Category Archives: Disney

Can you name the top merchandised film of the past 18 months?

By web gangsta | Published: June 28, 2010



Profit from your Idea via Smart Licensing
Profit from your Idea via Smart Licensing

Web Watch has previously covered HOW MUCH MONEY THE DISNEY CORPORATION MAKES ON POOH AND MICKEY MERCHANDISE, and it should come as no surprise that licensing of film characters — whether it be from any of the Disney-Pixar canon, to action heros, to Harry Potter, or to those appearing in the Twilight series – is all big, big business and massive money makers for those who hold the character licensing rights.

But can you name which are the TOP TEN FILMS WITH FILM MERCHANDISE over the past 18 months, based solely on the amout of imported licensed products that have been coming through customs (in other words, not counting anything made in the USA)?  

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Movie Review: Toy Story 3

By web gangsta | Published: June 27, 2010



Toy Story 3 Poster
Toy Story 3 poster

Rated G for being appropriate for all ages, and a must-see for everyone.  Remember, a “G” rating or that the film is animated does not mean that the film is intended to be seen only by children.
Rating: A+

TOY STORY 3 is the latest film from Disney-Pixar, and completes the Toy Story trilogy that had releases in 1995 and 1999.  While the first two Toy Story films were made four years apart, Web Watch will estimate that only 2 years of movie-time passed for the characters in the film.  On the other hand, Toy Story 3 was released 11 years after Toy Story 2, and the filmmakers decided to run the movie clock those eleven years as well – which means that it’s time for the toy’s owner, Andy, to head off to college.

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Improving Disney Shopping, Part 5: Tigger Watch 2011 revisited

By web gangsta | Published: June 4, 2010



Tigger
Tigger

Web Watch last had a TIGGER WATCH article almost a year ago, which is plenty of time to have passed to see if Disney has been paying attention and improved the Disney Shopping Experience.

We were prompted to revisit TIGGER WATCH 2011 due to popular Disney blogger JIM HILL’s recent column entitled DISNEY’S GOING BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH WINNIE the POOH.   Why?  Because there are some things in Jim Hill’s article that just didn’t seem to add up.

Jim Hill quotes  Andy Mooney, Chairman of Disney Consumer Products, as saying that Disney has “done a lot of research” regarding the Pooh characters and marketing franchise.  Mr Mooney states, ““We talked with a lot of mothers. Who do most of the buying when it comes to Winnie the Pooh merchandise.”  He continues, “What we’re really looking to do here is return these characters to their roots. Try and recapture what made them so popular, so desirable in the first place.”

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The 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies Ever Made

By web gangsta | Published: June 3, 2010



Disturbing Movies

Growing up, we all remember being taken to see certain movies with our parents and wondering why they thought that seeing these films would be a good idea.

Web Watch faintly remembers being taken to see a double-feature of THE THREE MUSKETEERS with UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT, and recalls that we really couldn’t follow the plots of either film, let alone understand why we were taken to see them. 

But when it comes to kid’s films, Walt Disney once famously said “for every laugh, a tear must fall”, which explains why many Disney films made back in the day contain some vivid, scary imagery or themes that may be a bit heavy for what today are considered to have been – truthfully or not - primarily children’s films.  There’s a reason why the attraction at Walt Disney World is entitled SNOW WHITE’S SCARY ADVENTURES… because that Evil Queen reallydoes live up to her name.

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How Disney Villains stack up against each other, and against other characters

By web gangsta | Published: May 26, 2010



The Disney Villain
The Disney Villain

Remember a few months ago when Web Watch showed you the PIXAR CHARACTER SIZING CHART?  Well, it seems that was just the beginning for artist Juan Pablo Bravo.

Since then, he has come out with two additional charts in his character sizing series:

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Meet David Rosdeitcher – The Zip Code Man

By web gangsta | Published: May 9, 2010



The Adventures of the ZipCodeMan
The Adventures of the Zip Code Man

David Rosdeitcher has an affinity for numbers, or just a really good memory. He is a street performer from Boulder, Colorado, and his act consists of asking the audience for their zip code.  He then proceeds to tell those people not only what city they’re from, but also about a restaurant or other local point of interest that’s located there.

He’s been called THE ZIP CODE MAN, THE MIGHTY ZIP CODE MAN, and MR ZIP CODE.

As a busker, he earns money based on the tips that people provide from the entertainment he offers.  His pitch line is “give me money, because I know where you live.”  It seems to be effective.

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The WOOT BAG OF CRAP (aka Bandolier of Carrots) is here!

By web gangsta | Published: April 6, 2010


Woot Off Lights
Woot Off Lights

Web Watch likes bargains, and sometimes you end up getting what you pay for.

Take online shopping site WOOT.COM, for example.   For those of you who don’t know, woot.com is an online clearinghouse of discount, discontinued, overstock, and occasional new product introductions.  The catch is that woot.com only sells one item a day – and once they’re sold out, they’re gone.  The bonus – no matter what you buy from woot, shipping is only $5.

So, on occasion when woot is selling phenomenal stuff, like the TIVO SERIES 3 HD DVR (which normally retails for around $400 new) at a woot-tastic price of $169 for a freshly refurbished model – they can sell out relatively quickly, even when users are limited to buying at most three of each sale item.

Then there are the other occasions when woot is selling inexpensive camera tripods for $1 each, and they do everything in their power to get rid of them as fast as possible and still not succeed in putting a dent in the woot inventory before the day is through.

And that latter situation is what brings us to the famous woot-off, because woot needs to do something with the inventory that even they can’t sell.

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Disney/PIXAR Character Sizing Guide (comparing Toy Story’s Woody to WALL-E to UP’s Kevin and more)

By web gangsta | Published: April 4, 2010


Pixarpedia
Pixarpedia

Aspiring animators and cartoon artists are constantly trying to size their characters up against each other, to ensure that perspectives and size relationships are maintained throughout the production.

It’s probably why Keifer Sutherland is always filmed from low camera angles on “24″, in order to maintain size ratios with his co-stars and give Keifer the “larger than life” persona he needs to portray Jack Bauer.  But we digress.

With this in mind, artist Juan Pablo Bravo has put together an art piece that compares the sizes of all major Disney/PIXAR characters from TOY STORY through UP (including some of the Pixar shorts, such as Geri’s Game or For The Birds)

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Another Disney Bus Accident: Improving Disney Transportation part 2

By web gangsta | Published: April 1, 2010



Disney Monorail
Disney Monorail

Today marks yet another accident on the Walt Disney World transportation system — this time, a 10-year-old boy was struck and killed by Disney bus while he was riding his bike near Fort Wilderness with an 11-year-old friend (who was unhurt).  Initial reports say that both children were wearing proper safety gear, but bike helmets are no match versus a bus.

This past year has seen an unfortunate growing number of major accidents involving guest transportation at Disney World.  Two other bus incidents – one of which just occurred last week – sent park guests to area hospitals with mostly minor injuries and one serious one.  Combined with the Monorail cast member death last July, these accidents seem to be happening with more and more frequency, especially troubling as Walt Disney World prides itself on creating a safe environment for its guests.

So while Web Watch has talked about HOW TO IMPROVE DISNEY TRANSPORTATION in the past, perhaps its time to take another look at what else could be done.

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Winnie The Pooh gets the ALIEN treatment, and Tigger finds out what Tiggers do best

By web gangsta | Published: March 27, 2010



The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh (and Tigger, Too)
The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh

Winnie The Pooh and his pals have had many adventures over the years, and even though Pooh gets top billing most of the time, Web Watch knows that Tigger is the real star of the show.

Others seem to appreciate the timeless Pooh and Tigger stories as well, and every occasionally we will run across some Tigger and Pooh fan fiction – you know, those fan-created stories featuring their favorite characters.  Heck, in 2000, the Canadian Medical Association published their own fan fiction featuring the characters in the 100-Acre Wood entitled PATHOLOGY IN THE HUNDRED ACRE WOOD: A NEURODEVELOPENTAL PERSPECTIVE ON A.A. MILNE that the Pooh characters suffered from various mental and psychological illnesses:

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Want FIGMENT and DREAMFINDER returned to the Imagination ride at Disney’s EPCOT? Here’s how

By web gangsta | Published: March 24, 2010



Epcot's FIGMENT
Epcot’s FIGMENT stuffed toy

Fans of Walt Disney World’s EPCOT theme park have a new mission: to RETURN THE FIGMENT AND DREAMFINDER CHARACTERS TO EPCOT, specifically to the Journey Into Imagination ride.

First, some history:  when Epcot first opened, the plan was for the park to not have any of the traditional Disney characters present at all.  Of course, “where are the characters?” was a common complaint from families who visited and expected to see Disney characters at any Disney theme park they visited – which, at the time consisted of just the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland…not exactly a large sample size to deal with, here.

But Epcot did have one cuddly, friendly cartoony character available – FIGMENT, the playful winged dragon of imagination — who, along with his mentor Dreamfinder, became the defacto face of Epcot when no other characters were available.

Luckily, park fans loved Figment and Dreamfinder, and together they made the original incarnation of the JOURNEY INTO IMAGINATION attraction a family must-see favorite.  Ask anyone who visited the park in those days if they could sing the “Imagination” song, and you’ll hear everyone share their version of “One Little Spark”.

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Can YOU name the top 50 global brands?

By web gangsta | Published: March 2, 2010



Designing Brand Identity

It’s hard to differentiate your brand in a small market.

Imagine how difficult it can be to establish your brand in today’s world-wide environment.

Now imagine how more complicated that has become with the Internet diluting everybody’s attention span to that of a walnut.  Now you have an idea of how hard it can be to get a new brand noticed in the competitive world-wide field.

Especially when other companies have had decades-upon-decade head start on you.

Here is a list of the TOP 50 BEST GLOBAL PUBLICALLY-TRADED BRANDS FOR 2009, as ranked by their overall brand value in the marketplace.  

The first ten are fairly easy to pinpoint by anybody who’s been paying attention to anything around them:

  1. Coca-Cola
  2. IBM
  3. Microsoft
  4. General Electric
  5. Nokia
  6. McDonald’s
  7. Google
  8. Toyota
  9. Intel
  10. DisneyAnd the rest are a bit more interesting where they fell:
  11. Hewlett-Packard
  12. Mercedes-Benz
  13. Gillette
  14. Cisco
  15. BMW
  16. Louis Vuitton
  17. Marlboro
  18. Honda
  19. Samsung
  20. Apple
  21. H&M
  22. American Express
  23. Pepsi
  24. Oracle
  25. Nescafe
  26. Nike
  27. SAP
  28. Ikea
  29. Sony
  30. Budweiser
  31. UPS
  32. HSBC
  33. Canon
  34. Kellogg’s
  35. Dell
  36. Citibank
  37. JP Morgan
  38. Goldman Sachs
  39. Nintendo
  40. Reuters
  41. Gucci
  42. Philips
  43. Amazon
  44. L’oreal
  45. Accenture
  46. eBay
  47. Siemens
  48. Heinz
  49. Ford
  50. Zara

More interesting than how many of these global brands could you name – how many of these brands do you touch or interact with on a daily basis as part of your everyday life?

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Video Fun: Parodies of Discovery Channel’s “The World is Just Awesome” video (boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da)

By web gangsta | Published: February 2, 2010



Deadliest Catch Dutch Harbor T-Shirt

If you have watched The Discovery Channel on any regular basis over the past two years, you should have seen their musical promotional video. It’s either called “I Love The World” or “The World is Just Awesome” depending on who you talk to, and is also otherwise known as the ”boom-de-ah-da”, “boom-de-yada”, or “boom-de-ya” song, depending on how you interpret the spelling of the refrain).

The clip features scenes from various Discovery Channel shows, such as DEADLIEST CATCH, MYTHBUSTERS, DIRTY JOBS, MAN VS WILD and others, with the stars and guests on the shows lipsyncing the catchy commercial song as they go about their business.

Here’s one of the originals:

And here the Discovery Channel stars themselves sing it live:

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Picking a good password is important. “Tigger” is not a good password.

By web gangsta | Published: January 24, 2010


username password underwear

A recent study has been released that took a look at over 32 million passwords that were published onto the Internet after a hacker broke into the ROCKYOU.COM website.

This is the first time that a password study of this magnitude was able to be performed, but it did confirm a few things about users and the passwords they choose:  PEOPLE ARE NOT PICKING SECURE PASSWORDS FOR THEIR ONLINE ACCOUNTS.

The most common password found online is typically 12345, although the ROCKYOU data had the most common password being 123456, with nearly 1 percent of the ROCKYOU users being that uncreative.  Go figure – that extra digit made it that much harder to hack into the critical ROCKYOU website. 

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Mahna Mahna (doo doo doo doo doo). Mahna Mahna (doo doo doo doo).

By web gangsta | Published: December 16, 2009


Mahna Mahna songSo by now, Web Watch hopes that you have taken the time to view the Muppets’ version of Queen’s BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. 

If you haven’t, we’ve included it here.  (If you have, we know you’re just going to click PLAY again, if only to watch Animal’s segment one more time.)

Obviously the highlight of the video for most people is Animal’s part.  Web Watch, on the other hand, enjoyed noticing the many lesser-known Muppets that were included in the video, including Mahna Mahna.

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