EPCOT Figment, well, to be replaced by Figment

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

*sigh* and just like that, while we’re here celebrating the fact they put out some perfect t-shirts based on the classic ride we all love and want back. We get mixed-up nonsense on the new dress shirt. Seriously. Does anyone really want Skunk Figment as opposed to iconography or more of the classic ride scenes with Dreamfinder & Figment? Ya know, the scenes that actually fit with using our creative abilities rather than getting our senses checked? (As Tony Baxter once said, “if you can explain to me what an upside down toilet on the ceiling and learning how a skunk smells improves your imagination. It would help me a lot cause I for one can’t figure it out”)
Even the ride vehicles aren’t right, and they’ve sneakily put the original pavilion spiral logo onto the current day red vehicles when they infact (sadly) have the institute logos used on them instead… :

Still trying to pull a fast one on us, eh Disney? You think we won’t notice but I know I certainly do. I’m more than willing to call out usage of the 02-current day Honey I Shrunk rethemed sham when I see it. There is ‘zero’ excuse to use that for new Figment material when you have 20 or so years of complaints & data proving that the redo isn’t as (infact, not at all) popular compared to the original ride, evidence of closing the popular original under totally shady circumstances, the sales numbers of the marvel backstory comics & new original ride inspired 2024 golden book etc. Missed opportunity to use the original load area mural art by Toshi Muto much? Now ‘that’ would’ve made an awesome dress shirt:

 

[FigmentFan82]

*sigh* and just like that, while we’re here celebrating the fact they put out some perfect t-shirts based on the classic ride we all love and want back. We get mixed-up nonsense on the new dress shirt. Seriously. Does anyone really want Skunk Figment as opposed to iconography or more of the classic ride scenes with Dreamfinder & Figment? Ya know, the scenes that actually fit with using our creative abilities rather than getting our senses checked? (As Tony Baxter once said, “if you can explain to me what an upside down toilet on the ceiling and learning how a skunk smells improves your imagination. It would help me a lot cause I for one can’t figure it out”)
Even the ride vehicles aren’t right, and they’ve sneakily put the original pavilion spiral logo onto the current day red vehicles when they infact (sadly) have the institute logos used on them instead… :
View attachment 913053

Still trying to pull a fast one on us, eh Disney? You think we won’t notice but I know I certainly do. I’m more than willing to call out usage of the 02-current day Honey I Shrunk rethemed sham when I see it. There is ‘zero’ excuse to use that for new Figment material when you have 20 or so years of complaints & data proving that the redo isn’t as (infact, not at all) popular compared to the original ride, evidence of closing the popular original under totally shady circumstances, the sales numbers of the marvel backstory comics & new original ride inspired 2024 golden book etc. Missed opportunity to use the original load area mural art by Toshi Muto much? Now ‘that’ would’ve made an awesome dress shirt:
View attachment 913054
View attachment 913061
View attachment 913057View attachment 913059
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Having skunk Figment on the shirt is definitely a choice, but these are RSVLTS shirts so not Disney designed, and their patterns are def hit or miss for me.

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

Having skunk Figment on the shirt is definitely a choice, but these are RSVLTS shirts so not Disney designed, and their patterns are def hit or miss for me.

Ahh, fair enough. Didn’t know that. Guess it was the artist’s personal choice or preference then. Why? I dunno, but to each is own I guess. lol
But if it was some kind of corporate mandate that the artists had to follow.. trust me, I am ‘not’ happy about that and will (again) be happy to call them out on that if I found out that was Infact happening. (hopefully the rest of you will too. zero excuse for it at this point if they are.)

 

[OptimusPrime]

Ahh, fair enough. Didn’t know that. Guess it was the artist’s personal choice or preference then. Why? I dunno, but to each is own I guess. lol
But if it was some kind of corporate mandate that the artists had to follow.. trust me, I am ‘not’ happy about that and will (again) be happy to call them out on that if I found out that was Infact happening. (hopefully the rest of you will too. zero excuse for it at this point if they are.)

Well it features Figments from both versions of the ride, so I'd say he was added as a way to fill space.

It is lowkey funny too.

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

Well it features Figments from both versions of the ride, so I'd say he was added as a way to fill space.

It is lowkey funny too.

Perhaps.. but there were plenty of other scenes of Figment that could’ve been added there outside of that.

There was Figment wearing the rainbow apron putting the autumn flower petals, etc. into the paint mixture to create the paint colors he did for the rest of the Art scene, Figment holding the Cat-Bat blocks in the Literature scene, Figment making a literal ‘Shadow’ puppet in the Literature scene, Figment popping up and down from the Nightmare book, Figment holding the book of monsters closed in the Literature scene, also Figment as he appeared in the realm of science circle, twisting & turning, etc. and then all the scenes of Figment you see of him as an actor & roles he could play in the Film Finale. (A super hero, a ship captain, mountain climber, tap dancer, weight lifter, a flavor chemist scientist, etc.). And that’s not even getting into the additional ImageWorks stuff like the Mirage illusion activity where he’s a baseball player, balloon blower, a snake charmer with a rope, a ballerina, and a magician) and a music composer to represent the instructional sign that used to be seen with the Electronic Philharmonic. But yeah, whatever...

 

[DCLcruiser]

It's a tacky shirt. Not kitsch-tacky. Not tropical-shirt-tacky.

But, I'm sure there is a buyer. lol

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

It's a tacky shirt. Not kitsch-tacky. Not tropical-shirt-tacky.

But, I'm sure there is a buyer. lol

Oh, of course! And I absolutely would’ve been one of those buyers if it had stayed the correct ride that we love rather than the Honey, I Shrunk-themed, deceptively titled sham that makes no sense.

I’m not inspired to use my creative abilities from having my senses checked through a phone call pretending a train of thought is a sound, through testing my hearing, singing along on an eye chart testing my sight, a slot machine that lands on skunk to have Figment fart in my face to test my smell, and then an upside down house full of Figments doing normal, non creative occupation based stuff in a house that’s upside down, to then just be blasted at the end for whatever reason of a hodgepodge of Figments somewhat inspired by the original for 15 seconds and then be met with a wild Dr. Channing as a moon face for the finale.

The scenes from the original ride though, absolutely. Cause all of that actually had everything to do with coming up with new ideas and creating new things through creative occupations you could actually get into, in real life; Art, Literature, Theatre, Science & Tech, and Film. Just represented in a whimsical way.
I still, to this day, wanna find out what the heck the imagineers behind the 02-current one were thinking when they thought, the wild nonsense they came up with was somehow “bringing the original ride’s spirit back”, when it isn’t at all. Budget is no excuse, even the old Fantasyland rides made way more sense and had much more well crafted & staged scenes than any of that does.

 

[HMF]

It's a tacky shirt. Not kitsch-tacky. Not tropical-shirt-tacky.

But, I'm sure there is a buyer. lol

Yes, His name is John Lasseter.

 

[Homemade Imagineering]

Okay maybe SSE will leapfrog Figment.

SSE reopened, are we back??

 

[cspencer96]

one of the core inspirations behind the building’s design actually. Good eye

The Louvre pyramid was proposed by I.M. Pei in 1984 and not completed until 1988.

The Imagination Pavilion, as you know, opened October 1, 1982.

 

[Figments Friend]

That all over pattern shirt does have one postive thing ….

Figment is wearing a shirt to make him look just like @marni1971 !

Look, it’s true!

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

That all over pattern shirt does have one postive thing ….

Figment is wearing a shirt to make him look just like @marni1971 !

Look, it’s true!

View attachment 913184

Forgive me @Figments Friend . Ultimately, the reason I did and have complained for a little while whenever I see new “Imagination Institute” related things is we all know, full well, how unpopular & mocked the current Honey I Shrunk crossover version is (rightfully so) and how practically everyone misses the classic original that knows of Figment and this pavilion. The problem is I’ve noticed a ridiculous upsurge of stuff dedicated specifically to that Honey I Shrunk tied/Imagination Institute version of the ride recently and It’s not just present in the merchandise.
The How Not To Draw Figment video quite literally gets the creative process ‘wrong’ in it (the Cinderella & Donald videos in the same series don’t get their characters & core concepts wrong) the most important part of it, Figment isn’t a demonstration of said creative process anymore and it says Imagination is getting a spark of inspiration to then go and “imagine” (in that video’s case by pretending something is what it isn’t, rather than collecting & combining ideas (sparks of inspiration) together to create something new), by showing Figment seeing a drawn spark and then he says “that looks like an octopus, and now it is an octopus!” and they continue showcasing imagination as pretending things are what they’re not, throughout, when we both know full well that is not at all the way creativity/imagination was presented in the original ride. The unpopular current ride has him pretending things are what they’re not, but not the popular original.
And yeah, it may feature little references here & there in the ‘background’ from the original but it very noticeably (to me atleast) gets the core concept in the forefront wrong (utilize the bad current one rather than good original). Which is shocking since the 2024 Little Golden Book got it spot on and sold incredibly well as a result.
And it also breaks my heart to say, the Disney Speedstorm appearance from a couple years ago also reutilizes mostly quotes from the current ride (and Horizons for some reason rather than the original Journey Into Imagination) as his catchphrases rather than any of the lines from the original ride and he sounds moreso like the current grating/shouting portrayal than the original warm & charming portrayal., and the little promo video featuring the meet n greet Figment walking around the Walt Disney Studio & to the doors of Imagineering, also shows references to the current ride of testing your 5 senses to apparently create things, in that series of video clips, putting his hand on Tony Baxter’s Legend hand print after showing/doing that… like.. OMG. Utilize the very thing he (and all us fans) have been very vocally against and have hated for 20+ years now??
I had ignored it before because I figured.. alright, it’s just a little thing, they’ll surely get it right when a bigger product or piece of media comes out… but I’m starting to get more & more concerned that they Infact ‘don’t’ get what we love about this ride & character and are intentionally trying to implement in the current unpopular ride, thinking they can get away with it and folks won’t notice, when we so very clearly ‘do not’ want that one, only the original. Why ‘anyone’ would take the version of the ride where he’s rendered in terrible looking CGI interrupting a random Honey I Shrunk themed sensory lab that Infact has nothing to do with using creative abilities, & farting in our face as a skunk and doing things upside down as something that should seriously be utilized as your core reference material, that has 20+ years of complaints against it on top of it, I have no idea. But I don’t like it and will continue to complain whenever I catch them using it again.

So yeah, that’s all I really have to say. The character & ride is in an incredibly vulnerable & bad state as it is when it comes to the core media he’s being represented in atm, which is why it is ‘so’ essential, they get new prominent pieces of media featuring him ‘right’ rather than wrong. I’ll keep holding out hope they do & soon. But if not, I will not hold back on my disapproval of it, that’s for sure. Hoping the rest of you folks will do the same, I can’t force you all to do anything, but it’s important to give your honest feedback during this time. If something isn’t right, go ahead and be honest, and say so. Stay discerning & pay attention to all the details. They need the right feedback coming their way to get this right, clearly.

 

[HMF]

Forgive me @Figments Friend . Ultimately, the reason I did and have complained for a little while whenever I see new “Imagination Institute” related things is we all know, full well, how unpopular & mocked the current Honey I Shrunk crossover version is (rightfully so) and how practically everyone misses the classic original that knows of Figment and this pavilion. The problem is I’ve noticed a ridiculous upsurge of stuff dedicated specifically to that Honey I Shrunk tied/Imagination Institute version of the ride recently and It’s not just present in the merchandise.
The How Not To Draw Figment video quite literally gets the creative process ‘wrong’ in it, the most important part of it, Figment isn’t a demonstration of said creative process anymore and it says Imagination is getting a spark of inspiration to then go and “imagine” (in that video’s case by pretending something is what it isn’t, rather than collecting & combining ideas together to create something new), by showing Figment seeing a drawn spark and then he says “that looks like an octopus, and now it is an octopus!” and they continue showcasing imagination as pretending things are what they’re not, throughout, when we both know full well that is not at all the way creativity/imagination was presented in the original ride. The current ride has him pretending things are what they’re not, but not the original.
And yeah, it may feature little references here & there in the ‘background’ from the original but it very noticeably (to me atleast) gets the core concept in the forefront wrong. Which is shocking since the 2024 Little Golden Book got it spot on and sold incredibly well as a result.
And it also breaks my heart to say, the Disney Speedstorm appearance from a couple years ago also reutilizes mostly quotes from the current ride (and Horizons for some reason rather than the original Journey Into Imagination) as his catchphrases rather than any of the lines from the original ride and he sounds moreso like the current grating/shouting portrayal than original warm & charming portrayal., and the little promo video featuring the meet n greet Figment walking around the Walt Disney Studio & to the doors of Imagineering, also shows references to the current ride of using your 5 senses to apparently create things, in that series of video clips, putting his hand on Tony Baxter’s Legend hand print after showing/doing that… like.. OMG. Utilize the very thing he (and all us fans) have been very vocally against and have hated for 20+ years now??
I had ignored it before because I figured.. alright, it’s just a little thing, they’ll surely get it right when a bigger product or piece of media comes out… but I’m starting to get more & more worried that they Infact ‘don’t’ get what we love about this ride & character and are intentionally trying to implement in the current unpopular ride when we so very clearly ‘do not’ want that one, only the original. Why ‘anyone’ would take the version of the ride where he’s rendered in terrible looking CGI interrupting a random sensory lab that Infact has nothing to do with using creative abilities, & farting in our face as a skunk and doing things upside down as something that should seriously be utilized as your core reference material, tha has 20+ years of complaints against it on top of it, I have no idea. But I don’t like it and will continue to complain whenever I catch them using it again.

So yeah, that’s all I really have to say. The character & ride is in an incredibly fragile & bad state as it is when it comes to the core media he’s being represented in atm, which is why it is ‘so’ essential, they get new prominent pieces of media featuring him ‘right’ rather than wrong. I’ll keep holding out hope they do & soon. But if not, I will not hold back on my disapproval of it, that’s for sure. Hoping the rest of you folks will do the same, I can’t force you all to do anything, but it’s important to give your honest feedback during this time. If something isn’t right, go ahead and be honest, and say so. Stay discerning & pay attention to all the details. They need the right feedback coming their way to get this right, clearly.

I do think the 20+ years of complaints will hopefully give them more incentive not to mess the next one up, hopefully.

 

[WaltsTreasureChest]

That all over pattern shirt does have one postive thing ….

Figment is wearing a shirt to make him look just like @marni1971 !

Look, it’s true!

View attachment 913184

I actually really like this image of him with a Mickey Bar.

It feels like we don’t get moments like this anymore where non-Mickey Disney characters interact with or play off Mickey the way they used to.

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

I do think the 20+ years of complaints will hopefully give them more incentive not to mess the next one up, hopefully.

Pray to God they do. Cause I honestly can’t believe they’re getting it wrong in the new media we’ve seen so far. (With the exception of the Golden Book & ‘some’ of the shirts & merch we’ve seen)

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

I actually really like this image of him with a Mickey Bar.

It feels like we don’t get moments like this anymore where non-Mickey Disney characters interact with or play off Mickey the way they used to.

That’s perfectly fine & enjoyable to me, as are the elements of the original ride seen on that shirt. (And same goes for the other new media) As you mentioned, it’s a cute thing to do/have.
Figment merch used to do this back in the day too. But it’s utilizing the long hated/criticized current ride redo elements in any new media & merch featuring the character specifically that I have a problem with, when it’s so very clearly proven to be unpopular compared to the original that’s genuinely beloved and that we constantly clamor for more of. There is zero excuse for it at this point, it needs to be called out & corrected.

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

The Louvre pyramid was proposed by I.M. Pei in 1984 and not completed until 1988.

The Imagination Pavilion, as you know, opened October 1, 1982.

Whoops! You’re 100% right. My apologies on that, I had read this “fact” about it being inspired somewhere before but clearly it was wrong. Thanks for the correction. Duly noted

 

[cspencer96]

Whoops! You’re 100% right. My apologies on that, I had read this “fact” about it being inspired somewhere before but clearly it was wrong. Thanks for the correction. Duly noted

The actual inspiration for the pyramids and their shape (at least according to Imagineer Tom K. Morris) is much more interesting IMO — silver halide crystals, a key component of film and what gives it the characteristic “grain.”

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

The actual inspiration for the pyramids and their shape (at least according to Imagineer Tom K. Morris) is much more interesting IMO — silver halide crystals, a key component of film and what gives it the characteristic “grain.”

View attachment 913227

Tom K. Morris would be one of the most reputable sources. He’s absolutely right on that. And it would make the most sense as Kodak of course was the sponsor of the pavilion.

 

[Bocabear]

yeah....the Louvre Pyramid was wrong on many levels...