Disneyland C & H Sugar Packet

Ok, I have to admit, even for me this is a little weird. This is a sugar packet from Disneyland, probably from either the hotel or one of sit-down restaurants. Why do I have this you might ask?

Because on the back is a picture of the walkaround Alice, Mad Hatter and White Rabbit. The image is taken from the Donruss Disneyland set, card #12.

Who knows how this survived, and it wasn't even in a scrapbook, it still is full of sugar!

Royal Stars of Wonderland

This past week on eBay saw two pictures cut from the back of pudding boxes fetch more than $200. Seems like a good excuse for a post to me!

One of the largest national promotions for Alice's original release was the tie-in with Royal Desserts during the months of August and September 1951. As they had previously done for movie stars and baseball players - and would later do for Howdy Doody - Royal printed 16 scenes from the film on the back of their packaging. According to the campaign book, the tie-in was set to appear in more than 250,000 retail stores.

A later publicity press release sets this number at more like 200,000. Radio spots were recorded with Kathryn Beaumont and were to be played on 154 stations throughout the US. It also mentions that newspaper ads were planned, but the same later press release does not mention it so I don't know if these ads were ever created.

Royal also ran full-page color ads in comic books, with an estimated distribution of 34,000,000! That's a lot of comics. Consequently, the comic book ad page is fairly well known.

The cards were on the back of all their various products including pudding, custard, gelatin, and *new* lemon.

Despite the (presumably) large number of product packages produced, very few of these have survived. I have never seen a complete set, and only have 9 of the 16 myself.

The packaging mentions that you could send away for an album to hold the collection of 16, I have never seen one.

Thanks to Tick Tock Toys for sharing their images of cards 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16.

Ah, the 1950s, when every advertising campaign had some sort of jingle or rhyme to it. Some of these are pretty dreadful.

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.

Be Right Back

Sorry for the long break, was on vacation and returned to a fairly substantial work crisis. I hope to resume posting this weekend.

Golden Catalog - Fall 1951

I thought I'd add this post as an extension of my Sandpiper post, to illustrate all the other Alice related items that were in the Fall catalog from 1951.

First up is the page describing the Golden Story Coloring Book (see posts here and here for more details).

Second is third of the Little Golden Books from Alice, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party. This is other LGB from Alice to get a single (A) printing, along with the Live Flowers book.

Next is another one of those items that for years I couldn't confirm even existed. Just like the Sandpiper book I had seen references to the DBR-1 and DBR-2 Big Golden Records (or Disney Big Record - DBR), but had never actually seen them, nor had anyone else. But I did finally acquire them about 5 years ago, and I will be posting them in the not too distant future. Too bad the covers are so boring...

Lastly the Big Golden Book; a small entry for the Alice book amongst the other BGBs of the day. Oddly, of the catalogs that I have, this is the last time the Alice books are ever mentioned, even though the BGB and the LGB White Rabbit remained in print for more than 30 years.

Films in Review May 1951

An interesting article in a magazine with a scary cover (JUMP!), about how Walt Disney 'cartooned' Alice.


In it Walt (or his ghost write) discuss the difficulties they had bringing Alice to the screen. It is a fairly succinct description of why most Alice film adaptations are less than satisfying from a purely literary point of view - it is damn near impossible to faithfully adapt Alice as a film, it just doesn't lend itself that well.

Of particular interest is the descriptions of why specific characters were left out or combined, and both the consolidation and abridgment of the two books.

In general a pretty high-brow article, definitely meant for a different audience than would read Screen Stories or Movie Life. And so far in advance of the film's release too.

One More Child's Wallet

I know even less about this wallet than I do the other previously posted, but still pretty cool nonetheless.


It is marked Walt Disney Productions, but the art is a little sketchy, makes me think it is foreign.

1st Anniversary of the Blog

Hard to believe its been a whole year of blogging. Where does the time go? Looking back over the past 231 post, there have been some pretty good ones, and some not so good ones (you can tell when I was particularly tired). Some of my favorites have been the series on the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, the Goebels, and the Weeki Wachee record post.

For today's anniversary post I thought I break out one of my favorite pieces of concept art, this very cool pencil, ink and paint drawing of the Mad Hatter.

This drawing is on a piece of trimmed animation paper, and is a little worse for wear, but the image itself is fantastic. The stylized rendering is very reminiscent of the UPA stuff that was going on at the same time, and while I don't know who exactly executed this drawing, it has a zany quality that I usually attribute to Ward Kimball. One of my faves.

Mouseketeer Alice in Wonderland Child's Wallet

From slightly later, probably from the mid to late 1950s, during the height of the Mickey Mouse Club TV show, comes this Mouseketeer wallet featuring Alice in Wonderland.

I have seen this in both this off-white color and a bluish color as well. Again I don't know the manufacturer.

Alice in Wonderland & White Rabbit Child's Wallets

These are pretty fun. Children's wallets featuring wraparound character art from Alice in Wonderland. They are made from a vinyl or vinyl-like material, and are most likely from the original release or pretty close to it based on the logo type used on the Alice wallet.

These have a blue base color with the picture encased in a clear top layer - there are also variants with a red base color (of course I had to have both variants for both images dontcha know).

The inside has a change pocket with a snap closure, couple of smaller storage flaps, and of course the main wallet compartment.

One still had a couple of wallet-sized school photos inside. I call these two kids Bobby and Susie.


While I don't know which company made these, I believe these were made by a company called Salient, Inc. of Holyoke, MA. They made a child's vinyl purse for the original release as well, and I've seen reference material that states they also made wallets.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 40

Last of the original pages from the Golden Coloring Book, page 40, Alice flees the trial through the hedge maze pursued by card soldiers.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 38

My favorite of the five pages, page 38 with Alice being brought to trial by two soldier cards.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 26

Next in the Golden Coloring Book art series is page 26 - Alice in the garden of live flowers.

This is the page that made me realize what this batch of art was from. If you look at the rendering of Alice's face - especially the eyes - you'll see that it is very distinctive. I had always noticed the way her eye's were drawn in that coloring book, and the page of art triggered that memory enough for me to pull out the book and compare.

Another interesting thing is that this page of art - along with all the others in this series - is art from the pre-colored pages of this book. You may recall from my original post that this coloring book is a little different from most, it has a bunch of pages that come pre-colored, acting as a sort of reference.

The Golden Catalog from the fall of 1951 describes these special books as Golden Story Coloring Books, and the pre-colored pages as offering 'a general guide to the young artist'.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 20

Continuing with the original art from the Golden Coloring Book, this is page 20, Alice in the White Rabbit's house opening the Eat Me box.

Golden Coloring Book Original Art by Bob Grant - Page 14

A while back I had a post on a very hard to find item, the Alice in Wonderland Golden Coloring Book.

The next few posts feature original art for this coloring book. First up is page 14, the Walrus preparing to 'begin the feed'.


Art for these is credited to Bob Grant, an artist who did a number of comic strips and comic books for Disney from the 1930s through the late 1960s at least.

Goebel DIS 106 - Walrus Ashtray Discovered!

At long last I have acquired one of the Goebel ashtrays! DIS 106 is the Walrus ashtray based on figure DIS 63.

This completes my set of five walrus figures made by Goebel in the Alice in Wonderland series. See my previous post on this figure for more details.

Yay!