It will be fun to have a look back at the way Disney was through the pages of the Disney Magazine. This post features an issue with both key articles and vintage advertising for the Disney company and it’s affiliates.
Let’s have a look at the cover for this Fall 1993 issue:
This magazine began in December of 1965 as the Disney News and was only 16 pages long. It was initially a free benefit for members of the Magic Kingdom Club, but later started charging a cover price (as above) with a discount for members.
The name was changed to Disney Magazine in January of 1994 to highlight it’s bigger size and expanded content. The Magic Kingdom Club ended in January of 2001 with the magazine continuing until the summer of 2005 when it finally folded.
What killed it? Apparently failing readership and the Internet.
Here is what could be found inside the Fall 1993 issue:
But while each issue did give us some excellent Disney content, this post will focus mainly on advertisements. Such as:
Buy Us First!
Very early in the magazine we are offered a subscription and a Disney Gold Card membership. With that out of the way, Disney moved on to offering products:
Arribas Brothers Crystal Dumbo
65th Anniversary Disney Dollar
Disney no doubt relied on it’s affiliates and partners to fill out the remaining advertising pages. Here are just a few of the companies that took full advantage of a captive Disney audience:
Delta and National
Kodak and The Big Red Boat
Yes, before The Disney Cruise Line sailed into existence, there was an official cruise line to the Mouse: The Big Red Boat. I wonder how many have fond memories of time spent at sea with this line?
Premier Cruise Line was a cruise line that was headquartered in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was licensed as the official cruise line for Disney starting in 1985 and used the trademark “The Big Red Boat” based on the color scheme of some of its ships. Premier was licensed to provide Disney characters on its ships, until the relationship ended in 1993.
We’ll end with a few articles from the magazine that I thought were interesting:
The Mighty Ducks Hockey Team
Still looking forward to their first season in 1993, this article gives some history of the franchise. Of course, we know now that Disney did not stand behind the team for long and quickly sold them off.
Walt and Steam
The two were inseparable back in the day and so I thought this was a nice nod to the Master! It was interesting to see the link between trains and Mickey Mouse, too.
And that concludes our look back through the pages of Disney history!
