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I am searching for any official sources on the history and creation of the Disney canon or "classics" (i.e. Disney's list of full-length feature animated films).

The only relevant unofficial information I have found is on Disney.Wikia, which states, "For advertising purposes, the Walt Disney Company began to affix numbers to each of the films in the late 1980s."

Does anyone have an idea of a book, a documentary, a scholarly journal, or perhaps a better unofficial source that might answer some of the below questions.

When was the canon officially created?
Who authorized the creation of a canon?
Which Disney department was/is in charge of maintaining what is in the canon and what is not?
Why is the UK canon different than the canon within the United States?

If we assume the canon was created strictly for promotional purposes, in what ways has the canon benefited home video sales? etc. Has the canon been used outside of studio marketing?

I seem to remember that some Disney Classics videocassettes from the early 90s contained a check list of films within the canon. I cannot find any pictorial evidence of this in my internet searches. Does anyone else remember such a list? Or better yet, have a picture of one of the lists?

The first instance I can remember hearing their numbered canon was a promotional home video trailer for "Beauty and the Beast."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqOShIwuCQg

Were there any instances of using the canon numbering promotionally beforehand? Or after? Besides the Tangled 50 film countdown in 2010?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crsr3uGexOo


Any ideas or information you can share would be wonderful!

ultimatefilmfan wrote:Why is the UK canon different than the canon within the United States?

How is the UK canon different than the US?

I assume the reason why it was created was because of people buying the movies. Before Disney entered the home video market in the early 80s, they features were only available on television and at the theatres (there were also some 8mm released, but I don't think these were complete movies). No reason to make up a canon then, and the world wide web obvioulsy didn't exist back then. And when Disney did release some of their movies on videotape, it was meant for rentals only, not sale. No reason to add any numbers then either.

According to this link, the first video meant for sale was Pinocchio in 1985: http://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/dis ... 1984-1998/

Then follows others in no special order. When they decided to release all the animated features in chronological order on VHS meant for sale, if they ever did, I don't know. But that would have been in the 90s. In the same decade DVDs became available, and it could start all over. From what I understand the American released don't have any numbers on their spine unlike those in Europe and possibly other parts of the world.

If I should guess, I would say the canon was created sometime after the creation of WWW and DVDs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110710133 ... story.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20060213013 ... /8695.html

There is also this recent discussion: http://www.dvdizzy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32676

I've heard that at least in the 80s, the live-action/animation hybrid films were included in the canon, unlike the package films. When Song of the South was basically blacklisted, the hybrid films were removed.

It's a confusing beast, the Disney Canon. This is all based solely on information at my disposal right now, though I assume some contemporaneous books from the 1970s (The Art of Walt Disney by Christopher Finch or The Disney Films by Leonard Maltin) might point to the unofficial status of the canon in that era.

As early as 1978, in an article for the now-defunct "New West" magazine, film critic Kenneth Turan designates The Rescuers as the studio's 27th full-length animated film. This is the earliest I've seen on record of anyone in the industry - Disney or otherwise - numbering the animated films. Using The Rescuers as #27 means that his numbering system also takes into account the four hybrid films: Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, Mary Poppins, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Turan himself does not provide a list in that article, so that is just my speculation as to how he reached #27 for The Rescuers. In all modern canon lists, The Rescuers has always been #23, so the difference of 4 films either takes into account the four hybrids listed, or perhaps some package features dropped and replaced by other hybrids like 1941's The Reluctant Dragon and 1943's Victory Through Air Power. But I have no basis for that speculation.

However, in 1981, Disney themselves basically negate Turan's numbering system as they touted The Fox and the Hound as its 20th fully-animated motion picture:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFwPyqQy9K0[/youtube]

If we were designating The Fox and the Hound as #20 rather than its traditional #24 (in the hybrid-less numbering), then four films were no longer counted in the canon. By my speculation, those films likely were Saludos, Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Melody Time, as their more segmented package-feature narratives made them expendable compared to the dual-narrative approach of Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. So by 1981, the "canon" no longer included hybrids or package films save for Fantasia, the two mentioned, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Original trailers for The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective don't attach a number to their films, just calling them the latest from Disney.

It's not until 1988's Oliver & Company that Disney designates it as #27:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6TCgTTl0Qg[/youtube]

At this point, we've reached the canon that everyone was familiar with until 2010, in which the package features were included and the hybrids were not. So the longest "official" US Disney canon was used from 1988 to 2010.

As mentioned by ultimatefilmfan, 2010 brought the animated countdown trailer for Tangled, labeling it the 50th animated film by Disney by its retro-active inclusion of Dinosaur. It hasn't changed since then, as far as I know.

Truthfully, I've wrestled with the idea of what the Disney canon should be for so long that I've basically given up and decided on the umbrella of "All Things Disney" just about covers it. No two fan's canon will ever be the same, and nobody will ever be 100% satisfied with whatever the official designation is - especially given that it's changed enough times already.

As for the home video market, there was a rhyme and reason to it, as Disney basically adopted their theatrical re-issue system for animated films and applied it to home video. Though many point to Pinocchio's 1985 VHS release as the one that... started it all... earlier VHS releases had already been out for Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland, but only as rental tapes. Robin Hood was actually the first of the classics to get a theatrical re-issue (1982) followed by a VHS release (1984) that came in a growing and stronger VHS market of the time. Pinocchio's was the next to follow that trend, as its 1985 VHS came on the heels of its 1984 Christmas reissue in theatres. The March 1986 theatrical release of Sleeping Beauty actually saw its VHS released within the same year, coming out later that October. In 1987, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs got a theatrical re-issue, but was still considered an "untouchable" for VHS. Instead, the 1987 holiday release of Cinderella would see the film get its VHS release 11 months later in October 1988. The more popular films in their re-issues would get the VHS a year later (Peter Pan in 1989 for theatres and 1990 on VHS, The Jungle Book in 1990 for theatres and 1991 on VHS), while the less-successful ones would wait a little longer: for example, The Fox and the Hounds 1988 re-issue did not lead to a 1989 VHS, instead the film would hit the format in 1994.

Albert

Big Disney Fan wrote:

ultimatefilmfan wrote:Why is the UK canon different than the canon within the United States?

How is the UK canon different than the US?

In the UK and throughout much of Europe "Dinosaur" (2000) is not included their version of the canon. "The Wild" (2006) takes its place within their canon. Although neither film was animated by WDAS, the former was produced by the studio. "The Wild" was only distributed by Disney.

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:https://web.archive.org/web/20110710133 ... story.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20060213013 ... /8695.html

There is also this recent discussion: http://www.dvdizzy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32676

Thanks for your links. They were both interesting and informative. It is intriguing that Disney claimed they would stop numbering their releases as they eventually started numbering them again with the release of "Tangled". They produced a promotional video emphasizing the film was their 50th animated feature.

Escapay wrote:Truthfully, I've wrestled with the idea of what the Disney canon should be for so long that I've basically given up and decided on the umbrella of "All Things Disney" just about covers it. No two fan's canon will ever be the same, and nobody will ever be 100% satisfied with whatever the official designation is - especially given that it's changed enough times already.

Your break down of the ever-changing canon is exactly the type of history I was looking for!

I had speculated that it was around 1989, after the release of "The Little Mermaid," that they created an official canon to strategically place "Beauty and the Beast" as their 30th film, but the "Oliver and Company" trailer aides in demonstrating that the contemporary canon was decided even before the Disney animation renaissance.

Albert, do you have any recollection of Disney providing a small sheet that listed their "canon" films within 1-2 of their videocassettes in the early 90s? I may be mistaken about a list being specifically provided within a clamshell case, but I remember having a small check-off sheet (from Disney) with their films (probably) up through "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin."

As a kid, I remember thinking it was unfortunate that "The Black Cauldron" was their milestone 25th film...especially as it had been rumored at the time that Disney would probably never release it again after the film had missed its 7 year theatrical release cycle. I also remember being confused about the inclusion of the package films on the list as many were not released for almost another decade.

The Fall 1986 release of "Sleeping Beauty" was the first movie that was given to me for by 4th birthday and I have been collecting the canon ever since. Even as a kid I was a completist and engrossed in eventually owning the canon. I was happy to check off each film as they were released (exactly as the release strategy you outlined).

ultimatefilmfan wrote:Albert, do you have any recollection of Disney providing a small sheet that listed their "canon" films within 1-2 of their videocassettes in the early 90s? I may be mistaken about a list being specifically provided within a clamshell case, but I remember having a small check-off sheet (from Disney) with their films (probably) up through "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin."

I don't remember any from my childhood, but my parents usually threw away whatever inserts were inside the clamshells anyway. :/

ultimatefilmfan wrote:As a kid, I remember thinking it was unfortunate that "The Black Cauldron" was their milestone 25th film...especially as it had been rumored at the time that Disney would probably never release it again after the film had missed its 7 year theatrical release cycle.

Oh my goodness, I remember when The Black Cauldron was released to VHS in 1998. To a kid with little knowledge of the inter-studio politics of Disney at the time, this was a very big deal for me, because it meant that a film that'd been sight-unseen for thirteen years was making its triumphant return. I was so excited for it, I think most of that internal build-up in my head made me appreciate the film more than I should have. I mean, I still love it, and do rank it quite highly in the canon myself, but it does seem understandable in retrospect why they opted out of a 7-year release cycle for the film at the time - it was so unlike any of their current films then or now, and Disney just didn't know how to market it. At least by 1998, it could now be mixed in among the latter-day Renaissance action epics like Hercules and Mulan.

Of course, now I'm expecting for Disney Movie Club to release it to a barebones Blu-Ray in 2020 since we've already missed out on a 30th Anniversary Edition for 2015.

ultimatefilmfan wrote:I also remember being confused about the inclusion of the package films on the list as many were not released for almost another decade.

I just remember not knowing what the package films were at the time. When my little brother convinced our parents to buy Make Mine Music for us, I was just confused as to why we'd want a movie that was made up of shorts.

ultimatefilmfan wrote:The Fall 1986 release of "Sleeping Beauty" was the first movie that was given to me for by 4th birthday and I have been collecting the canon ever since. Even as a kid I was a completist and engrossed in eventually owning the canon. I was happy to check off each film as they were released (exactly as the release strategy you outlined).

My family's first Disney VHS was Cinderella in 1988. The case is falling apart now and the tape itself has this weird glitch where it causes the VCR to stop and rewind shortly after the coach turns back into a pumpkin. But we still have it, mainly for sentiment rather than viewing purposes.

Albert

They released the films on home video in the 80's and 90's according to how popular films were and if they were too special or not to be released yet. They of course finally decided they could all be released, even the special ones, just in a matter of time. That specianess stays today with the vault. But will it stay forever?

The Black Cauldron was as mentioned above first released on VHS in 1998, which was the year after DVDs was introduced to the market. If there existed any official Disney websites then, I don't know. Wayback Machine only goes back to 2001.

As is says on the cover of the 1998 VHS:

"Disney's 25th full-length animated classic, The Black Cauldron, is a heroic adventure that fills the screen with magic and wonder. Overflowing with colorful characters, trailblazing animation and nonstop action, this critically acclaimed film can now be enjoyed on video for the first time ever."

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Black-Caul ... SwWD1ZsNWo

Why the live action and animation hybrids was removed from the list could be because of this definition used by the AFI, AMPAS and BFI; "an animated feature must be over 40 minutes long and have animation in at least 75% of their running time, or have at least 40 minutes of animation in total".

Saludos Amigos is just 42 minutes long, and while live action between the animated segments, making the amount of animation less than 40 minutes. But the movie as a whole is oveer 40 minutes and probably has animation in at least 75% of their running time. When this definition was created I don't know, but at least it allows Saludos Amigos to joint the list.

Why Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons is not included for the same reasons, is probably because it was relased before Snow White. The fact that the shorts were made up of previously released shorts shouldn't matter consider that is also true for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.


Also found on the net:

Music Land was a package feature produced by Walt Disney Productions in 1955.

Following Howard Hughes' takeover of RKO, Walt Disney was very worried about the future prospects of the studio. He did not trust Hughes to make the right decisions with the distribution of his films and wanted to sever ties immediately. However, Disney was still contractually obligated to deliver one more film to RKO after the release of Peter Pan in 1953.

To fulfil that contract, Disney re-edited segments from Make Mine Music and Melody Time together. The shorts were the same (and the full version of those films are still in circulation today) but the film featured a new intro, new transitions between the shorts, and a new ending. Although rushed, it counted as a feature film and fulfilled Disney's contract with RKO. Walt Disney would go on to use the Buena Vista Film Distribution company to distribute his films. Although that brand has been mostly retired, Buena Vista is still occasionally used for Disney's DVD releases.

Music Land was never shown after its release outside of a special showing at the National Film Theater as a tribute to Walt Disney. It has never been made available on home video and was officially removed from the Disney canon in 1985. Very little information about the film can be found online today, although lobby cards and advertisement material is available.

While Winnie the Pooh is not included in the canon in most of the European countries, the Walt Disney studio has officially included it: https://web.archive.org/web/20120216051 ... story.html (a little more updated list) Either way, since Winnie the Pooh is not part (of most) of the European canon, that mean that Moana is either number 55 (instead of 56 like in America), or another feature that is not part of the American canon has taken Winnie the Pooh's place. Anyone who have the European DVD releases since Tangled?

I would check out many Disney books back in the day from my elementary school library, hoping to put the pieces of the puzzle together about how many Disney movies there were and what their order was. And of course, I'm speaking of those ancient days when VCRs were a rarity and the handful of Disney movies that were available were for rental only (imagine having to drive 35 miles to the nearest video store and pay $19.99-$29.99 just to rent ONE movie!). I'd sometimes catch tidbits of the more obscure films mentioned in those books like Victory through Air Power, which is probably why I carried a fascination for WWII propaganda animation from a very early age.

VHS tapes were common by the time I was in high school, and of course most family households had some kind of Disney collection going on (my first prerecord Disney VHS was Lady and the Tramp, and I managed to get most of the other titles eventually). Up through that point I'd also recorded quite a collection of Disney documentaries off TV, as well as some of the "lesser" DACs like Three Caballeros. Being a little older by then I was able to get my hands on some amazing, newly-published coffee table books about Disney animation, one of the most informative of which is can be found here (I got an earlier edition that was published just before Aladdin's release). I still own that particular book but I haven't looked at it in ages; I recall it does have an extensive section that focuses on the animated films one by one, and I remember forming my own longhand lists of what I personally felt should and shouldn't "count."

As far as I know the numbers weren't really a thing until, as Albert mentioned, the early 80s when it became a marketing tool. And honestly, I think that's all it really is, regardless of how fun it is to question and debate what's canon, what isn't, and why. Disney has even changed the numbers strictly for marketing purposes, for example retroactively adding Dinosaur to the list so that they could claim Tangled was their 50th animated feature (that is, if I'm remembering this correctly; can someone vouch for this here?).

Escapay wrote:

ultimatefilmfan wrote:Albert, do you have any recollection of Disney providing a small sheet that listed their "canon" films within 1-2 of their videocassettes in the early 90s? I may be mistaken about a list being specifically provided within a clamshell case, but I remember having a small check-off sheet (from Disney) with their films (probably) up through "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin."

I don't remember any from my childhood, but my parents usually threw away whatever inserts were inside the clamshells anyway. :/

Allow me to chime in for a moment here ...

I'm a little older and did save the inserts for as long as possible back in the day, so I do remember some of them clearly. I don't recall any kind of checklist of canon films to collect, just an occasional little full-colored multi-paged "catalog" of then currently available/upcoming titles, probably around the time of The Fox and the Hound's VHS release. The only thing I recall having any resemblance of a checklist was actually a mail-in customer survey that was from the early 90s/Beauty and the Beast/Aladdin era. I diligently filled those little boxes out and expected to get fancy mailings of upcoming Disney home video news as the surveys promised ... never received anything though. Anyway, we're talking about nearly 30 years ago now so it's very possible there was a checklist and I just don't remember it, but I'm pretty sure it's the kind of thing I would have laminated and kept in my wallet at the time, lol. And honestly, I don't see them even wanting to print a checklist of the every "canon" film in the early 90s when it would inevitably include titles that were either out of print or had not yet seen home video release, as this would just confuse/infuriate the average consumer (who would wonder why something like Oliver & Company was on the list but not available in any store). Maybe it's worth noting that the animated films were categorized in different tiers in the VHS years, and it's possible that checklists were made for "The Original Animated Classics" (AKA Back Diamonds) or for "The Masterpiece Collection" or what-not.

ultimatefilmfan wrote:As a kid, I remember thinking it was unfortunate that "The Black Cauldron" was their milestone 25th film...especially as it had been rumored at the time that Disney would probably never release it again after the film had missed its 7 year theatrical release cycle.

Escapay wrote:Oh my goodness, I remember when The Black Cauldron was released to VHS in 1998. To a kid with little knowledge of the inter-studio politics of Disney at the time, this was a very big deal for me, because it meant that a film that'd been sight-unseen for thirteen years was making its triumphant return. I was so excited for it, I think most of that internal build-up in my head made me appreciate the film more than I should have. I mean, I still love it, and do rank it quite highly in the canon myself, but it does seem understandable in retrospect why they opted out of a 7-year release cycle for the film at the time - it was so unlike any of their current films then or now, and Disney just didn't know how to market it. At least by 1998, it could now be mixed in among the latter-day Renaissance action epics like Hercules and Mulan.

Oh my double goodness, I was utterly obsessed with that film for a time, having seen a preview of it (well, sort of a preview) on TV in the early 80s as part of a Disney behind the scenes special, and somehow missing the news of its release entirely even though I was a 9-year-old Disney fan that summer! I had collected a handful of Disney-related Black Cauldron books by the mid-90s (a opposed to just the original novels they were based on, although for a time I did have a copy of the novel with the Disney movie poster as the cover). I knew a fair amount of the studio politics at the time due to some of the books I owned, which made the idea of this dark, mysterious film even more intriguing.

Back in 1996 I got a fan letter published in a Disney comic, and that prompted the start of making some long-distance Disney pen-pal friendships. Granted, this was also the early days of the internet as we now know it so I wasn't even online just yet. But I used my penpal connections (Wow, doesn't that sound so serious! ) and started letter-writing campaigns to raise awareness of the forgotten film and to prompt people to ask Disney to give it a home video release. Who knows how successful that may have been, but I'd like to dream that it stirred something.

I believe it was the following year I actually got online (thank you library computer!) and attempted to buy a lot of 3 VHS work prints of the film off some random Texan girl on eBay! No clue how or why she claimed to have had them. But I sent her my winning bid of $100 via snail-mail post office money order, she claimed to had gotten into an accident, and there was some kind of excuse about her boyfriend and blah blah blah thus I NEVER RECEIVED THEM. I'm still upset over that, as the listed running time of the videos is longer than the final version; since they were unfinished work prints they would have contained the deleted scenes in some form. Anyway, it's very possible those work prints are still floating around somewhere, but as far as I know, they've never resurfaced online. I eventually stumbled across a site entitled "Bring Back the Black Cauldron" which was run by Chris Baker. It included some very low-res images (as per standard at the time) of mostly movie posters, and a little info about the film.
And of course, it included a petition to sign, which I promptly did. When the VHS was finally released the following year, a Chicago Tribune article mentions that Lloyd Alexander (the author of the original books) credits Baker's site and lobbying efforts as the reason Disney finally pulled it out of the vault.

Oh, and one more note of potential interest ... sometime around 1997 or so, there was an internet rumor that Disney was planning on releasing every single Disney Animated Classic in theaters, one per day for the majority of a month during the following summer, leading up to the premiere of Mulan. And of course this really got Disney fans worked up on the idea of actually getting the opportunity to watch the particular films that had still never seen a home video release. Some even came up with ordered lists matching up with the specific dates they were supposedly going to be shown, although I'd wager all of this was entirely the excited speculation of fans that got carried away with what was merely an unfounded rumor; the concept probably wouldn't enough make sense money for Disney to even consider. Would have been plenty exciting had it happened though, and also would have provided the beginnings of that definitive list that you're looking for.

Elladorine wrote:Disney has even changed the numbers strictly for marketing purposes, for example retroactively adding Dinosaur to the list so that they could claim Tangled was their 50th animated feature (that is, if I'm remembering this correctly; can someone vouch for this here?).

Dinosaur was included in 2008.

Since we are talking about VHS, some quotes from the article in the link mentioned above:

During the internal discussions, estimated revenues were offered for movie box-office returns vs. home video-sales. Releasing Sleeping Beauty four more times for theater-only showings over the next 28 years — i.e., once every seven years — would generate a total box office of $125 million. But a single home-video release of Sleeping Beauty in the near term would generate sales of at least $100 million.

That quicker return, while a lower number, proved the more persuasive strategy since inflation would ravage the longer-term, theater-only box office returns.

“The net present value of earning $125 million from Sleeping Beauty over the next twenty-eight years in theaters is less than $25 million,” concluded one of Disney’s analysts at the time. “It makes a lot more economic sense to earn $100 million from home video during the next six months.”

And the money Disney earned from its video sales in the near term could be invested on other projects to produce further value for the company. The video sales strategy was the clear winner, and Disney began to push harder on this front with the Sleeping Beauty release.

In the fall of 1986, Disney put up an unprecedented $7 million marketing campaign for the Sleeping Beauty video, priced at $29.95, using the theme “Bring Disney Home for Good” as part of its sales pitch. The campaign helped sell 1.3 million copies of the cassette, doubling the performance of Pinocchio and making Sleeping Beauty one of the largest-selling videos at the time. “The initial fear of diluting the value of our classics in future theatrical release began to pale beside the enormous profits we could earn immediately through home-video sales,” later explained Disney CEO Michael Eisner. “Nor did it cheapen Disney’s image in the marketplace. The best possible impact on our brand turned out to be having our classic films in people’s homes, where they were watched over and over.”

1988, the next Disney classic to come up for video release was the 1950 hit Cinderella. During the previous year in 1987, over the Christmas holidays, Cinderella had its latest scheduled movie theater release and had earned a respectable $34 million. But by this time Disney was also developing an improved strategy for marketing its home videos. It was now going beyond just the video stores. Disney began to link up with big mass-merchant retailers who had not previously sold home videos.

Their first partner was Target but they soon joined with other big stores, including Caldor and Wal-Mart. By mid-year 1988, sales of the Cinderella video hit nearly 6 million copies, generating revenues of about $100 million, or nearly three times its previous years’ box office.

Disney further refined its video marketing network in 1989, eliminating middlemen and taking over distribution. Overhead costs came down, joint marketing campaigns were launched with large retailers, and computer-based accounting kept track of it all. The Jungle Book — a 1967 Disney film based on the Rudyard Kipling story, and the last film that Walt Disney himself had worked on before his death — was released on home video in 1991. It sold almost 9 million copies. Next up was 101 Dalmatians, a 1961 Disney film. Released on VHS for home vide sale in 1992, it sold more than 14 million copies.

The success of Disney’s animated classics in the home video market, and the apparent good prospects for feature animation in the movie market generally, helped to bolster Disney’s resolve in the late 1980s to make more animated films.Michael Eisner put it this way: “The enormous [home] video market for our animated films prompted a second epiphany, namely, the huge potential upside to be realized in stepping up production of new animated films.” In the 1970s and early 1980s, the film-making process at Disney had become slow, turning out unremarkable products. And the films produced no longer seemed to have that Walt Disney quality. But after Michael Eisner arrived as CEO in the mid-1980s, things began to change.

It seems that VHS-releases was one of the major reasons that Disney decided to focus on and give a lot more attention to the production of new animated features in the late 80s. In the late 60s and 70s, there were no cable and satellite to speak of either, just a threatrical run and maybe it would be shown at traditional TV at some point later. Which explains why there were so few features made during those years. They may not have been epic in scale and all that, but I don't think there is anything wrong with them for that reason. They have their own charm typical for that period in time.

Wow Elladorine, if only those VHS work prints were real, and you had gotten them!

So the VHS sales helped make more wonderful late 80's Disney films. Awesome. But yes, the 60's and 70's ones still have charm, like you said Rumplestiltskin. Who knew The Little Mermaid owed istelf partly to great VHS classic film sales?

Yeah, both the explosion in VHS sales (and some rentals) and the cinematic success of The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin allowed the studio to blossom in the late 80s and the 90s. No wonder they came up with a canon that made it a must for collectors to buy all the titles on the list if they wanted it to be complete. It was a whole new market and Eisner, amongst others, turned it into an industry. Which is actually OK as long as the products are good. The frenzy made them invest in new tools and equipment and take the chance on projects like A Nightmare before Christmas and Toy Story, and produce lots of direct-to-video sequels.

In a special on Disneyland's 30th anniversary (not the one featuring John Forsythe and a young Drew Barrymore, but a different one hosted by the "Entertainment Tonight" people), they touted the then-upcoming "The Black Cauldron" as the 25th animated feature, so I'm guessing that by the time of Eisner's arrival, they had settled on including the package films of the '40s in the canon.

Well, Eisner entered Disney in 1984, and The Black Cauldron had premiere in July 1985. (As you are aware of, the movie was supposed to have been released in December 1984, and it would have had it not been for Jeffrey Katzenberg. Had he arrived at the studio just a few months later, everything would have gone as planned.)

Considering all the time and money that went into the movie, not to mention all the ambition, they needed to draw attention to it and make people aware of its existence. Entertainment Tonight probably got the numbers from Disney. Announcing it as number 25 would give it some extra publicity. Of course it is fully possible this was already the established canon, but it wouldn't hurt to spread the news.

The same thing happened with Tangled. It was promoted as number 50, and cost a lot of time and money. Disney needed it to become as success, and it was (at least a modest one). It is still the most expensive animated movie ever made as far as I know. Still makes me wonder if Dinosaur would be on the list if Winnie the Pooh had been released before Tangled.

And as mentioned, in the 80s the popularity of Disney VHS-movies exploded. In an article from New York Times in 1988, it says that "''Oliver & Company'' - Disney's 27th animated feature in 51 years - the first in a production schedule that calls for an animated feature a year".

It would be interesting to see if books and articles in newspapers and magazines in the 70s and 80s are referring to the canon.

the way some of you guys feel about Back Cauldron I felt about Oliver and Company. Ugh did it take forever for that film to come out to video and dvd, and it was agony waiting for it. It was especially cruel that then they decided to release Little Mermaid on vhs only a year after its theatrical release but they still kept Oliver & Co. vaulted for some reason. Wasnt until early 1996 that I saw an add in the Billboard trade publication that they were rereleasing the soundtrack for the film in conjunction with its upcoming rerelease to theaters. I was elated! not only did I finally get the film on video (and laserdisc), I got to see it in theaters again(saw it 3 times!)Goood Times!

btw do an of you older guys like me feel that the period b/w the mid-late 80s and late 90s was the BEST time to be a Disney fan? I nostalgia so hard about that era(especially the late 80s, early 90s.) I think that although the studio had become successful it still had maintained its identity as something special and magical that its completely lost as a mega-moster-corp. nowadays. And of course the parks where better then too.

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unprincess wrote: btw do an of you older guys like me feel that the period b/w the mid-late 80s and late 90s was the BEST time to be a Disney fan? I nostalgia so hard about that era(especially the late 80s, early 90s.) I think that although the studio had become successful it still had maintained its identity as something special and magical that its completely lost as a mega-moster-corp. nowadays. And of course the parks where better then too.

Even though I wasn't born until the late 90s, I have enough memories of the end of this period to know that Disney was at its prime during this era. Every film was an event back then, in a way that hasn't really occurred nowadays except for Frozen. Not only they did they promote their latest movies, but they never neglected the classics that came before either. Even though Disney is just as ubiquitous now as it used to be, the main focus is on Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. Even though I love all these properties, they aren't classic Disney, although a case can be made for Pixar. Also, the merchandise quality has really fallen for collectors and home video enthusiasts.

Big Disney Fan wrote:In a special on Disneyland's 30th anniversary (not the one featuring John Forsythe and a young Drew Barrymore, but a different one hosted by the "Entertainment Tonight" people), they touted the then-upcoming "The Black Cauldron" as the 25th animated feature, so I'm guessing that by the time of Eisner's arrival, they had settled on including the package films of the '40s in the canon.

Is this the anniversary segment you were thinking of? Around 4:40 Min. in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5covamEAJw

Did I miss where they pronounced the film as being the 25th animated feature? Is there another video stating this that I have not located?

I'd love to find the reference to the film being numbered 25th in 1985 (three years before promoting Oliver and Company as their 27th), if you know where it can be found. Thanks!