Less love for Pluto in the new "Mickey Mouse" series

This one is partially due to this being the Year of the Dog...

On my last post, I resented how much attention that Minnie Mouse seemed to get on the new Mickey Mouse series. By contrast, another character gets nowhere near as much love. He is Mickey Mouse's dog, Pluto.

While he has started to appear more frequently in recent shorts, the fact of the matter is, Pluto's initial appearances have been infrequent. He has appeared in 13 shorts (out of 78), which is not bad, while Daisy's appearances have declined, but she still has 14, one more than Pluto. This list below shows the exact amount that Pluto has appeared in, counting cameos:

• Dog Show
• Space Walkies
• Doggone Biscuits
• Coned
• No
• Couple's Sweaters
• Shipped Out
• The Birthday Song
• The Perfect Dream
• Year of the Dog
• New Shoes (in a picture)
• Dumb Luck
• Flushed

It should be noted that "Dog Show" was Pluto's only appearance in the first season of the series, while "Space Walkies" and "Doggone Biscuits" were his only two appearances in the second season.

In any case, here are some other shorts where I feel Pluto could have been used:

• Gasp! (Pluto is friends with Gubbles and tries to help Mickey stop the cat)
• Ghoul Friend (Pluto accompanies Mickey on the trip, tries to protect Mickey from the Goofy zombie on the cliff, and then tries to make off with the zombie's arm bone)
• Goofy's Grandma (Pluto lives with Mickey and is as annoyed with Goofy's "grandma" as Mickey is)
• The Boiler Room (Pluto is among the crowd of apartment dwellers)
• Mickey Monkey (Pluto is on the boat with Mickey's other friends and is the only one to know that the monkey is not Mickey)

All told, those five appearances would equal 18, which is still low, but Pluto would at least be used a little more frequently. Mind you, these are all just my opinions on how I would have done things. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Paul Rudish LOVES Minnie Mouse

This article is a matter of personal opinion with me, but I'm going to assume that Minnie Mouse must be Paul Rudish's favorite character (of the Fab Six, anyway) for her to be used in well over half of the shorts featured on the 2013 Mickey Mouse series, as well as that new Runaway Railway dark ride being added to Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2019.

Of the 78 (as of writing) shorts produced for this series (not counting specials), Minnie appears in 49, counting brief appearances or cameos, and some of them actually star her and not Mickey (who sometimes does not appear at all). For reference, here's a list of all the shorts where she appears (those that bear her name instead of Mickey's on the title are marked with an asterisk (*)):

• No Service
• Yodelberg
• Croissants de Triomphe
• New York Weenie
• Bad Ear Day
• O Sole Minnie
• Third Wheel
• The Adorable Couple
• Cable Car Chaos
• Fire Escape
• Eau de Minnie*
• Captain Donald
• The Boiler Room
• Mickey Monkey
• Clogged*
• Goofy's First Love
• Doggone Biscuits*
• Al Rojo Vivo
• Bottle Shocked
• A Flower For Minnie
• Wish Upon a Coin
• Movie Time
• Shifting Gears
• Black and White
• ¡Feliz Cumpleaños!
• Wonders of the Deep
• Road Hogs
• No
• Dancevidaniya
• Couple Sweaters
• Sock Burglar*
• Ku'u Lei Melody
• Entombed
• No Reservations*
• Touchdown and Out
• Locked In Love
• Bee Inspired
• Shipped Out
• Three-Legged Race
• Nature's Wonderland
• The Birthday Song
• The Perfect Dream
• Carnaval
• Year of the Dog
• The Fancy Gentleman
• New Shoes
• Springtime
• Dumb Luck
• Roll 'em

By contrast, Goofy appears in 39 shorts, Donald in 32, Daisy in 14, and Pluto in a mere 13 (all counting cameos, by the way).

NOTE: The numbers may not be entirely accurate, however.

So I'm going to assume that Minnie is Paul Rudish's favorite of Mickey's inner circle. There is no other explanation. That is why even though I'm not personally fond of the series, I do watch it, but I prefer shorts where she does not appear, like those with Donald, Goofy and/or Pluto, or those with just Mickey by himself.

Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of gender equality, and it's nice that Minnie is no longer just the distressed damsel she is in some of the cartoons of old, but there has to be a balance here, and I feel that there should be some more appearances by Donald, Goofy and, perish the thought, Pluto. I always feel that everything should be balanced.

I also kind of think it's time to figure out who can replace Russi Taylor as Minnie's voice, because she's not going to be around forever.

Winnie the Pooh Rides the School Bus

A quick one today...

With another school year starting and in honor of the release of the new Christopher Robin movie, here's something interesting: an educational video in which Winnie the Pooh and his friends (as how they looked on the old-school Disney Channel's Welcome To Pooh Corner) ride a school bus. It seems as though the school bus can be one of the most dangerous places around, as they are constantly referring the need to always be safe, often in song. Also, the bus driver looks like a reject from Sesame Street. Who would have thought that there was so much to riding the school bus safely? At least they're not talking about the dangers of strangers in this one. In any case, here's the video. Enjoy.

Elsa is NOT a princess!

This is a minor rant in response to the brand-new trailer for the upcoming sequel to Wreck-It Ralph.

I've seen many fan artwork that prominently features both royal sisters in Frozen in the crowd of Disney princesses:

And it really frustrates me that they consider Elsa a princess (it also frustrates me that Mulan is considered a princess, but that's another story). She may have started out as a princess, but now she is a queen. I have no qualms about Anna being in this crowd, because she is a princess, but Elsa is a queen. As such, I like it when I read information on merchandise about Elsa that describes her as "Queen Elsa", because they're absolutely right and know what they're talking about:

Most of the time, given how obscenely popular the movie became, Anna and Elsa are treated as their own separate franchise, which is all to the good. However, from time to time, they have been seen, however briefly, with the other Disney princesses.

Things came to a head for me when I went to the movies a few weeks ago. One of the trailers was for the upcoming Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2. I had heard that one of the things that so many people went nuts over was this one scene where Vanellope Von Schweetz has an encounter with the Disney princesses:

As if that wasn't enough,Vanellope tells them she is a princess, too, and they ask what kind of princess she is, with Elsa in particular asking if Vanellope has "magic hands":

And to all of that, I say once more, "What part of 'Elsa is a queen, not a princess' do these people not understand?" Again, I have no objections with Anna hanging out with them, but Elsa is no longer a princess. It just really rubs me the wrong way.

(And by the way, maybe it's just because I'm a big fan of Pee-wee's Playhouse, which I have seen constantly throughout my life, but Elsa looks like kind of like one of the Del Rubio Triplets. I don't know why, though.)

Anyway, maybe it is that "princess" is Disney talk for "heroine". After all, Disney loves to use words to mean anything they want (i.e., "cast member" means "employee"), and in this case, "princess" means "heroine". Of course, by that logic, that means Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, Tinker Bell, Alice, Maid Marian (from Robin Hood) and others too many to mention are all princesses, too.

Maybe the notion of "princess vs. queen" can be summed up in this video from Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who, many years ago, posted an editorial about "princess hate". I won't post the video here (click here if you want to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xv-DoKUgL0), but basically, he too has objections over "princess" vs. "queen", and speculates that Disney, indeed the entertainment industry as a whole, is practically anti-queen, as queens are usually cast as villains, not heroines, whereas princesses represent innocence, youth and beauty.

In any case, I'm just glad I'm not that sucked in by the Frozen, or even princess, hype. But then again, I'm a guy, and way out of the age range of the princess franchise anyway (little girls).

How Pinocchio died

In the climax of Pinocchio, Pinocchio is laid out cold, presumably dead:

There has been some debate as to how he managed to die. The most common belief is that he drowned - even though, in searching for Monstro, he had spent a long time underwater with no side effects whatsoever.

In my opinion, I don't think Pinocchio died by drowning. There is another explanation, one that to me seems a lot more logical. As Pinocchio drags Geppetto to safety behind a rocky crevice, Monstro rams his head against the wall good and hard...

...sending up a huge blast of water every which way that obscures the screen.

It is possible, in this case, that the blast of water threw Pinocchio against a rock, knocking him out. Another possible explanation was that he somehow wore himself out trying to get Geppetto to safety.

In any case, Pinocchio did not die because of drowning.

MouseCon 2017 cosplay gallery

In November 2017, I made my yearly pilgrimage to MouseCon, held that year in a convention area near the San Francisco airport. Why they changed it this year, I don't know; I had a doozy of a time getting over there. As always, there were galleries, booths and cosplayers, as well as guest celebrities, including Keith Coogan, the voice of Tod as a cub in The Fox and the Hound, and veteran Pixar performer John Ratzenberger, who I did not get to see. Also, there were small theaters for small presentations. I went cosplaying as Christopher Robin, but nobody really got it; it was too simplistic.

In any case, here are some shots of the cosplayers I got for this year, some of which were taken from a cosplay contest I attended. One of the judges is another guest celebrity, John C. Morris, the voice of Andy in the Toy Story series.

These are the judges of the contest. The short one in the middle is John C. Morris, who, as I mentioned before, voiced Andy in Toy Story.

Here's a better, if not head-on, shot of Morris:

I look forward to this upcoming MouseCon to see what I can find this time around. This time around, it will be held in Concord again, thankfully, which means I won't have to traverse any major cities to get where I want to go. I haven't decided who I'm cosplaying as this time, but I should have some time. I'm debating between either dressing as Geppetto again or dressing as Br'er Bear from Song of the South (which I'm pondering for the 2019 D23, and which would make sense as 2019 will be the 30th anniversary of Splash Mountain).

Happy Year of the Dog!

In the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Dog! Coincidentally (or perhaps not so much), Disney is about to release an appropriate classic animated feature to the Walt Disney Signature Collection line of Blu-Rays and DVDs: Lady and the Tramp. And once again, as in all home video releases of the film, the cover art is the same shot: that of Lady and Tramp having their iconic spaghetti dinner as their lips are about to meet...

Don't fix what's not broke, I guess.

Anyway, between the upcoming Blu-Ray release of the movie and this year being the Year of the Dog, I would like to show this program from the old Disneyland TV show called...

One of the earliest episodes of the show ever, airing in December of 1954, this program, as the name implies, takes a look at some of Disney's canine stars. It is divided into two parts. The first half is about the making of Lady and the Tramp, in production at the time (it would be released the following June). The second half is all about the life and times of Disney's first dog star, Mickey Mouse's pooch, Pluto (including his Oscar-winning short Lend a Paw). This piece of opening artwork shows as much:

Both segments of the program have been included separately as bonuses of DVD releases related to them. The Lady and the Tramp segment was included as a bonus on the 2006 DVD and 2012 Blu-Ray releases of the film, and the Pluto segment was likewise included as a bonus on the Walt Disney Treasures set "The Complete Pluto, Part One", released in 2004.

So, in honor of the upcoming rerelease of Lady and the Tramp, taking place in the Year of the Dog, here is the first part of the Disneyland episode, "A Story of Dogs":

You can look up later parts of the program on YouTube. Happy Year of the Dog!