A Disney Collector's Lament

Still life with Disney books, Orange Birds,
Mary Blair, Oswald, Big Al, singamajigs,
headscratcher and Whatnot Muppets.

Tom and I have been watching a lot of Hoarders lately. We can’t help it. A marathon aired before the new season got started and we spent one of our precious days off together on the couch, consuming episode after episode ravenously. I think there is a unique combination of factors that has lead to our (and America’s) love of this show. We feel grateful that we are not like the people being documented, and yet we see tiny bits of ourselves reflected in them. We feel a sense of schadenfreude and at the same time are uplifted when progress is made. We cheer them on and judge them simultaneously. This show and others like it (Intervention, Heavy) fascinate me to absolutely no end.

This last marathon, however, has mostly served as a motivator to get me to take a look at my own clutter.  As Tom and I are preparing for our big move out of the NYC, I am taking a more critical look at my own (in)famous hoarding tendencies and trying to purge our apartment of detritus here and there so that we aren’t overwhelmed in a few months. The last thing we need is to be forced to move a pile of unnecessary junk across the country.

Duane Reade shopping bags have been filled with books that I am slowly admitting to myself that I will never get around to reading and so will soon stick the shelves of the Strand. (So long, Anna Karenina.) Trash bags full of clothes have been lugged to the local charity store. (Bye-bye vintage shirts from my high school Goodwill scavenging days.) Progress is being made, slowly but surely. It has been surprisingly easy to let go of stuff, which is nothing short of a miracle and a testament to my excitement surrounding the imminent move.

I have a predilection for park vinyl.

I see a lot of negotiation in the next couple of months as I try to whittle almost ten years of acquirements down to a manageable haul. Mostly, it will be the media that will be a bit of a challenge. I have hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books that I need to devise a plan for. In this digital age, the CDs should be a snap, right? Just rip them onto my computer, store them in the cloud and rid myself of the bulky discs. Unfortunately, I am an old fogey who, after losing my hard drive many times over the years, is leery of abandoning the piece of plastic where the information is tangibly stored. I am also a dork who enjoys having such things as artwork and liner notes.

The DVDs and books, however, can’t all be stored on a machine. I am a bit crushed under the weight of the fact that I will quite possibly not get around to reading every word and watching every frame, but I am a man who needs options. One day I might turn around and realize that I want nothing more than to watch that American Gladiators DVD or read that important gay novel from the seventies. I don’t know if I can deal with the regret knowing that I had them and got rid of them, especially when I got most of them used and dirt cheap while braving the labyrinthine jungles of used book and/or DVD and/or CD stores. Bargain shopping for this stuff is the closest I’ll ever get to participation in a sport and I could be a major league player.

Florence and Adele watch over
my Disney CDs.

Possibly above all else, I like the aesthetic value of spines lined up on a shelf. When you are invited to someone’s place for the first time, what is one of the first things you inevitably do? You take a glance at someone’s collections to glean information. It allows you to bond over your shared love of obscure cast albums, connect over your hilariously curated coffee table books, and strike up a conversation about your extensive selection of amazing TV shows on disc. And it gives me great joy to be able to say, “Yes! Of course you can borrow my copy of Hey Dude! I’m so glad that you love it too! Did you know season two is finally coming out soon?” It’s a way to instantly suss out what you have in common with someone else.

The problem in New York City has, of course, become a matter of space. I don’t have space for enough shelves to make everything I have easily accessible. My CDs used to have some semblance of alphabetization going on, but once their dedicated spaced was filled, they started to stack on the floor in an out-of-the-way corner. DVD genres are somewhat separated, with children’s movies and anything made before 1980 in an Ikea cabinet near the bathroom door and Christmas movies and music in the couch (which has storage space under the seats). The catch 22 is that though we will have more space wherever we move, getting all of this stuff there will be a trial. So downsizing is inevitable, with one very notable exception. Can you guess what is non-negotiable? That’s right. My Disney stuff.

Top two shelves are Disney.
Yeah. They're three deep.

As I have mentioned before, I am a little bit late to the Disney enthusiast game. Most of my accumulated Disneyana has been hunted and gathered over the course of the last two to three years. I have shelves dedicated to my Disney books, a few to my Disney DVDs and Blu-rays (with the fifty animated classics separated and in chronological order waiting patiently for my DATE Nights with them), and a space reserved for my Disney CDs. My small collection of Disney vinyl decorates a wall while other souvenirs, such as lanyards stocked with pins, selected plush and very, very selected Vinylmation dot the apartment here and there. I have been a very busy beaver.

It’s been both an exercise in frustration and exhilarating beyond belief to build my Disney collection. There are elusive items that have become hard to find at anywhere near a reasonable price, like the Dr. Syn Walt Disney Treasures DVD or Disneyland: The Nickel Tour. As much as I want to get my mitts on them, I cannot justify plunking down hundreds of dollars for the bragging rights of calling them mine. It’s all balanced, however, by the amazing feeling I get when I finally find a coveted piece, make that winning bid or click buy, see it beckoning to me from my doorstep after delivery. It’s an undeniable high when I rip through the packaging, revealing the Polly soundtrack or The Colors of Mary Blair Japanese exhibition book.

Animated classics on top, Walt Disney Treasures on
the bottom, Bullwhip Griffin on the telly.
Blu-rays out of frame.

Even the less momentous buys are always fun. Few things give me as much pleasure as flipping through a Disney Park souvenir book that I found for a dollar plus shipping on Amazon, laughing at the out-of-date clothing on display, dreaming about my next trip, and discovering the changes, both subtle and substantial, that are a part of the DNA of the ever-changing parks. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I won it for a buck on eBay, I would have never been privy to the soothing twang of Rex Allen’s Yellowstone Cubs narration. And I certainly would have never invested in music from Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus has it not been relegated to dollar bin at my favorite NYC used media joint (Book Off in midtown).

Our lanyards and pins.

As we take stock of what is making the journey from the Northeast with us, it is not even up for discussion whether my Disney stuff is coming along. Tom has contributed a few items to it himself, like our Art of Mulan book and what may be my favorite piece- a stretching portrait from the Haunted Mansion, an attraction that holds a very special place in our hearts. When he moved east from California, he left everything he couldn’t fit into a couple of suitcases behind. After giving away the majority of his possessions, I think he’s kind of excited to get some of them back through me. Not only does he know it wouldn’t be wise to try to get me to let go of the Disney, he wants to keep it within his own reach as well.

So why, you ask, will we be taking our own personal Disney mountain along with us? First and foremost, Disney makes us both blissfully happy. I found Tom soon after my interest in Disney took off. From our first date, one of the things we most connected over was our mutual love of all things created in the House of Mouse. He has seen me through the creation of this blog, which has become an important outlet for me. From our trips to the parks, to watching the films, to our times bantering in Kathryn Beaumont or Hayley Mills voices, Disney has been one of the constant threads in the tapestry of our shared life. It doesn’t define us, to be sure, but it’s a slice of our experience together that is precious to us.

The stretching room portrait
above Tom's keyboard.

This move is going to be huge for me. It will be the first time I have moved in almost nine years, when I moved to New York City from Tallahassee. Over that near decade I have (arguably) grown into an adult. Along with adulthood has come a bevy of things that have been heaped onto the two suitcases I arrived here with. For a long time these objects gave me a sense of consistency. They made me feel like I had laid claim to a space of my own where I belonged. Now that I’m married to the most amazing man in the world, anywhere that I go I know that I will feel loved unconditionally. As Barbra might say, “Any place I hang my hat is home.” As long as Tom is there, that is. I don’t need a plethora of possessions when what is essential will always be by my side. So as we look forward to a new beginning, we shed what weighs us down, keep close the things that bring us joy, and start our own mutual collection- of memories, experiences and things alike. No doubt, more than a few will involve Disney in some way or other. Let the memories begin.

All Hayley the Queen

Oh, rehlly. Do buy my album.
You'll lahve it!

My post last week, in which I contemplate my newfound interest in the new crop of Disney Channel stars and compare them to some of the Disney personalities from yesteryear, got me really thinking about my unabashed adoration of Ms. Hayley Mills. Of all of the old school Disney stars, she is without an ounce of hesitation my favorite. Just the sound of her voice makes my soul giggle.

Since I already discussed the reissue of her Let's Get Together album in that other blog post (Bottom Line: Get it if you ever find it. It's completely adorable and worth it to hear her sing "Jeepers Creepers" and a swingin' 60's version of "A Tisket, A Tasket" alone. The fact that you get to hear the verb-tense-twisting lyrics to the Pollyanna theme is just a bonus. "I'm as happy as a little clam. I am. I am. I am in love. Just with nothing in particular. I are. I are. I are in love." Charm bonanza!), I decided that I would gush over her a bit more this week and share some amazeballs videos that I have culled from the interwebs for all of you to enjoy.

Still don't have The Three Lives of Thomasina
or The Sword and the Rose on DVD, dangit.

I would be hard pressed to pinpoint when my love affair with Hayley began. I remember back in the day when we started building a collection of Disney live action films on VHS. Yes, kiddies. Before DVDs and streams and Hulus and Netflixes we had these bulky plastic contraptions that allowed you to play movies off of magnetic tape housed in cardboard slip covers! Strange, but true. Every weekend when we would go to Sam's Club to stock up on necessaries in bulk, I would beg and plead for Mama to buy one of the tapes that I didn't already have. From these trips my love of Disney beyond animation was born. Even as a child, my collecting/hoarding nature reared its ugly head, resulting in a pretty sizable collection. I remember the bright-colored cover designs and especially the trailer that played in front of the film which showed the other available titles while a synthesized jam blared raucously in the background. I. Wanted. Them. ALL!

Just recently, while I was home in Tallahassee, Mama and I gathered a bunch of the VHS tapes that have been taking up space since we don't even have a VCR anymore and donated them to a local school. I'm not gonna lie. It was sad to see them go. Hopefully there are a bunch of kids out there who are now rooting for Herbie to win the race, puzzling over where the treasure is hidden at Candleshoe, and wondering how Mrs. Andrews will survive the Aquacade.

My fave was without a doubt The Parent Trap (followed very closely by Freaky Friday, but that's another blog). I wore that tape out. The story is funny, the cast is fantastic, there's a little bit of rad music, plenty of hijinks ensue, and it's empowering to kids. Now, I question what the fact that the twins' shenanigans actually bring the parents back together does for false hopes in broken families, but I was, and am, too busy loving every second of the movie to quibble. My parents have been together for decades, so in my case it reminded me that just because I was a kid it did not mean that I powerless in situations. But yeah, mostly it was just a heckuva good time.

I actually think I picked this mannerism
up from Hayley. No lie.

When you're a kid, you don't much analyze why you are drawn to a character or actor, but looking at Hayley now, I am still rather bowled over by how fantastic she really is in those early movies. Tom and I have watched both The Parent Trap and Pollyanna recently and not only do they hold up as great films, but her performances are just as fantastic now as they ever were. Her accent may be sketchy, but her instincts as an actor were there from go. She was also able to take her Hayleyisms and incorporate them seamlessly into her performance. She was always essentially Hayley Mills, but she brought out the aspects of her self that fit the character she was playing. And that, my friends, is just as impressive when you do it well as actors who completely disappear into a role. The light that she brings to the screen in her early Disney roles is unmatchable. Those big blue eyes. That adorably impish voice. She felt like a real, flawed, interesting girl on film rather than a pre-packaged, cutesy, creepily precocious child star.

Trendy hat, Hayley. Who's that creepy old
dude smelling your hair?

Watching her later Disney output, it was interesting to watch how she blossomed as a performer. She herself talked about how her childhood was prolonged uncomfortably by her stardom. As she grew into a woman, she did some of her most interesting work. The Moonspinners is centered around that time in a girls' life when she (sing it Brit Brit) is not a girl and not yet a woman. It's notable for the adventure, Grecian locale and its depiction of burgeoning (PG-rated) sexuality. It's a fascinating and unexpected performance from Hayley. You can tell that, just like her character, she is struggling to grow up.

The third Hayley head from the bottom has hardcore crazy eyes,
bless her. And there's that tongue again on the top Hayley head! 

In That Darn Cat, you see a more maturely formed sense of humor in Hayley's acting. She was always funny and had impeccable timing, but as she grew, she was learning how to harness it. The whole movie is an amusing lark, but her performance is especially impressive. (Please avoid the remake at all costs. It hurt our eyes and ears so much that we turned it off after about ten minutes and haven't ventured back since. It co-stars someone named Doug E. Doug. 'Nuff said.)

Of course, over the years I drifted away from most things Disney, including my beloved Hayley. But over the last years she has come back into my life full-force. I can't get enough. I have The Trouble With Angels and The Flame Trees of Thika on my shelf just waiting for me to give them some attention. Though I still haven't watched the whole thing through, I often put Summer Magic on while I sleep because hearing Hayley and Burl Ives as I go to sleep is like being swaddled in a blanket of vocal happiness. Tom is a fan of that movie, too. He was just saying today that practically all of the music you hear on Main Street comes from that movie. And Hello Dolly. And then he mocked me because I kept on singing "Femininity" even though I don't really know any of the lyrics and I'm pretty unclear on the melody as well. It's the enthusiasm that counts, right? I'll learn it one of these days when I'm not listening through a pre-REM haze.

There's no way that canoe has room
enough for 5 butts and 10 legs.

So here are some clips that I've found during my hours of Youtube video hopping. I think you'll get a kick out of them. The first is one of my favorite Hayley Mills movies. Parent Trap Hawaiian Honeymoon! It's the fourth film in the series. I missed number three, but this one is classic. Susan has married a man with triplets. Somehow Sharon and the girls end up coming along on their honeymoon to Hawaii. Hijinks! So many confused identities! Otho from Beetlejuice! Jayne Meadows! One of the triplets was on the fifth season of Saved by the Bell! Barry Bostwick! All that late eighties clothing! They need to release it on DVD soon (you hear that, Generations Collection?!?!) because my VHS tape is MIA and it gets really annoying watching it all pixelated in ten minute increments on Youtube, which is the only way that you can currently watch it. It's one of my most treasured guilty pleasures and is actually genuinely entertaining.

By the way, I need to go on a short tangent. I get to do that since it's my blog, right? Did you know that in the early fifties, ten years before Disney's interpretation, there was an earlier version of The Parent Trap that was made in Japan?  Well, there was and it's fascinating to watch! (This is mostly for Tom, who loves all things Japanese.)

The next is a Disney Channel movie called Back Home. It is another one of my favorite movies from childhood and another lost VHS tape. Haley Mills plays a woman who has sent her daughter to the US to keep her safe while World War Two ravaged England. But, after five years across the pond, the culture shock when she returns is intense. It's a great story and I remember the performances being really solid from Hayley and the girl who played her daughter. I make another plea to the Generations Collection to release this on DVD as well. I haven't actually sat down to watch it bit by bit on Youtube. I have too many awesome memories of this movie to do that. I want to wait until I can watch it all continuously in one sitting and in decent quality.

Did you know that before Saved by the Bell was Saved by the Bell it was a Disney Channel show called Good Morning, Miss Bliss? Zack, Lisa, Screech and Belding were there. It took place at a school. But everything else was different. It lasted for one season before it was retooled into the Saved by the Bell that we all know and love. Minus Hayley Mills as the titular Miss Bliss. Boo hiss. This is the opening credit sequence as it was originally and after it was redone in syndication to match the rest of the Saved by the Bell episodes, which is how I remember seeing it back in the dizay. You can also track down a few episodes of the show. It's fun, though I must say that the changes they made improved the show. As much as I love Hayley, it worked much better when the kids were the true focus of the story.

This is Hayley being supremely cute-tastic on the game show What's My Line? when she was promoting That Darn Cat. I love that Hayley Mills can't do a Southern accent at all without sounding like Hayley Mills doing a Southern accent, but her save sounded pretty good to me. I will say, however, that I would recognize that voice right away no matter what "accent" she was "doing". For you theatre geeks out there, this was back in the era when even huge Broadway flops like Drat! the Cat! were major enough cultural draws to warrant mention on major television shows.

And last, but sure as heck not least is a video from the phenomenal Punchy Players. A couple produces these videos. One guy does almost all of the voices and his partner does the visuals. And they are pretty uniformly hilarious. They focus mostly on classic gay icons and are spot on. This video poses the question, "If ______ auditioned for the role of Mary Poppins, what would the audition reel be like?" Fill in the blank with Sally Field, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, Lady Elaine Fairchild, and of course, Hayley Mills. Please to enjoy.

I never really thought of Hayley as a gay icon, but really she is. She's the odd duck who turns into a swan. In the end, I think I loved Hayley Mills so much as a child because I related to her. She seemed smart, awkward, goofy, curious, hammy, sometimes overzealous, a little bit weird, and a completely singular individual. She was someone who was in process as opposed to someone who was a product. She made it OK for me to feel outside of the norm. And as a young soon-to-be gay, I needed someone to help me feel that way.

I love her now because she is a woman who seems to have had exactly the career that she wanted to have despite starting out and finding such intense stardom at such a young age and has come out relatively unscathed. She is iconic of a certain era in Disney's history. When you watch one of those movies, you can't help but feel all warm and gooey inside. They are comfort food. And I, my friends, am an overeater.

So, are you as much of a Hayley Mills-aholic as I am? If not, Have I convinced you of how she is brilliant beyond compare? If not, why are we still friends?

Remember that next Tuesday we have a DATE Night planned. We're going to take a stroll through the woods with Bambi. I know, I know. I'm not much of a nature boy either, but this will be worth it, I promise. The forest is all watercolored and lovely and the critters who live there are totes adorable. Just put on some hiking boots and a plaid shirt and stop moaning about it, OK?

Who Wants to Have a DATE Night With Me?

Yup. That's my living room.
Need a DVD? Cuz I probably have it.

So this is how it all began. In preparation for a trip to Walt Disney World with my family in March of 2010, I decided that it would be fun to watch all of the Disney animated classics in chronological order. I realized that I had been collecting most of them piece by piece over the years because I knew that I loved them, but I hadn't actually sat down and watched the films themselves- most of which I hadn't seen since childhood. I would watch the making of documentaries and other special features but not the actual movies. Don't even get me started on the fact that I am something of a hoarder when it comes to media, be it movies, music or books. Suffice it to say that I am just grateful that it's not trash or cats or I would have my own episode of a reality show.

I had to skip a few that I didn't have in my collection/couldn't get from the library and the process wasn't terribly well-structured. I would watch one here and there whenever I could, sometimes with months in between them. Sometimes I watched them alone and sometimes with friends. There are some that I loved and some not so much. I felt like some were overrated and some vastly underrated.

Pascal keeping watch over the 50 classics. Tom was trying
to watch A Single Man while I took this.
I dunno why he puts up with me, poor thing.

I noticed things I never would have as a kid since I was now watching with three decades old eyes. I was experiencing some of these films for the very first time and there were a few I wasn't able to get my hands on, so they still remain on my list of unseen Disney. Spending this time really digging into the canon was when I really turned the corner from Disney Fan Street onto Disney Freak Lane. I watched nearly all of them over the course of the last year and a half and then moved on to the Pixar films, finishing up with Toy Story 3 just this past week.

The experience was phenomenal. Seeing the progression gave me a real respect for the artists and creators who crafted these films. My mind was exploding like nighttime fireworks over Cinderella's castle and I felt compelled to share what I was discovering. I started status updating after every film that I watched and dubbed it "The Disney Project". People started really enjoying and looking forward to these updates. They would comment on the posts, relaying memories of the films and really getting involved in a discussion of them.  Some of them suggested that I put these reviews into blog form somehow.

Maybe I should have called my blog
"A Gay Whirl at Disneyland"!

When I was starting the blog, the first thing that I did was google "The Disney Project" to see if anybody had taken the name and, of course, somebody had. Then I googled "The Disney Film Project" and someone else had taken that one as well and had started a pretty fascinating blog where they are trying to watch every film, animated and live-action, short and full-length, that Disney has made. God speed, my good folks. I knew that I wasn't quite ready to compete with that. You should check them out, by the way. It's really good stuff.

Ultimately, I'm grateful that both of these were already taken because it encouraged me to broaden the scope of what I was going to do with my blog a bit. It spurred me on to come up with the name "Moved by the Mouse" (long live alliteration, lads and lasses), and start something that was more personal, exploring my emotional experiences and opinions about all things Disney. It allowed me to inject more of my personality into the writing and cover things such as news that tickled my fancy, the parks, which I would live in if I could, and music, along with whatever else flitted across the folds of my scattered brain. I was no longer locked into just reviewing the animated classics. It was a blessing in disguise, really.

Just the other day, I finally got my copy of The Rescuers Down Under in the mail. It was the last of the fifty animated classic available on DVD or Blu-ray that I didn't have. My collector's heart did a happy dance and it got me thinking that now would be a great time to relaunch the Disney Project that I had done informally on Facebook. I would be able to watch each film sequentially without missing one or having shift the order to accommodate for something not being available. It would be an opportunity to expand on my original thoughts and have some fun revisiting the classics again after I've had some time to let them marinate. Maybe those original reactions to them will have even changed. It could be a big ole stew of review, history, facts, videos, pictures, and whatever else really melted my butter. Now that I had wrapped up "The Pixar Project", it would be a perfect time to start at the top and do it all over again.

If you know the "Date Nite at Disneyland" song, it
is will now be stuck in your head all day.
You're welcome.

But I knew that I would have to change the name. Come up with something a little snappier. So, drumroll please! Ladies and gentlemen, I am extremely excited to announce DATE Nights with Moved by the Mouse! What does DATE stand for, you ask? Disney Animated classic Time-ordered Examination, of course! I know, I know. It's a bit of a stretch, but I think it's charming. Plus it's a throwback to Date Nite at Disneyland back in the day, which makes me want to slick what hair I still have left back and dance to Annette Funicello singing "Tall Paul," and that's always a good thing. It's also less clinical than referring to this whole endeavor as a project. It feels more relaxed and fun.

So here's how this is going to work for now. I have been updating the blog twice weekly on Mondays and Thursdays. I will be shifting it to Tuesdays and Fridays. (That is the goal at least. I am human after all and there will be days once in a blue corn moon without entries. I know it will be hard for you to cope, but you will have to find some way to keep on living.) The Friday entry will continue on the same path as the rest have been on- Alt-Disney World, Disney Dreamboat, Odd Disney World or more personal stories, reviews and thoughts. Every weekend I will be watching one of the Disney animated classics in the order in which they were made and Tuesdays will be the DATE Night entry, starting this upcoming Tuesday with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

How much do you wanna bet that one of those adventures
was probably getting nookie on Adventure Thru Inner Space?

Part of my hope in starting this blog was to start to build a bit of a community of Disney fiends and encourage interactivity. I would love it if you would watch the films along with me and comment on the entry to let us know what your thoughts on the films are. (There is a great complete list of the fifty animated classics in order here at UltimateDisney.com. They even have a super convenient printable version here.) Was it the same as you remembered? Better or worse than expectations? Do you have any funny stories about your experience of the movie or awesome tales of how they affected your life? Let us know! As this grows, hopeful we can find more exciting ways of communication, but this will be a start.

Also, if you are in New York City and would like to join me in person for a particular film or two, just give me a shout on twitter @movedbythemouse, I would love to engage in witty banter about the film in real time and be social. You really should be following the blog's twats, anyhoo. Otherwise how would you have found out about the new Bjork video in which she is full on Madame Leota's disco dancing younger sister? It's an amazewich! Aw, heck. In case you missed it, here you go:

Uncanny, innit? I am very excited about where the blog is going and want to take a moment to thank everybody who's been reading along and sharing this journey with me. It sincerely does mean the world to me. If you have been enjoying what you've seen here, I would love it if you would help me spread the word. Tell people to visit! Link me up on your what-have-yous! Comment on the entries! I am still a novice in the blogosphere and any help I can get on directing people to Moved by the Mouse's direction is greatly appreciated. You guys are all fantastic and I look forward to whatever's just around the riverbend!

The Lost Treasure

As I think I have mentioned before, I am a bit of a media hoarder. I would post a picture of the myriad of books and DVDs in my apartment if I had no shame, but any of my friends and family can attest to the full shelves. That overflow onto the floor. In stacks. I actually can't watch Hoarders on A&E because I get scared that I'm watching myself in twenty years. I shudder.

This does mean, however, that I have amassed an impressive collection of Disney stuff. I have a booty load of Art of... books (both Disney and Pixar), books about Disney parks, films, and animators, Disney DVDs and Blu-rays (just getting started there after getting a Blu-ray player for Christmas- thanks Mama!), and Disney CDs. I'm sure that I'll get around to writing about a lot of these, but today I want to talk about the one that got away.

Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. It's described on Amazon thusly: "Originally airing in three parts on "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color," this thrilling adventure stars Patrick McGoohan as Dr. Syn, a kindly country vicar in 18th-century England. Only a few know that Syn is also the masked Scarecrow, notorious leader of a band of smugglers, who defends the villagers from unjust taxes and oppression by King George III's men." Sounds pretty cool, huh? Apparently it had a huge following, but they released a pretty small number of them. I think it's safe to assume that a good chunk of those were bought by resellers currently asking for a kidney or my firstborn in exchange for the much sought-after discs.

It is part of the Walt Disney Treasures Series that was put out by Disney from 2001-2009 before being put on indefinite hiatus. Most likely the series is now dead. And it breaks my heart. The main goal of this series of limited edition DVDs was to release early output from Disney. Mostly stuff from Walt's days. Each set was created with care. They were remastered and usually stuffed with fantastic special features to make collectors like me drool. They made and released a certain number of each title and then they quickly went out of print, making some of them highly collectible. The early ones in the series and some of the later ones, which had relatively tiny pressings, are pretty hard to get a hold of at a price that isn't exorbitant. My friend Dr. Syn over there? He goes for upwards of $150 dollars on a good day. A cheap date he ain't.

I started collecting the Walt Disney Treasures sets rather late in the game, getting my first one the same year they stopped production on the line. That left me with a lot of catching up to do. It started innocently enough. I was just starting to dip my toe into the pool of Disney geekdom. Buying things here and there that struck my fancy. I bought the "More Silly Symphonies" set because I wanted to own "Ferdinand the Bull" on DVD so I didn't have to watch it on a YouTube video like this:

At the time, I was working at a bookstore and running the children's programming. I had read the book, which has always been one of my favorites, to the kids and they loved it. I was impressed that that book, which had been around for over 70 years, not only had such a progressive message (he was born this way long before Gaga was born, period), but was so entertaining to the kids. Though I'm sure that my interpretive skills didn't hurt. I'm a pretty awesome storybook reader, if I do say so myself.

This is when I realized that the book had been made into a cartoon by Disney back in the day. I don't remember the cartoon from my childhood. Even though my Nana had the Disney channel, which used to play a good number of classic shorts back in the day, and I distinctly remember checking out the Silly Symphonies VHS (remember those, kids?) from the video store, Ferdinand was not among those I remember seeing. Watching it with relatively fresh eyes, I was impressed with how much justice they did to the story. They didn't veer to far from Munro Leaf's original book and took obvious inspiration from Robert Lawson's fantastic illustrations.

But they added that intangible Disney spark. One of my favorite moments is the mother cow's reaction when the narrator says "Even though she was a cow". Brilliant.

I went onto eBay and bought a copy of the set for a reasonable price. And I got hooked. Both on eBay, which should have its own twelve step program, and the series. I grew up during the Disney renaissance of the late eighties and early nineties, but even when I was younger I was more aware than most kids of the older output. When they started releasing the live action movies on VHS (remember the days when you had to stop, rewind, stop, press play and hope you were kind of at the place in the movie you wanted- and how much that sucked?), I would beg my parents to buy me one every time we went to Sam's Club on the weekends to stock up on essentials. We'd walk out with an oversized bottle of ketchup, a pack of twenty paper towel rolls and Candleshoe.

When I started collecting the Treasures, a whole new world of Disney opened up to me, with new horizons to pursue. I now have on my shelf every set except for the good Doctor. Mickey Mouse Club serials and episodes, almost all of the classic shorts, classic films about Disneyland, and other fascinating miscellania from the era before Walt's death. It is odd to feel a sense of nostalgia about a time I didn't live through, but that's what these DVDs made me feel. It is a record of a certain time in the history of both Disney and of America. These have become comfort food to me. I oftentimes put on a Goofy short (I love the "Art of..." ones especially) or "Disneyland 10th Anniversary", where Miss Disneyland Tencennial Julie Reihm and Walt show us The Haunted Mansion and The Pirates of the Caribbean in progress ("By going up the waterfall...?"). I'm kind of obsessed with her. She's so cute I could just eat her up.

In a lot of ways I feel that Disney has turned its back on the past since the death of Roy E. Disney in 2009. He was the last person at the top who had a true connection to what the company used to be. I wish that they could find a way to embrace those of us who love classic Disney content, but with the potential layoff of hundreds in the Home Entertainment division, I doubt that formal releases of more obscure material are on the horizon. However, with the way we consume media changing so quickly, it seems that there are possible solutions.

My vote? I would love to see a Classic Disney iPad app, like HBOGo or Hulu where you could stream classic Disney I know that I, for one, would shell out for that app. Maybe they could even pull some newer items out of the vault. I would give my eyeteeth to be able to watch "Disney's Halloween Treat" in decent quality. Remember that gem of a compilation from the eighties and nineties?

The problem is that they assume that most of the people who would want content like this are older, preferring DVD releases and terrified of embracing new technology. I myself am an old man about that stuff. I would much rather have something tangible I can put on my shelf, but I understand how impractical that can be for the company when DVD sales on the whole are down. It would be great if they could find a way to release print-on-demand bare bones versions of hard-to-find material, like the Warner Archive Collection. The Disney Movie Club exclusives are a step in the right direction. They're a step in the right direction after all. That's how I finally got my hot little hands on Polly, hallelujah and amen. Personally I would love to see radtastic Blu-ray releases with amazeballs special features, but I doubt that will ever come to pass. Some kind of streaming of this kind of stuff is much better than having no access to it at all.

So for now, I will be content with lusting after Dr. Syn until he is mine, finally completing my set. Hopefully the higher ups at Disney will come around and realize that without finding ways to expose new generations to classic material, they are missing out on an opportunity to further the Disney legacy, which is part of what makes them special. Pirates of the Caribbean 16: The Voodoo Spell of the Pearl Necklace sure won't. 

Just as any of the lands in the Magic Kingdom links us to another time and place, to what's come before us and what we believed was on its way, so do these films, songs and pieces of art. They deserve to be both preserved and made available for those kids that are out there, like I was, who would rather sit in awe of "The Cookie Carnival" than see Transformers destroy the universe, and for people like me, who want to both remember the wonder I felt as a child and discover the wonder experienced by generations of children before me.