice is ready to do her civic duty all decked out in Red Cross regalia (well, at least with a hat and new pinafore). 

Again we see very standard nurse kit fare, all from Hasbro's OTS kits.  My favorite is the *ahem* hot water bottle.  I don't know about you, but I'm not about to let my 7 year old use that thing on me!  Of the three kits, this has the strangest closure of all, just a single snap.  How weird is that?  And I dig the faux blue alligator box.

This toy eluded me for years, and I began to wonder if it even existed!  All I had to go on was an ad from an issue of Playthings Magazine from July 1951.  Since that issue was coincident with the release of the film, I felt fairly confident that the toys depicted in it would have been produced, but now I think otherwise.  I think that because the ad lists FOUR playsets, not three. 

The Make Up kit (item 1915), the Sewing kit (item 1545) , and the Nurse bag (?!) (item 1765) are all pictured, but the Nurse kit (item 1735) is only mentioned in a text blurb.

I don't think the Nurse bag was produced.  It seems odd that there would be two nursing playsets made, and it was three times as expensive as the Nurse kit.  It may have been made, but I've never seen one, and who knows how well that plastic material would have held up after all these years.  Still, fun to think about it and if it was made, I'm sure it will turn up someday!

Hasbro Sewing Kit

Next up from Hasbro is the equally strange Alice in Wonderland Sewing Kit.  While it is conceivable that Alice would eventually learn the art of sewing - or at least some form of needlework - I doubt the good Rev. Dodgson ever imagined it being accomplished with a working miniature plastic sewing machine!

As with the make-up kit, this playset is chock full of OTS goodies for a young seamstress, including a doll for which the various clothes were designed!  As the box says, the little red sewing machine does actually sew, I just don't know how well.

The bad thing about this set is the design of the box.  There are no hinges on the lid, it relies on the paper of the lid to act as the hinge, which as you might guess is not that strong and is almost always found damaged if not completely separated from the rest of the box.  The closure is odd on this too, a strange little triple tab connection, although there is a variant of the box with a standard closure, the name of which I do not know, but basically is the old school closure for metal lunch boxes.

Hasbro Make-Up Kit

Some of the coolest, and quite frankly oddest, toys created for the original release of Alice in Wonderland, are the various playsets made by Hassenfeld Brothers, later known as Hasbro.  The first of these is the Make-Up Kit.

It is an unusual experience for a grown man to get giddy with excitement when encountering a mint in the box complete make-up kit let me tell you.  Hasbro basically re-packaged an OTS (off the shelf) make-up kit by slapping a little custom Alice art on it, and voila!  The kit is pretty cool as it contains powder and puff, various play cosmetics, and apparently bottles of colored water that were supposed to be perfume I imagine.  Hours of fun for any little fashion model.  There are of course variations, usually having to do with the contents of the kit (probably what they had on hand at the time), but the oddest variation is the placement of the carrying handle.  Sometimes it is on the side with the closure,

sometimes it is on the top, smack dab in the middle of the art?!  Fortunately the cover art is the same as the art on the inside of the lid.

Interestingly, the art of Alice in the mirror was re-purposed for the various pencil boxes as I noted in this post.

Chocolate Sticks Original Box Label

This is one of those things that turn up that make you wonder just exactly how much stuff was created during the release of the film that has never been seen since 1951.  This is a shipping container label for Alice in Wonderland Chocolate Sticks, Item #1255, by the Chicago Biscuit Company.

This label would adorn cases of the product when they were shipped to distributors and stores.  I've never heard of these before.  Ever.  It is not listed in the campaign book, nor is it listed in the CMD.  I do have another piece for a different Alice confection made by the same company, and there is a very blurry image of yet another Alice confection in the Life Magazine photo I posted here, but I do not have any kind of comprehensive list of what was made.  The world may never know.