Disneyana for a Dummy
Birth of A Habit
One sunny May Saturday four years ago I entered, what was for me, the strange new world of pin trading when I bought my first Disney pins. Disneyland was offering two free Dancing Hippo pins, you know the ones in the tutus from Fantasia, with every purchase of $15 dollars or more in pins or pin related merchandise.
All my life I have heard the story, first from my grandparents then from my mother, of how my great, great grandfather took my mother, who at the time was only a small child, on her first ever visit to a zoo. While there they had what she still describes to this day as a hilarious encounter with the zoo's family of hippopotamuses. From that day on my mother came to love all things related to hippos. This is especially true of the hippos from the Dance of The Hours segment of Walt Disney's Fantasia.
So, when I learned that for just fifteen bucks worth of Disney pins I could score two lovely cloisonné Fantasia hippo pins just in time for Mother's Day it seemed like a no grey matter required idea.
Buying the pins was no problem. Properly displaying my investment was another matter.
I practically live in cotton pullovers and at the risk of sharing too much personal information I don't wear them over an undershirt. Which, as far as the pins were concerned, presented me with two problems. The first being the wear and tear the pins would have on the loose knit fabric of my shirts. The second problem was the wear and tear the then metallic clasps that secured the pins would have on the skin and hair directly beneath each pin.
The ever-practical folks in Disney merchandising had obviously foreseen this very problem because in addition to a wide selection of pins they offered a variety of items suitable for displaying one's collection. I passed on the $50 safari vest and opted instead for a basic lanyard.
While my first Disney pin acquisition may have been motivated by a desire to be a good son I saw no reason not to wear my new lanyard and pins on subsequent park visits. Upon doing so I discovered I had entered into an entirely new community of park goers known as "pin-traders."
Suddenly complete strangers would come up to me in the park and ask to see my pin collection. Most of these folks either wore layers and layers of lanyards densely packed with pins or the fifty-dollar safari vests equally carpeted with enameled keepsakes. The really serious ones wore the vests, multiple lanyards and carried bound folios containing hundreds upon hundreds of pins.
Looking at my lanyard with its four pins, two on the left two on the right, a feeling of inadequacy swept over me. I felt like the new kid on the block whose family had just moved into the tiniest house on the street. I trotted over to the nearest pin cart and bought enough pins to fill in my barren lanyard.
On my next Disneyland visit a precocious young lad—with what had to be at least a thousand dollars worth of pins in a backpack full of folios—asked what I had against Disney villains. He had accurately surmised that my entire collection consisted of Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Peter Pan, Wendy, Michael, John, Tinkerbelle and Grumpy. Before I could mumble my usual feeble excuse of being new to pin collecting he had whipped open one of his folios and was offering to trade for some of the dozens of Disney villain pins in his collection.
I told the young man that he was looking at my entire collection and that I had only purchased pins that I wanted to keep for myself. He looked at me like I had grown a second head and that it was speaking an off world language.
"You mean you haven't bought pins for trading?" He asked in a voice that completely reversed our age difference.
"No I haven't." I sheepishly replied and with that he zipped up the folio and moved on with the speed of a summer storm. I had a feeling of relief as if I had just escaped a close encounter with a used car salesman. My next stop was the nearest pin cart where I bought my second lanyard, a black one. I populated it with some of Disney's greatest villains.
Collecting can be a mania.
Image copyright obe-mediaone. All rights reserved.
Since that time my collection has grown considerably. Not so much from buying or trading but from well meaning friends who saw my new "hobby" as an answer to a question. I've reached that stage in my life where I'm really hard to buy gifts for. Seeing my pin laden lanyards as a new interest in my life my friends began giving me pins for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays you name it.
Not one to ever give away, much less trade, a gift I soon had boxes full of pins. I thought about buying more lanyards but the two I had began requiring regular maintenance. Those little clasps that are supposed to hold the pins on frequently loose their grip and get lost. If you're lucky you discover this before the pin works its way loose on say Splash Mountain and becomes lost forever. If not you have to haunt the trading areas within the park looking for someone who had the foresight to buy extra copies of your now lost pin expressly for the purpose of trading.
Unable to dedicate the time required to properly care for and display my pin collection I stopped wearing my lanyards to the park. I thanked all my friends for their thoughtfulness and informed them that I was ending my days as a pin collector.
That, coupled with the fact that my partner has demanded that we add a room for "Disney crap" to the house before I drag home one more collectable, or he'll take the dogs and move to a seaside flat in Long Beach, has pretty much put a hold on my career as a Disneyana collector.
What I didn't know until recently was that I was going about collecting all wrong. I was attempting to do it on my own. I didn't understand or really appreciate that there was or is an entire support community out there for would be Disneyana collectors like me.
About Collecting
During the past three decades like everything else touched by the Baby Boom generation collecting has evolved from a quite hobby into a multi billion-dollar industry. A gentle pastime for the leisure classes of the nineteenth century turned hobby for throngs of twentieth century retirees it has become both a virtual and real obsession for millions of people in the twenty-first century.
Collecting is celebrated everywhere from PBS with it's Antiques Roadshow to the Internet. Since 1995 the grand high arbiter of value of all things collectable has been eBay. Anything and everything that has ever meant something to someone during their lives is deemed "a collectable." From Lionel electric trains and Hall China teapots to Star Wars memorabilia if it holds a place in our culture and our lives it can be found for sale on eBay.
In a worldwide market filled with millions of buyers predisposed to amassing large collections of nostalgic memorabilia it should come as no surprise to anyone that one of the biggest names in collectables is Disney. In fact it is the wide variety of these items that first gave rise to the term Disneyana to describe this particular group of collectables.
So popular has the collecting of Disney produced and related items become that on October 16, 2000 the Walt Disney Internet Group joined forces with eBay and established the official Disney auction site. Like millions of other eBay traders before them Disney has been able to reduce operating costs by cleaning out storage rooms and warehouses while at the same time increasing revenues from the sale of items once thought to be little more than landfill.
In 1984, before the rise in popularity of the Internet and the launching of eBay, a group of friends with a common interest in fantasy and the collection of related memorabilia got together and formed the National Fantasy Fan Club. From those first meetings of fourteen friends the organization has grown to more 6,500 members. It is now an international non-profit organization with over 30 chapters in the United States and around the world. Officially named the NFFC - The Club for Disneyana Enthusiasts it is most often referred to simply as the NFFC.
Through its network of local chapters the NFFC sponsors a variety of activities, publications, seminars, auctions, shows and sales. And of course they have a website, www.nffc.org. The NFFC's most well known activities are their two all Disneyana Conventions, Sales and Shows.
Part of the 2003 NFFC convention festivities.
Image copyright obe-mediaone. All rights reserved.
I Was Lost But Now I'm Found
This year's NFFC - National Convention 2003 Celebrating the 21st Century Mouse was held the week of July 15 - 20, at the Crowne Plaza Resort Hotel in Garden Grove, California just a few blocks South of The Disneyland Resort. Like a gigantic twelve-step meeting in reverse I found the convention, my first ever NFFC event, to be everything the official website said it would be;
"… a celebration of all things Disneyana, past, present and future."
"… a dizzying array of lectures, panels, workshops, seminars, tours, gallery visits, meal events and other special programs."
And more.
Due to a prior commitment I arrived to late the first day to attend any of official convention events. The good folks at the registration table suggested that I check out that day's "Room Hopping." Not sure if I had heard them correctly I checked my copy of the schedule and found that Room Hopping was a regularly scheduled daily event.
Over the years I have attended more computer hardware and software tradeshows, expos and conventions than I can keep track of. Not to mention a few SciFi conventions and assorted gay men's "Bear" rendezvous'. At all of these events I have frequently heard the expression "room hopping" bandied about. This was, however, the first time in all my years of attending such events that I had ever seen it listed as an official activity. In fact they even had a notice board for posting room numbers.
Faced with a two-hour drive home through evening Los Angeles rush hour traffic I decided to investigate room hopping NFFC style for myself. A quick check of the notice board revealed that while there was room hopping on nearly every floor of the Crowne Plaza the fourth floor seemed to offer the most action.
Imagine my surprise upon exiting the elevator to see a series of rooms with their doors wide open and a variety of signs, featuring Disney characters of all kinds, inviting anyone and everyone to come in and swap, talk and shop.
Unlike a SciFi convention, for example, which will have a large exhibit hall dedicated to sales and trading open for the length of a convention the Strictly Disneyana Show and Sale only takes place on the last day of the convention. Before that day vendors who want to sell Disneyana collectables convert their rooms and suites into small shops.
Here at last were the masters of Disney collecting that I should have studied with prior to my haphazard entry into pin trading and commemorative plate collecting. As I hopped from room to room I saw thousands of pins and every conceivable manner of Disney collectable. There were sculpted figurines, models, trains, toys, dolls, plush, prints and posters of every description.
At one point my early childhood came back to me when I spotted a set of brilliantly colored vinyl placemats. Each mat featured a vivid illustration of Donald, Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket, Pluto or Ludwig Von Drake. They were still in a wrapper, which read, "Compliments of your RCA Victor Dealer." I remember getting a set of those placemats with my family's very first color television.
Yes children, once upon a time TV was only available in black and white and there were only three channels to choose from.
After visiting just a few rooms it soon became obvious why NFFC members need a whole week of room hopping. This wasn't just a huge shopping event. It was like a gigantic family reunion. It was a chance for old friends from far-flung parts of the country to catch up with one another. And, judging by a few of the conversations I overheard it was a chance for more than a few folks to, in the words of an old cowboy friend of mine, practice their lies. You know stories like the one about a one of a kind item found at a garage sale for a dollar that brought three hundred at a previous sale or show.
In the days that followed I spent a lot of time room hopping but there was still a great deal more to do and see at this year's NFFC National Convention. Unlike Disneyland that let the 40th Anniversary of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room come and go without so much as a press release the NFFC hosted a celebration in honor of this landmark Disneyland attraction.
With the exception of Thursday July 17, an Open Day in honor of Disneyland's 48th Anniversary, each day of the convention was full of events and presentations by an impressive roster of speakers. Sessions ranged from an artists panel discussion to presentations by Tim O'Day and former Imagineer Eric Robinson to presentations on Elongated Coins, the El Capitan restoration and Buena Vista Games announcement of the coming release of Tron 2.0.
Two of the most widely attended events at this year's NFFC Convention took place on Saturday July 20. The first session of the day was a look back at an NFFC National Convention tradition, The Bruce and David Show. Over the years The Bruce and David Show, which featured co-authors and Disney Imagineers Bruce Gordon and David Mumford, had become a hysterical highpoint of NFFC National Conventions. David Mumford passed away from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma earlier this year and it fell to his colleague and friend Bruce Gordon to host the final Bruce and David Show, a video tape retrospective of some of their wackiest antics.
During the presentation Bruce Gordon made it clear that over the years he and David had developed a reputation for two things, "throwing stuff" out to their audience and shamelessly "plugging things." One of those things is perhaps the most famous book on the history of Disneyland there is, Disneyland The Nickel Tour: A Post Card Journey Through Half A Century of the Happiest Place On Earth.
Fittingly Gordon ended his presentation with the announcement of the publication of a new book that he and David Mumford wrote with and about legendary Disney matte artist Peter Ellenshaw, Ellenshaw Under Glass. The book was Mumford's last project. And, even though the preceding video presentation demonstrated that Gordon is a natural entertainer and pitchman it was clear that he was struggling to stay upbeat while telling the audience about this his final collaboration with David Mumford.
The final event of the day was Luncheon With A Disney Legend. Actually there were three Disney legends. David Smith, keeper of the Walt Disney Company Archive, gave a presentation on the history of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Which turned out to be the introduction of featured guests Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor the official voices of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
A Disney Legend in her own right Alice Davis chats with Wayne Allwine.
Image copyright obe-mediaone. All rights reserved.
I can't find words to tell you what it's like to see these two charming and lovely people talk about their respective careers and suddenly and without warning break into the voices of Mickey and Minnie. Unlike their animated alter egos who seem to be caught in a perpetual state of courtship Wayne and Russi are real life husband and wife. Wayne is a self-described sound engineer "who got lucky" and Russi in addition to doing the voice of Minnie Mouse is a talented and frequently sought after voice actor.
Wayne and Russi went out of their way to tell the audience how grateful they are for all the love and support they receive from fans of their work. Both performers donate hours of their time making phone calls, as Mickey and Minnie, to sick children. And both Wayne and Russi stayed for hours after their panel discussion to sign autographs and talk with fans.
I left the NFFC National Convention that day. There was one day left, Sunday July 20, the day of the huge NFFC Strictly Disneyana Show and Sale. I made a lame excuse about having been away from home and family for to long. But, I knew the real reason for not staying for the sale. I'm just not ready to add that room onto the house.
C'ya real soon!
On July 16, of this year the NFFC board of directors invited C. W. Oberleitner to join them as their new Vice President Media Relations and Communications. He accepted. Lord help them.—Editor
