Originally Posted By hopemax Talked to my parents today. My Dad had to mention his new shirt. He found a nice Mr. Toad's Wild Ride T-shirt...for sale at the Mickey's Philharmagic shop?!? So WDW didn't sell Toad stuff, when they had a Toad ride, now that they don't they feel the need to have it?
Originally Posted By MPierce >> So WDW didn't sell Toad stuff, when they had a Toad ride, now that they don't they feel the need to have it? << That does seem rather odd. I wonder what's up with that. Possibly a Mr. Toad Renaissance is in the making.
Originally Posted By -em LOL! So the next question does DLR have the same stuff or is it just WDW (which would be hilarious..) -em
Originally Posted By dshyates My question about the Mr. Taod's shirt, Did it actually say Walt Disney World on it, or the nebulous Disney Parks logo. So it could either be a retro attraction shirt OR it could be the homoginization of Disney Parks merchendise. One would be ubercool, the other sort of pathetic.
Originally Posted By leemac <<He found a nice Mr. Toad's Wild Ride T-shirt...for sale at the Mickey's Philharmagic shop?!?>> It is part of a new retro range - you can also get one with the '71 MK logo on it. Epcot also has a range of tees that hark back to '82.
Originally Posted By bobbelee9 OMG, there will be hell to pay when Happy Haunt finds out about that shirt. She'll buy a plane ticket right away. Unless it's for sale on LP?
Originally Posted By MPierce Retro is always big. We old geezers sit around all day long thinking about how good the good old days were. I sure wish we didn't have TV or telephones or AC or shopping Malls or grocery stores where you can buy food from all around the world. I sure wish I worked for $1.00 a day, and the only retirement I could hope for was sponging off my sons or daughters families. That is if I lived that long since the average person died at 58 from being worked to death, with only marginal medical treatment available. Man those were the good old days.
Originally Posted By bobbelee9 You got a $1 an hour? I $1 too, but I could only report 1/2 my hours. The good ole days. My mother worked in the admissions office of a college, and I use to stop and see her on my way home from HS, they decided to put me to work as a file clerk, but didn't think the job was worth a whole $1. But I filled a need they had and it was fun. Also only worked 1 hour a day. Not bad.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 I haven't bought any of the retro stuff, except for the shirt they sold only on EPCOT's 25th anniversary. It's not that I don't like the stuff because I do. A friend bought the Toad shirt and loves it. I just wonder if doing retro merchandise is a way of cheaply appeasing fans by selling something that harkens back to ... I dunno ... happier times when things were done better. Again, not saying it's bad ... but it also doesn't take much creativity to go back into Disney's huge vault of material and say 'hey, look at all this Mr. Toad ... Horizons ... 20,000K ... etc ... stuff we could replicate.' I'd like to see it balanced out with kewl new stuff ... not the one design fits all US parks annual merchandise/designs. Of course, I'm one of those silly spirits that believes Pirates and Hannah Montana shouldn't be sold in the Space Mountain gift shop and that you should be able to buy say western-themed merchandise in Frontierland.
Originally Posted By hopemax > that you should be able to buy say western-themed merchandise in Frontierland. < And so does John Lasseter. In early January, I think, he visited WDW and was aghast that you could buy Princess stuff at Big Al's and not more western stuff. So the word went out to change the selection at the shop. The Princess stuff was taken out, Davy Crockett hats and guns were moved out front. And the managers whined because sales went down. However, they sold a TON more Davy Crockett hats. The princess stuff has moved back in, but the compromise was that it wouldn't be so much "out front."
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 ^^You sure about that? I know he had an issue with a lack of western-themed merchandise in DL's Frontierland and he made sure that things changed so the first thing you saw when you entered the Mercantile was well, properly themed stuff. Now he could have had a similar experience at WDW, but I am unaware of it. I think the bigger issue at MK is how the Frontierland Trading Post became a giant pin shop because when one thinks of the American frontier thay naturally think of $12.95 LE pins (that cost about a dime to make) of cartoon characters and theme park attractions etc ... Magical.
Originally Posted By hopemax Yes, I am sure. The only thing I can't remember if the visit was Dec or Jan. Big Al's isn't the shop my relative is in charge of restocking, but her shop is in the area...
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 ^^That's good to know. I had heard John wasn't happy with many things, but that anecdote is new. I can't believe how MK merchandising has been destroyed over the past decade. It's all tacky crap. Stores are shuttered with carts everywhere and open areas (Caribbean Plaza) turned into glorified flea markets.
Originally Posted By hopemax > I can't believe how MK merchandising has been destroyed over the past decade. < So true. While I was down there in Jan, we spotted a new PVC set. It has characters from 8 different attractions. One of them is from an attraction closest to my relative's shop...but they didn't automatically receive the PVC sets. She had to specifically ask for them to stock it. I'm not sure if the request was approved. But you would think something like that would be automatic. But you COULD buy it at the Studios which has zero of the attractions represented. Cute set though, too bad it's branded for WDW and DL though. It's got the Abominable Snowman/Yeti which looks more like the Abominable Snowman. But I don't know what DL is going to do with a Figment...It was one of 2 interesting pieces of merchandise I found. The other is a Big Al bobblehead.
Originally Posted By hopemax Nope, no Vinylmation...those things are just plain weird. Here is a pic of the set <a href="http://i13.ebayimg.com/06/i/001/1d/b4/8974_1.JPG" target="_blank">http://i13.ebayimg.com/06/i/00...74_1.JPG</a>
