Giant Rubber Critters
When Disneyland first opened, there were no costumed characters wandering the park for photo ops and autographs (I still think that the idea of getting an autograph from one of them is weird). But today it is just one of those things that the public expects when they go to a Disney park! As a kid, those giant heads freaked me out.
But they don't worry this little girl, she was much braver than me! She's standing (somewhere in Tomorrowland) with the Practical Pig and the Piper Pig (and wearing her mouse ears). The Practical Pig is scary, come on! He looks like he's going to hurt someone. Eat them, maybe.
Here's all three oinkers, they've just robbed the Bank of America and are making a getaway!
The whole family had to get in on this one... Mickey Mouse himself (wow, he really is short) poses with a happy bunch. Cat's eye glasses were the order of the day for the ladies. Everyone looks pretty fresh, they must be arriving rather than leaving!
9 comments:
Creeeeeeeepy! I remember these pig costumes as well as the freakishly large Seven Dwarfs, Mad Hatter and Winnie the Pooh costumes. They redesigned all of these and made them more proportionate in the early eighties. I wish the Mad Hatter was still a "rubber head" instead of a man running around dressed as the Mad Hatter. Now THAT'S a scary character!
What a handsome group in that last shot with Mickey. They're all in pretty good shape too, not like the horribly inflated folks you see in the park these days.
I can trace my fear and lifelong avoidance of all of the characters to a memory from my first Disneyland trip in about 1962. Snow White and all her seven giant headed henchmen were all lined up along a fence line. One dwarf had a squirt gun inside and was blasting unsuspecting guests through the costume view port. That freaked out this 5 year old. I am almost over it now.
Wow, it's hard to believe that squirting guests was approved by the powers that be! As a kid (like you) it would have been distressing. As an adult, I would have been tempted to take a chair and apply it to the head of the offending dwarf!
yikes!! scary stuff today....its hard to imagine that the little girl isnt running for her life from those "characters"
thanks goodness they have the new and improved versions nowadays...
gotta love those cat-eye glasses; a special thanks for that one!! : )
hehe Practical Pig is ticked that the little girl looks like she's more than able to handle him by attitude alone!
wouldn't say folks are "horribly inflated" there now, that's the prices. ;) Folk came in all shapes then and they come in all shapes now.
hehe Practical Pig is ticked that the little girl looks like she's more than able to handle him by attitude alone!
wouldn't say folks are "horribly inflated" there now, that's the prices. ;) Folk came in all shapes then and they come in all shapes now.
The double wide and triple wide people are everywhere you look in the parks, it's just shocking, especially compared with the normal sized guests you see in these photos from 40 years ago.
Right after it got in the news about Disnyeland needing to deepen the channel in It's A Small World because the boats were bottoming out due to America's increasing obesity, I watched the 1955 broadcast of opening day. MILLIONS of people were in the Park that day... and about an hour into the show, it dawned on me that not one of them was fat.
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