This has been really confusing. Let me see if I can get this straightened out. I'll make a little Buzzy timeline/field guide.
-First appearance:
Red jumpsuit, white gloves, blue hat
This was the beta design for Buzzy. This is not really Buzzy but rather "Captain Cortex" from before they had the current preshow made. Before we got the preshow we have today, Colossal Pictures was working on animating one, but halfway through production it was deemed too dry and condescending and handed over to Walt Disney Feature Animation. I believe this is why we have this
kind of weird mural of an early-production Captain Cortex and General Knowledge, and also why Buzzy looks so different in the preshow than the animatronic does. They had to retrofit an animatronic they already had to resemble a new, animated character.
This Buzzy was never shown to the public. He appeared in some promotional images (such as
1989 cover of Disney News and in the
WDW Explorer CD-Rom)
-Second appearance:
Big glasses, green hat, brown coat, molded rubber hands
Here he now looks like pre-show Buzzy (kinda). He's got the big glasses, green hat, big headphones, brown jacket, green shirt and pants, and notably the molded rubber hands. This version is the one most often used in promotional images and promotional video, and in every news article written about him as of recently. It is difficult to find video/pictures taken by the public of this particular Buzzy model as he was changed fairly soon thereafter.
Here's a camcorder video of this Buzzy model from 1989. The molded rubber hands did not play well with the animatronic underbody, and got worn out quickly. Because of this, he was given rubber-lined brown gloves. I'm not sure of exactly when this change happened.
-Third appearance:
Small glasses, brown gloves
For whatever, his glasses were changed. The ones Buzzy has in this third appearance are much smaller. His eyes have been repainted (smaller pupils) and he now has eyelashes. This was the last change they made to him before it's closure, and he ran like this for the majority of his life-- most pictures of him you see taken by the public/cast members are this version. As we know, after the ride had closed, Buzzy started
to look very bad and his
lazy eye got very intense. (Interestingly, his lazy eye seems to be a problem as far back as the second appearance as he appears to have a little eye trouble in a bit of
promotional footage that was spliced into this video.)
-Fourth appearance:
Bare animatronic hands
In 2013, someone posted a photo of Buzzy that included
scaffolding around him. Note his hands. There were reports that people were working on him. After this event, photos of Buzzy showed that his lazy eye and his one wild eyebrow had been fixed. He then
looked great up until he was stolen in late 2018, with the exception of his hands being bare animatronic. According to BDD (not the most reliable source, I know) his brown gloves had been stolen in October 2012.
This is just a rough timeline. It is a little bit hard to date pictures of him but you can usually do so by noting the appearance differences, position in the chair, and amount of hydraulic fluid stain on the screen underneath him.
(Earlier, and
later.)
So, about the police report mentioning the red jacket. If you'll notice the picture of Buzzy for the second appearance, there is a red light cast on him. I personally think the person who wrote the police report saw this picture as opposed to the other ones (its the easiest available HD pic of Buzzy) and thought that his jacket was red because of it. First appearance Buzzy/Captain Cortex is wearing a red
jumpsuit rather than jacket. I spoke with somebody who had personally seen the picture of BDD's car, and they noted specifically that the jacket in the photo was brown. (Take with a grain of salt)
As for the hands, I have no idea why the hands that were reported missing were the rubber ones. I do not know if the police again googled Buzzy and saw the aforementioned picture where he has rubber hands, or if they looked at Disney documentation about Buzzy that only listed the cosmetics for second appearance Buzzy. There are probably extra costumes in storage for him, I've seen it mentioned his blue hat is in Costuming. Always found it a little weird we never saw photos of Buzzy without his hat/headphones and jacket after they were stolen. I feel like someone would have taken a picture of that.
Phew! All done! ..........................Looking back on this whole post, it's a lot...I swear to god I didn't steal him! Just a fangirl...
