Category Archives: Merchandizing and sales

Disney’s Snow White: Thinking about the Brand

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Disney released Snow White, the latest live-action remake of one of the studio’s classic animated films last weekend, with the controversy about the leading ladies’ political differences  still simmering.  (Rachel Zegler [Snow White] and Gal Gadot [Queen] appear in civilian clothes on the right.)  The flurry of commentaries seemed more or less agreed that the House of Mouse was trying to force a poison apple down the public’s throat. The likelihood of successfully updating this particular fairy tale for the 21st century seemed doubtful because it has as many problems as Sleeping Beauty, with a passive princess awakened with a nonconsensual kiss after a century of slumber. The box office take last weekend dropped significantly.

Zegler as Snow White and the dwarves, who were not played by actors with the syndrome but created by through a combination of techniques including C. G. I.

For Disney, the top priority has to be sustaining the brand with periodical reinvention of its classics.  Reviewers who are under the spell of Disney magic point out that the studio must create for a new generation the experience of seeing the original in new dress because of its investment in theme parks, merchandise, etc.  The business logic is impeccable, but the strategy never would have been possible if Disney had not availed itself of stories in the public domain and then taken their commodification to  new levels.

Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White, posing with the book that figures in the opening sequence. She was not credited in the film.

Watch the 1937 original Snow White and it’s clear as the nose on a dwarf’s face that transforming a sparely worded 10-page story into an 84-minute film requires sacrificing good scenes,expanding the action and elaborating details out of whole cloth.   Adding and subtracting has always central to the Disney approach to adaptation and sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s mixed.  Hard to argue with eliminating Grimm’s quiet opening of the queen embroidering during a snowfall and beginning with the brooding spirit in the magic mirror telling the stunning evil queen what she never expected to hear.   A few details in Grimm allowed Disney to spin the vertiginous scene of Snow White running through the dark woods.  Grimm briefly describes how the queen crossed the mountains to find her stepdaughter at the dwarves’ cottage, while in the film the crone punts down the misty river with the vultures watching overhead.  Probably few people would object to the last change.

The ”liberties” the Disney team took in the famous scenes that frightened children work brilliantly because they are true to the story’s spirit and structure; the ones in the scenes with Snow White haven’t aged as well, because of the way the nonhuman is domesticated by sentimentality and physical humor.  (That’s my take).
The superfluity of birds and mammals Disney added  have rounded, juvenile features that make their faces sweeter than they would be in nature.  At Snow White’s bidding they wash the dishes and do the laundry and no one thinks of biting anyone else.  Grimm’s “good little dwarves’” are transformed into a band of comically dim, bearded sidekicks in need of civilizing by the good little mother and housewife Snow White.  These miners couldn’t hold their own in Middle Earth or Discworld because their dwarvishness has dwindled away to next to nothing.The collection has a nice selection of merchandise for the original animated film, marked in prominent places that it is authorized merchandise. All of them except one appeared in 1938 on the wake of the film’s release.

Whitman Publishing Company issued a 280-page retelling of the fairy tale by the “Staff of the Walt Disney Studios based on the Walt Disney Motion Picture” in the Big Little Book series (Cotsen 87872).  Printed on acid paper that is brown and brittle, the  illustrations were printed with such a coarse screen that the dots are quite visible.  The quality of the cover art on the binding is much better, and the Queen is featured on the spine and the back board.

The Story of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Racine, Wis.: Whitman Pub. Co., c1938. (Cotsen 87872)

(Cotsen 87872)

The dwarves were featured on a get-well-soon card published by White and Wycoff.  Cotsen’s  copy is annotated by “B. W.” (presumably the giver) and Snow White has been identified over her head as “Teacher” (Cotsen 37944).   On the inside, Snow White is sitting in bed underneath a patchwork quilt with the dwarves lined up at the foot of the bed.  Could the art have been adapted from the scene where the dwarves build her a bed that was cut in the final version?

[Snow White Get Well Card]. Walt Disney Enterprises, 1938. (Cotsen 37944)

Carrochio the Italian publisher in Milan produced an activity book,”Biancaneve ei sette nani,” complete with a detailed backdrop, props, and multiple figures with stands (Cotsen 40143). Snow White’s iconic gown on the cover is blue, when it should have a yellow skirt and a blue bodice.  The Queen isn’t anywhere in the sheets of cut-outs, which means it is impossible to tell the entire story.  Little dramatists would have to cut directly from the merrymaking after dinner to the arrival of the prince on horseback.

Biancaneve ei Setti Nani. [Milan]: Carroccio, [ca 1938]. (Cotsen 40143)

If Snow White were not such a good little housekeeper, there would have been no Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Recipe Book  (Cotsen 15526), courtesy of Armour, who sold canned ox tongue, boiled beef, corned beef, and ham under its “Veribest label.”  The back story is Snow White discovers a large supply of corned beef in the cupboard and promises to show the dwarves all the ways she can prepare it if they will teach her how to make their favorite dishes (mostly versions of hash).  Some fresh vegetables besides potatoes are used in some of the recipes.  Sneezy has to be reminded of the principles of good hygiene in the kitchen and Grumpy has to turn it into a contest of who is the best cook–him  or the princess.

Armour’s Present Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Recipe Book. [England?: Armour?, not before 1937]. (Cotsen 15526)

(Cotsen 15526)

Disney could not resist promoting the art of the film in the Sketch Book published by Collins dedicated to the “eternal spirit of childhood in all of us” (Cotsen 4999).  For each character, the color plate tipped onto thick brown paper is followed by three to four pages of reproductions of original sketches, with brief descriptions of the leading characteristics.

“Sketch Book“. London: Collins, 1938. (Cotsen 4999)

One of the surprises in the stacks was a set of Snow White cards published in China (Cotsen 94564).  The illustrations are redrawn from the studio renderings and must be an unauthorized use.  Sometimes the mighty Disney lawyers are caught napping.

[Gong he xin xi. China, not after 1950?]. (Cotsen 94564)

Disney’s stream of live-action remakes of its classic animated films demonstrates that  truly great tales can’t be obliterated by heel and toe chopping, the addition of all kinds of business to the script, or a stream of products children never knew they needed until…   All the relentless activity of the last 84 years might suggest a quiet read of the Grimms to reacquaint ourselves with the story that started it all.  It has to be an improvement over the project Disney abandoned to make Kung Fu version…

 

French Promotional Giveaways about Africa in Cookies, Cheese, and Chocolate

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Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures. Battle Creek, Mich.: W. K. Kellogg, c1909. (Cotsen 4419)

Once upon a time, cereal shopping was an adventure. While mother made the circuit of the aisles, her child disappeared to the cereal section to decide which one had the best giveaway.  The cereal manufacturers were hoped to make the child pine for all their promised prizes so he or she would ask to buy more boxes of their products, supposedly creating brand loyalty. When mother arrived, negotiations began about what brand her darling wanted versus what she was willing to buy, having given in before and seen boxes of untouched cereal stripped of the prizes going stale on the shelf.  We can give thanks to the Kellogg Company of Battle Creek, Michigan for putting the first promotional giveaway for children, Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures (1909), in boxes of cornflakes.

European corporations also have used this diabolical advertising strategy in the promotion of food products to children.  Several ambitious examples of collectible premiums about Africa were added to Cotsen’s collection of advertising ephemera because they looked like an underused source for studying how corporations doing business in particular countries presented to children those cultures formerly under European control.

Africorama was a promotional giveaway ca. 1967 for Petit-Exquis cookies by the L’Alsacienne brand, which had been baking the buttery treats since the 1920s.  The cookie box contained a color enamel metal flag of an African nation. There were two sets, 20 representing the Muslim countries of Africa, and 28 for the “pays noirs” or Black countries. The set in Cotsen has all of the flags except for the Rhodesian one.  Most of the copies coming on the market are seriously defective, so it is unusual to have one so complete.  On the picture of the cookie box to the left, the metal tabs of the flags can be seen. The metal flags were supposed to be displayed on a  folded, perforated cardboard sheet illustrated by Wilquin.  The flags came with the cookies, but the child-collector had to write away for the sheets if they were to be displayed.  The set for the Muslim countries features a full-length portrait of a Berber Tuareg warrior, a Bantu warrior on the Black one. The back of the cardboard display has a big illustrated advertisement for Petit-Exquis cookies, but no clues why L’Alsacienne was issuing such an elaborate giveaway.

The second example of a French promotional giveaway, La collection La Vache qui Rit, also dates from the 1960s.  The semi-soft cheese had been sold in Africa since the 1930s and the continent remains a big market for the product.  Tucked into the little circular cardboard packages containing the cheese were illustrated cards the same size and shape. The child determined to acquire a complete set had to convince his mother to purchase over 200 boxes of cheese. I suspect many mothers were of two minds about that unless her family consumed a great deal of La Vache qui Rit anyway.  Similar to Africorama, single cards and one or the other of the display sheets are not hard to come by, a set as large as this takes persistence and time to accumulate.

The cards, none of which are signed by the artist, are in French and Dutch.  They illustrate in rather attractive detail African animals, arts and crafts, indigenous costumes, and relations between the European colonizers and native Africans in the Belgian Congo. The cards could be stood up for display if cut along the indicated lines on the front and folded as directed. The pictures are captioned, but there is no explanatory text on the back: they are blank. The subjects are quite intriguing; surely many children would have been curious to learn more about what they saw. To look at these cards, no one would have any idea that the Congo had been roiled by political turmoil since it was granted independence by Belgium in 1960.To understand why these two French corporations produced such attractive, elaborate promotional giveaways, one needs to know something about the history of European corporate investment in Africa during the twentieth century.   Have economists studied this phenomenon to learn more about how corporate strategies for increasing market share at home and possibly abroad devised these sets?  Who came up with the ideas?  Who was responsible for the projects, which could not have executed quickly or cheaply.   Was there a motive other than an economic one for making these giveaways?

How might the presentation of Africa in these promotions might have affected French children and African children living in France or abroad?  When were French children taught about the history of their country’s colonization of Africa?   Would they have been exposed to news about Africa in the press, radio, and television? What attitudes towards non-European people were reflected in the illustrations? How would they have compared with those in school books, leisure reading, or the media?  Would children have heard similar or different views expressed by the adults in their families?   And do reminiscences of collecting promotional giveaways as children survive?  Is collecting this kind of ephemera bound up with nostalgia in the same way as it is in America?