Fun Photo Gallery Souvenirs

It's GDB pal KS's birthday! And you already know that Sue B. provided a fun vintage photo to help celebrate. It's four boys versus one girl at this party! Big sis is cute. I love the paper-and-crayon artwork that adorns the window shutters behind them. Christmas bells on the chandelier tell us that this was around the holidays. Check out those classic 50s anodized cups! I used to have a bunch in every color, but finally sold them off. I hope KS has a party as swell as the one in this picture.

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I recently rummaged through a box with assorted Disneyland artifacts; some have already appeared on GDB, others have not. I decided it was high time that I scanned some souvenir Fun Photos that were produced at (I believe) several places throughout the park in the 50s and into the mid-1960s. There are quite a few different scenes, some that are very rare that I don't have. But I do have a little stack of them!

The Fun Photos were put inside a mailable paper envelope that doubled as an inexpensive frame (stay tuned), there were several different variations of the envelopes.  

As you can see on this 1964 souvenir "fun map", one of the locations for Fun Photos was in Tomorrowland, right next to the "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" walk-thru. I am pretty sure that the Opera House (pre-Mr. Lincoln) was also used on occasion, though this is not indicated on any old maps that I am aware of.

You'll see these souvenirs fetch occasional high prices, and I was always too cheap to pay very much. BUT I also found it hard to resist buying an example that I already had, if the price was low enough. So today I am sharing multiples of the same scene - an old-fashioned flivver, careening out of control. Just like the Mr. Toad ride! This one was perfect for couples (other scenes lent themselves to groups of three to five people).

Here's another one; this boy was solo, and it's interesting to see examples like this... painted faces fit into the open holes for just such an occurence. 

When removed from the envelope, you can see that the photo was a Polaroid, stapled to a piece of cardboard. Sometimes these old black and white Polaroids show weird streaks and blotches, I don't know if they always looked like that, or if the passage of 60 years did the trick.

I remember buying this one on eBay, with a young fellow and his sweetheart...

But when I took it out of the envelope, there was another different photo stapled inside! I have no idea how this happened, and speculate that some other collector put them together and eventually forgot that there were two.

Here's this one, presumably it was removed from its original envelope long ago.

OK! That does it for this first batch of Fun Photos. I hope you found it somewhat interesting! I have 15 more (with a few duplicates), so stay tuned!