Featured Attractions

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The First Mickey Mouse Item


It is virtually impossible to walk into any store these days and not find something with Mickey Mouse or some other Disney character on it. The world's favorite mouse appears on billions of dollars worth of goods sold worldwide. Of course, this wasn't always the case. Believe it or not, but character licensing and merchandise wasn't always a big business. Many comic strip artists rarely licensed their characters to merchandisers and those who did never thought of the possible profits from the merchandise itself. They saw merchandise as just another way to promote their work. 

Walt Disney, however, saw merchandise as something that could make as much if not more money than the pictures themselves. These profits could be used to make more and better quality pictures. So Walt eagerly licensed his little mouse. The first item to be released was this simple notebook. It would be just the first of many fun items featuring Mickey Mouse.