Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966. In the decades since, his words — or words attributed to him — have appeared on more t-shirts, coffee mugs, wall decals, and inspirational Instagram posts than any other entertainment figure in history. The quote industry around Disney is enormous, and some of it is real and some of it isn't, and the distinction doesn't seem to matter to the people buying the shirts.
This particular tee pairs a Disney quote with Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore — the Hundred Acre Wood crew, the characters A.A. Milne created in the 1920s and Disney acquired the animation rights to in 1961. The Disney version of Pooh is rounder, simpler, and more marketable than the E.H. Shepard illustrations in the original books. It's also, for better or worse, the version that most of the world thinks of as Pooh.
Vintage Disney merch sits in an interesting collector space. The modern Disney merchandise operation is one of the most sophisticated brand management systems on earth — every pixel is approved, every product is on-model, every t-shirt in every Disney Store is exactly what the brand guidelines specify. The vintage stuff predates some of that rigor. The colors are slightly off-model. The printing techniques are cruder. The overall effect is warmer, more human, less corporate — which is ironic given that Disney was already a massive corporation when this shirt was made.
Pooh himself has become a public domain character in his original A.A. Milne form — the copyright expired in 2022. But the Disney version, with the red shirt and the specific proportions, remains under copyright. This creates a split personality: one Pooh belongs to everyone, the other belongs to Disney. The Pooh on this shirt is the Disney one.
Vintage condition. There's one.
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Header image: Photo: Egor Gordeev via Unsplash