Disney Book-on-Tape Question

[SpringHeelJack]

Hey, gang.

So, as a college student, one of the greatest joys in my life is nostalgia. It's why I buy "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street" on DVD off amazon. Anyhow, I remember as a young lad I used to have a pretty large collection of Disney book-on-tapes. You might remember them, they had like the animated movies (I remember "Sleeping Beauty", "The Jungle Book", and "The Black Cauldron" pretty vividly_, and some others, like "The Black Hole" and "The Hobbit" and "Return to Oz" (I think).

Anyhow, the ones in particular I remember are one with nursery rhymes and one just called something like "Children's Favorites". I'm not sure if these were in the same line as the above-mentioned book-on-tapes, but they looked similar. Anyhow, the nursery rhymes one had Goofy performing "Simple Simon" and Donald Duck performing "A Dillar, A Dollar". I can't remember any other tracks. The Children's Favorite one had "Oh, Susanna", "Daisy, Daisy", "Three Blind Mice" and some other songs. None of them were sung by Disney characters, they were all sung by the same guy, but Disney's name was still on it.

Like I said, I used to have these, but at some point during my childhood, as parents are apt to do, my mom gave them away. As such, I have no idea who has my copies or what they were even called. Now, several years later, I'm looking for them on CD. Basically what I'm asking is, does anyone remember these two tapes in question? Does anyone have them? Does anyone know where I can get them? I see amazon has a CD called "Children's Favorites" that seems to check out, but ideally I'd like to know if anyone here has it so I can confirm it's indeed what I want. No idea about the nursery rhymes one, though. I've tried googling all over, and so I finally decided to ask you guys. Who better?

So, please, help a nostalgic college student out.

[shr_fan]

Well, I can't help you with finding them, but I can say that I had the Children's Favorites records. I didn't have tapes of them so I don't know if it's the same thing, but it sounds a lot like what you are describing. I listened to those things everyday when I was a kid. From what I remember they came in a three record set with a sheet of lyrics that had pictures of Disney characters on them. If I remember right there is some kind of commercial for it somewhere on retrojunk.com. I also have been wanting to hear them again, but I got rid of mine ages ago.

Edit: I was right, there is a commercial on retrojunk:
http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/3292/

[Escapay]

It's why I buy "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street" on DVD off amazon.

AAAAHHHH!!!!

Another Christmas Eve on Sesame Street fan!









And if that isn't a true-blue miracle, I don't know what one is...

(You know the sad thing, though? I've had a VHS copy of this for years, and never got around to buying the DVD yet!)

(But you wanna know what's worse? I borrowed the DVD from a friend last Christmas and have yet to return it!)

Anyhow, the nursery rhymes one had Goofy performing "Simple Simon" and Donald Duck performing "A Dillar, A Dollar". I can't remember any other tracks.

I've got the Nursery Rhymes book on tape (it's actually Mother Goose Rhymes). It features two narrators (male and female), and they're reciting the various Mother Goose rhymes. However, I don't know if it has yet made the transition from cassette tape to CD. The Disney characters "perform" in the sense that they're illustrated to portray whatever rhyme they're in (I always remember Mickey, Minnie, and Morty or Ferdy as the King of Hearts/Queen of Hearts/Knave of Hearts). It's been awhile since I read the book/listened to the tape (both are in storage in my basement), but I do remember the following rhymes and characters (in addition to the aforementioned "Simple Simon" and "A Dillar, A Dollar"):

"The Queen of Hearts" - with Mickey, Minnie, and Morty or Ferdy

"Hey, Diddle, Diddle" - with Figaro and Pluto

"Jack Sprat" - with Dumbo and Timothy

"Deedle, Deedle Dumpling" - with Jiminy Cricket sleeping on a violin

"This Little Pig" - with the Three Little Pigs (obviously)

"Jack Be Nimble" - with Bambi, Thumper, and Flower

"This is the Way The Ladies Trot" - with Minnie, Mickey, and Goofy (I remember this mainly because I never understood why they'd write a rhyme about how people should ride their horses)

"Humpty Dumpty" - with Donald as Humpty Dumpty (and I think a couple other characters looking over at him from the wall)

"The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" - with a lot of Disney characters, I remember Clara Cluck was the old woman, since she was sweeping at the front. And the shoe was upside down...

"Georgie Porgie" - with Bashful (I always associate Bashful with Georgie Porgie because of this)

"Handy Pandy" - with Mickey Mouse jumping up holding two bags of candy and looking mighty pleased with himself. It came at the end of the book/tape, IIRC.

Also, in addition to the original book-on-tape, I also received a "Little Golden Books" version of the Disney Mother Goose rhymes when I was younger, and they re-arranged the rhymes in them ("Handy Pandy", for example, appears in the middle), so it didn't follow the old tape anymore.

Regarding the "Children's Favorites", we had that on LP's, not on cassette tapes (gah, that dates me a bit...). There's several minutes of a home movie from about 1988 featuring 4-year-old Jane, almost-3-year-old Scaps (it was a month before I turned 3), and 18-month-old Kram dancing around to one of the records (for some reason, we loved dancing to "Old MacDonald Had A Farm"). I'm pretty sure the LP's are in storage in the basement as well, but I definitely remember "Oh, Susannah!", "Daisy, Daisy", and "Three Blind Mice" being part of the tracks. In addition, I also remember "The Hokey Pokey", "This Old Man", and "In the Good Old Summertime" being part of the songs. Later this week I'll peruse through ye olde basement and see if I can still find them (it shouldn't be too hard, we completely organized the whole place a month ago and the records have remained where they were for years, along with the children's books and the old stack of cassette tapes.)

We had quite a few book-on-records as well as the book-on-tapes, though half of the books are gone (it's a dangerous world for a children's book in a house with little kids who liked scribbling a lot, cutting things out for fun, and ripping paper because the sound was awesome!). I'm more than certain, however, that the Mother Goose rhymes book is still intact, as is my favorite Disney book-on-tape: "It's A Small World" (with sad little orphan Bobby feelin' like he doesn't belong, but then he rides "it's a small world" and realizes that everyone belongs, and ta! He's a happy little orphan now and everyone's his friend!).

Albert (who will now go to bed and is mighty pissed at his computer, which froze thrice in the middle of typing this post)