Creepy Disney walk-around costumes!

Brer Panther

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Howdy, folks! I thought it'd be fun to have a thread where we post creepy, ugly, and/or weird-looking Disney character walk-around costumes, both official and unlicensed (as in bootlegs), and make quips about them.

To start things off, here we have proof that the Woody and Buzz costumes in the parks could've looked much, much worse (I know I already posted these in another thread, but they're what gave me the idea for the thread in the first place)...

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Heppenheimer

Well-Known Member
Howdy, folks! I thought it'd be fun to have a thread where we post creepy, ugly, and/or weird-looking Disney character walk-around costumes, both official and unlicensed (as in bootlegs), and make quips about them.

To start things off, here we have proof that the Woody and Buzz costumes in the parks could've looked much, much worse (I know I already posted these in another thread, but they're what gave me the idea for the thread in the first place)...

View attachment 502029 View attachment 502030 View attachment 502031
Where do these pictures come from?

The last one of Woody doesn't look creepy, just off-model.
 

Figments Friend

Well-Known Member
View attachment 502162

The phrase "off model" comes to mind.

These are part of a set of Disney character costumes that were created by and for the 'Ice Capades' touring production in the 1950s.
This is why they have the very obvious 'facical scars' all around the front of the snouts and heads sides.
Those large triangular slots were there so the ice skating performers could see where they were going in a darkened auditorium.

These costumes were never meant to be seen in plain daylight, however Uncle Walt borrowed these for the Grand Opening of Disneyland Park.
WDP didn't have any money leftover after investing so much into building Disneyland, and it meant that they couldn't afford to produce their own costume characters in-house.
So Disney instead borrowed these from the popular 'Ice Capades' production to use for publicity photos ( like the ones shown ) and for the Grand Opening of the Park in 1955.

Some years later WDP started producing their own 'official' costume characters...the first appearing in the early 1960s if I am remembering correctly.
These were still somewhat 'generic' looking and similar to these in that they had a simplified head and a straight ahead cloth bodysuit.

By the mid-1960s a design team was assembled with the task to create more accurate costumed renderings of the characters, which resulted in the vintage oversized 'rubber heads' from the days of Theme Park history.
These 'authentic' versions appear in many promotional photos from Disneyland in the mid to late 1960s and are characterized by their gigantic heads that had a somewhat 'grotesque' appearence by today's cutified standards.
When Walt Disney World opened in 1971, most of these versions of the characters were still in use and are featured in many of the promotional photos from that time period.



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