Transcription
What's going on, Disney fans? It's Dan here, and I am back with the evolution of a costume character that is very important to this channel. It practically made this channel, but new things have happened, and I've uncovered grand new stories about this fantastic character. That's right, guys, it's time to go all the way back to Mickey Mouse and take a deep dive into his costume evolution, in and out of theme parks. M.I.C. see all these costumes? K.Y.? Why? Because there were some choices. M.O.U.S.E. Let's go!
[Music] [Laughter]
It was all the way back in 1928 that Uncle Walt dreamed up the iconic character that was Mickey Mouse, who was starring in iconic shorts like "Plain Crazy" and "Steamboat Willie." But Mickey Mouse wasn't the only thing rocking and rolling in movie theaters back in the '30s. There was a Vaudeville act called Fashon and Marco, who had a very brilliant idea to bring Mickey Mouse into the real world. This Vaudeville act was huge, touring the country with massive audiences that would sell out time and time again. They designed the first Mickey Mouse costume to appear in their short films and Vaudeville acts.
This costume was wild, handmade with wildly oversized gloves, wildly undersized feet, and a super large head that was constructed almost like a piñata. Everything's very clearly wrapped in soft fabric and padded out in various ways, and, uh, most importantly, we have Mickey Mouse donning what could only be described as, uh, diaper pants. I don't know if it was Fashon or Marco inside the costume, but I can only tell you one thing: that 1930s Mickey Mouse did not skip leg day.
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The live-action Mickey Mouse didn't just stop with the Vaudeville performers. Their handmade costumes began to evolve and grow, matching new styles of Mickey Mouse as his animation changed, and more importantly, the toys that were promoting Mickey Mouse changed. In early 1930s, a toy designer by the name of Charlotte Clark came out with a very unique cone-shaped Mickey Mouse plush toy design that would very quickly influence the costumes that were being made. All of that, of course, culminating to 1937's premiere of "Snow White," where Mickey Mouse himself was on the red carpet, shaking hands and kissing babies. Again, we've got the thickness in the legs, the skinniness in the arms, and, uh, what is essentially just a sized-up, glorified Mickey Mouse plush turned into a costume that a human can wear. The head is strange. It's, it's, it's too coney. It's like an ice cream cone. It's a lot of this energy. It just makes me want to vogue, and I'm not exactly sure why. It's, it's interesting.
The original Mickey Mouse cartoons were purely in black and white, but then as color started to slowly creep its way into the cartoons, Mickey Mouse actually originally had green pants and yellow gloves. Now, all these pictures of these original costumes are in black and white, so it's not exactly sure what color palette they decided to go down, but it's definitely an interesting thing to think about that Mickey Mouse originally had green pants. I, I can't. Now, now it's like stuck in my brain forever. I can't stop, stop thinking about it. Is he wearing green pants when I'm watching a black and white cartoon? Is he wearing red pants? Is he wearing yellow shoes, white shoes, yellow gloves, white gloves? Black and white cartoons, man, they're messing with my brain.
While a bunch of cartoonists were toiling away on the West Coast, over on the East Coast in Hershey, PA, a group of ice skating arena owners got together to figure out what kind of events they could start planning to put in all their empty ice skating arenas. And they came up with the Ice Capades: a one-of-a-kind show, armed with all of the Olympic and U.S. national ice skating talent, boiled down and presented to you in a non-stop ice skating extravaganza. And much like we saw with Mickey Mouse in the early '30s, Walt Disney was more than happy to relicense his characters into another national touring show with the Ice Capades.
In 1949, the Mickey Mouse Ice Capades costume is a hand-sculpted foam head, full of tiny little vision holes placed precariously all over the head, lined with a fine mesh, allowing the performer to see where they're going, while at the same time allowing this large arena space to see their favorite, iconic, one-of-a-kind mouse hero. The costume, much like the costumes already before it, mainly consisted of a black unitard spandex outfit with a pair of shorts over it, some white gloves, and a costumed head. But what, what's really fun about this character is that they made specialized shoes with ice skates attached to them for Mickey.
Introducing these big costume heads into the Ice Capades was challenging for performers. If you got to carve Mickey's face up a little more so that the performer inside can see, it's an arena show, big, big rooms. It's fine. Do what you got to do. Except when Walt Disney decides to open up his visionary theme park and realize at the last minute he didn't have any Mickey and Minnie friends to join in the celebration. And well, enter in horror face.
[Music] Mickey. The opening of Disneyland in 1955 originally didn't have any costume characters in the lineup. It was this last-minute rush to get the Ice Capades characters and skaters to show up at the Disney parks on opening day in 1955 to hop in the parade and and march around. But the problem was, all of their shoes had skates built into them. All of their costumes were designed to be worn on the ice. Uh, and so what we get is this last-minute, thrown-together group of characters wearing generic shoes, generic gloves, and unholy, massacred faces.
This Mickey Mouse should not be anywhere near children. Would I let my children meet this Mickey Mouse? Well, probably, because it's important for them to get a little bit scared when they're young to, you know, enable that whole fight-or-flight, you know? But that's not what Disneyland's about, okay? This Mickey Mouse that you're seeing right now appeared in the 1955 ABC Disneyland opening day special. All right, it was immortalized. They kept these things around and put them on camera for the world to see. And it was truly, truly perhaps an embarrassment for the Disney park company in general, having this horror Mickey associated with the opening day of Disneyland.
And so, to compensate for that, in 1958, the Ice Capades had a massive Disneyland special event to promote the new park around the country, as well as a brand new "Alice in Wonderland" ride. And so we've got two big events to promote. We've got to get a new Mickey costume. So what we did was took the original Ice Capades Mickey costume and rebuilt it without any horrific face holes. No more is Mickey wandering around the parks looking at children being like, "Hey, you want to know how I got these scars?" Now Mickey just looks, well, pale and horrifying, but at least not scarred and murderous. That's all the Disney parks.
After this, quickly set forth plans to design their own Mickey Mouse. And they did that in 1959 with a large, what could only be described as a papier-mâché bobblehead type look with a very, very skinny cast member performer inside it. Underneath, what we're doing is we're scaling up the head to try to play with the proportions of a character humanoid mouse thing and making it look more like it's supposed to on screen. But what we end up getting is the odd proportions of just a skinny dude in a black skin-tight outfit wearing shorts with a piñata on the top of them.
By 1959, the idea of Mickey Mouse had been pretty well cemented in the brains of, uh, the world. All right, he was circles, circle head, circle belly, big circly feet. He was, uh, round and short and fun, and, you know, silly proportions that humans just do not have. It left families experiencing, uh, the meeting of their favorite iconic character becoming just meeting a dude in a suit with a mask on. It wasn't really fulfilling for a lot of kids.
Determined to offer guests a more measured character meet-and-greet experience, the Summer of Fun in 1961 rolled out what would become known as the "Big Heads." This new costume was designed to bring Mickey's eyeline closer to the younger audience, putting him in a scale closer to a child than a towering adult. A unique design allowed Mickey to appear more compact than ever, with the cast member's head inside the newly added top hat. And you can't just have a mouse wearing a top hat and short shorts, so the entire wardrobe of Mickey was redone to include him in a full tux and tails. However, this costume was a bit of a nightmare because what it did was essentially offer children and families a walking, immobile plush for them to hug. Because of the way the costume was designed around the cast member, the arms of Mickey and all the big-head characters were more or less worthless, with just dowels that allowed them to gently wiggle the sticks. So while kids and families could hug and interact with Mickey, Mickey could not hug and interact back with them because we essentially had the cast member inside in a straitjacket.
These big-headed Disney characters were made of rubber, like Halloween mask rubber. They were pliable. Cast members inside would like push out the cheeks and wiggle the nose and, you know, and make the characters move in weird ways. They were kind of, uh, flowy and, and, uh, and well, rubbery. Magic Candles, Magic Candles. Who's the candles you like to smell that bring home memories? Magic Candle Company. Disney Dan, 15.
[Laughter] I just, I mean, I'm a lunatic. I'm so [Music] sorry.
After a lot of complaints about the character meet-and-greets being a little bit awkward with Mickey not really being able to interact back with the families and kids, to solve this, they would set in motion an iconic height restriction that would exist through to today. What can you do if you can't make anybody look good in a Mickey costume? Well, you find someone short enough to look good inside a very specific Mickey costume. And in 1963, that's exactly what we did. Enter Paul Castle, a skater from the Ice Capades, including some of those Disney sections we talked about earlier. He was 4'6", an iconic height for everyone's favorite mouse, and he was Walt Disney's personal Mickey Mouse best friend for years. Whenever Walt would venture out into the world, he would be joined by Castle himself, portraying Mickey Mouse in his short stature.
Interesting, though, the costume from the big head version of Mickey Mouse carried over up to this point. We'd only seen Mickey Mouse in the parks just wearing shorts, but with the big head, we had to compensate for that top hat and tux. And, uh, as that costume continued to evolve, well, Mickey Mouse stayed in a tux. But a thing about this costume is that it still had a rubber face. It really wasn't the most consistent costume, but it was innovative for the time.
We have many things in mind that could make this unique and different than Disneyland. As the Walt Disney Company ramped up the hype train that was Walt Disney World, we got a brand new Mickey Mouse to celebrate. First and foremost, we moved away from the rubber head. Now we had a hard-sculpted head made out of a plastic-type material, the stuff we're familiar with today. No more are the squished Mickey faces and wiggling noses of the past. Now we have a consistent, hard plastic Mickey face. His tie was shortened to just be a regular bow tie, and interestingly enough, his iconic pants buttons were removed in lieu of a pointed white vest.
Mickey continued to carry on this look all the way up to probably one of the biggest events for any mouse's life: his 50th birthday. The 1978 Mickey's Birthday. Mickey Mouse is the Mickey Mouse that you all know and love today. It's where it all got started. It's where everything started to come together. We had the iconic hard plastic head, and we ditched the human body in regular clothes and replaced it with a padded, rounded mouse body. That's right, Mickey's got hips, baby. We're bulking up Mickey across the board here, okay? We're not just messing around with his hips. He's got new padded gloves, he's got a sleeker, tighter bow tie, shoes, all kinds of new stuff is lightly being tweaked and refined to make Mickey Mouse look more and more like the cartoon that you know and love.
And while everyone thought Mickey Mouse was taken care of on his 50th birthday, it wasn't until his 60th birthday that the foundation was finally laid for the iconic mouse that you see in the parks today. This look debuted in the "Spirit of America" parade. His hairline and head sculpt was refined, giving his face a larger canvas to work with. This really brightened up the face of the character. The whole personality of the character, Mickey now feels more open and welcome. Look at how happy he is to see you.
Popularized in the 2006 "Castle Show Dream Along with Mickey," the Main Mouse himself did something he had never done before in public: he talked. "Hi, everybody! I'm Mickey!" He sang. He danced. It was truly amazing. Up until this point, we were just used to a Mickey Mouse with a static head dancing around on parade floats and on stages with the music, and we all kind of suspended our disbelief and were like, "Yeah, sure, I guess he's singing." But now he actually sings. It's incredible. I mean, like, it was Inc. It was just, I remember when this happened, I was just like, "Awesome! Hi, how are you? Good. It's good to see you. Thank you."
For the first time, the Mickey costume was being controlled by more than one person. Using a series of soundboards, cues, and rehearsals, a team of cast members were able to literally bring Mickey Mouse to life for you to meet and interact with in meet-and-greet scenarios. It was really wild. It was really, really wild. I remember the first time I saw it, and I'm, you know what? It's been about, you know, 10 years, and I'm still shocked. I'm still, I mean, look at me.
The Main Street Theater that housed the Mickey Mouse meet-and-greet was laid out in a very specific and clever way because it took us into the dressing room for Mickey Mouse for his big magic show. We had a one-way mirror that allowed cast members behind the mirror to watch the room, see what was going on, communicate with the cast member inside of Mickey, and craft a beautiful experience time after time after time. My gosh, there are videos of kids meeting Mickey Mouse that tear me apart. Oh my gosh, true magic that was made with this costume character.
Interesting fact, and this is something that maybe warrants an entire video, but at first, the articulated heads were controlled by the cast members inside with specialized buttons inside their gloves that allowed them to both blink and move the mouth open and closed. Eventually, though, all of the heads that you see articulated interacting with shows and parades are now all radio-controlled. If you want more sneaky speaky Mickey secrets, leave me a comment below. #sneaky speakymickeys ecrets. That's a hard one. You could just ask me. You don't have to put the hashtag in. I don't even know how to spell it myself.
But Mickey wasn't done being retooled and reinvented. In 2016, with the opening of Shanghai Disneyland, we got, surprisingly, a brand new Mickey sculpt. This sculpt further refined the idea of the modern Mickey, changing everything from his hairline to his eye shapes, to the roundness of his cheeks and his nose, to the fullness of his tongue inside the mouth. It was really kind of a modernized re-looking at the Mickey Mouse that we had been kind of accustomed to and refining it further into that cartoon brought to life look. You could argue that Mickey essentially looks like he got a facelift with this. I mean, 'cause that's what happened. Someone took a lot of Scotch tape to his temples and pulled [Music] hard.
The most innovative Mickey costume ever to hit the parks came to Disneyland in 2017. Look at it. That is a free-walking, no one-way mirror, helping Mickey Mouse, interacting with people out on the streets of Disneyland. "I'm sure I'm glad you came to see me." He's just talking to people. Mickey, Minnie, and Donald are just having a conversation with guests as they wander to meet them, and there's no one around to control them. This is all being operated by the cast members inside the costumes. To be able to talk to Mickey Mouse as I walked through Disneyland would be truly, truly the future. The future.
And for whatever reason, reasons I don't know and I can't explain to you, Disney got rid of it. They got rid of talking Mickey in Main Street. They got rid of all these free-wheeling talking Mickey. There's, you know, and rumors on the street were that it, you know, it was confusing guests and it wasn't a consistent experience. There were talking Mickey in some places, not other places. Like, who was complaining about that? Who was complaining about that, really? Honestly, someone tell me you were the one who complained about it so that I can find you and we can have a little talk about, you can go back and take back all the things you said, because I want talking Mickey back. I want talking Mickey back. I can't believe they got rid of talking Mickey, dude.
Magician Mickey is still there. Mickey meet-and-greets in Disneyland are still there, but now the costumes are just static. They don't move. And I think that's really a bummer, guys. Come on, Disney, bring back talking Mickey. Now, listen, there may be a chance they got rid of talking Mickey because they were building all new, better talking Mickeys. But it's been years, folks. Where are the talking Mickeys? Uh, stop giving them to me for Christmas shows. I want to meet them. I want to meet them and shake their hands and have them do a silly magic trick with me, man. Talking Mickey was magical, and I'm so mad it's gone.
Mickey Mouse has had other animatronics, right? You know, 1971 Mickey Mouse review. There's a thing. It came up. It was like, "Duh." You know, it wasn't really as nearly cool as the animatronics we're seeing in Runaway Railway, that's for sure. What's really cool about this 2020 Mickey is that it has reinvented the look of Mickey Mouse based off of the new shorts that they've been putting. This is a new Mickey Mouse look. What we're really seeing is a habit of the Disney parks kind of following through with the new Mickey that they design. If Mickey's going to be brighter and bolder and more colorful, well, the costumes are going to reflect that. It's really great to see it represented in this ride.
Listen, I just went through the broad strokes of the core changes to the Mickey Mouse costume. The mouse himself has appeared in many, many events, many celebrations, parades, stage shows, live events. Mickey has seen many costumes. So here's what I want you guys to do. I'm going to make a video about all these costumes, but in the comments below, I need you guys to start telling me what some of your favorite Mickey Mouse outfits have been out there. I want to know what you love seeing them in. Uh, "Dream Along with Mickey," "Fantasmic!" Ooh, that black and white, uh, "Steamboat Willie" Mickey at the end, or the Sorcerer Mickey that pops up. Man, Mickey has had so many really cool outfits. I really want to know what have been some of your favorites. So let me [Music] know.
So there is the long and iconic history of the 90-year-old mouse named Mickey. I have been in love with this character for pretty much as long as I've been me, and it's helped create this channel. I know you guys love him. It's really, really an important part of the whole Disney. I mean, it all started with the mouse, right? Both for me and that big corporation. M.I.C. see all these evolutions? K.Y.? Why am I asking? Because I hope you were paying attention. M.O. rock s. Thanks for watching, guys. You guys are all amazing. Find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, P. Pon. You rock. Ha!
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