Next up are a set of films that comprise the late 1970s and early 1980s… By this point in time, Disney animated features took longer to ready. A new film would arrive every 3-4 years. Of course, this was still an age where home video was just beginning to become a thing. Home video wouldn’t quite take off until the mid-to-late 1980s, so the wait for new Disney animated features was always buffered by an annual re-release of a classic…
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio
- Fantasia
- Dumbo and Bambi
- Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, and Make Mine Music
- Fun & Fancy Free, Melody Time, and The Adventures of the Ichabod and Mr. Toad
- From Cinderella to Lady and the Tramp
- Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, and The Sword in the Stone
- The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and Robin Hood
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound
- The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company
- From The Little Mermaid to Aladdin
- From The Lion King to Hercules
- From Tarzan to Atlantis: The Lost Empire
- From Lilo & Stitch to Chicken Little
- From Meet The Robinsons to Now…
THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH
The Film Proper…
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, as I’ve went over a few times on here and elsewhere, actually wasn’t what Walt Disney had in mind for his adaptation of A.A. Milne’s classic bedtime stories. Disney pushes this narrative that Walt intended to make three separate featurettes first, and then string them together into one whole anthology afterwards. That’s actually not true at all…
Truth is, Walt made one featurette (a 25-minute subject, too long to be a short film, and not long enough to be a feature) because he felt that the stories weren’t suitable for a feature-length film. He never reasoned that making 3 featurettes was ideal because Americans were unfamiliar with Winnie the Pooh. Walt adapted several European stories into features before, so that does not add up. No, Walt opted to tell one of the stories in a more suitable length. The first of the featurettes was Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, which was released in early 1966, just mere months before Walt Disney had passed away. Development on the second featurette – Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day – commenced shortly after Honey Tree‘s and came out two years later. The third, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too… That was conceived well after Walt’s passing, and as such, it was released in 1974… Six years after The Blustery Day.
Of course, the roughly 5-minute ending where Christopher Robin bids Winnie the Pooh farewell was the only new footage cooked up for the release.
The typography is about the same on the title cards for the individual cartoons…
More than anything, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh functioned as gap filler. Audiences starving for new Disney product would get re-releases of classics and this patched together film to hold them over.
The Theatrical Release…
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh only received a single North American theatrical release. The poster re-used the image used for The Blustery Day…
Typical Winnie the Pooh typography right there. Bubbly, friendly letters that reflect the more innocent and childlike nature of the stories.
The same font was also used for The Honey Tree, and a similar one was used for Tigger Too.
Also, check out Tigger Too‘s world premiere at Disneyland poster…
Definitely not the common Winnie the Pooh font, that’s for sure! Suitable for that particular poster though, I get more marching band and parade vibes from it.
Home Video…
Given that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a compilation feature with a tacked on ending, it made sense that it would be one of the first Disney animated features to arrive on the then-nascent format that was home video.
Released in 1981, it uses the same typography, just a different arrangement… The title wouldn’t appear on video for a looooong while after this. And by long, I mean for 15 years.
A “commemorative” release in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection, the 1996 video release introduced a more formal font for this feature. Gives it more of a vintage book cover feel, but with its paper jacket taken off. Not remarkable, but pretty to look at and not too far removed from the film itself, for the featurettes and the feature go from a real-life bedroom into a book.
The 2002 DVD release tried to combine formal serif fonts with various shapes and a ribbon.
This one kind of looks like a badge. Not bad, but not exactly a logo that quite pops or has anything in it that jumps out. I feel that the 2007 “Friendship Edition” logo fares better…
On top of being housed within a tree branch-outlined oval, the logo goes back to the 1996 cover for inspiration: Formal serif fonts and a neat arrangement. The letterforms have a sort of printed book page feel to them, so I think that’s a nice touch. Vintage-looking, in a way.
The 2013 Blu-ray cover more or less takes inspiration from this release and the 1996 release, alongside the logo for the then-recent 2011 Winnie the Pooh film.
My question is, why couldn’t they use the stylized “the” from the 2011 poster instead of that awkwardly placed italicized serif font? Works good for the “Many Adventures of” heading, not so much that middle “the”…
What’s also weird about these movies is that they never spell it as Winnie-the-Pooh, the way the original books spelled it. The book that appears in the opening of the feature and individual featurettes even spells it that way, too!
For this feature, it seems like Disney gravitates towards a more book-like aesthetic than the bubbly one used for the featurettes and the films, and their theatrical release posters. Whenever released on video, the original featurettes often used the bubbly logos. Either approach works fine though, the book-like fonts for the book-like nature of the films’ art direction, and the bubbly ones to communicate the fun side of it all…
THE RESCUERS
The Film Proper…
Here we have another font that wasn’t ever really used on any media outside of the title card. It’s used throughout the credits as well. This font is indeed stylish and distinct, but I don’t quite think it communicates too much of the film itself. Maybe the waviness of the letterforms aligns with the film’s more goofy and comedic elements? Maybe it’s supposed to line up with that family of swamp critters, the family that aids Bernard and Bianca once they get to the Devil’s Bayou? I couldn’t tell you.
If anything, I think it simply just says “it’s an adventure”, which The Rescuers certainly is. It was compared to most of the Disney animated features and even their live-action films that were coming out around that time.
The Theatrical Releases…
The original 1977 release poster’s title font is a little similar in some ways, in other ways it is not. The logo is italicized here, and everything’s in all-caps.
Still, I get kind of a watery, almost seaside-like vibe from the font. The majority of The Rescuers takes place in the Devil’s Bayou, a Florida Everglades setting. Bernard and Bianca travel around the water via a leaf propelled by a dragonfly (suitably named Evinrude, a reference to a boat motor company), the villainous Madam Medusa cruises around on this makeshift speedboat called a “swampmobile”. Yeah, that’s a watery font to me.
Trailers and TV spots used an ever wavier logo. This one is really groovy 70s through-and-through… For a film that isn’t all that 70s, despite being made in that decade.
The 1983 re-release poster, by contrast, uses a logo that doesn’t say too much.
The font used for The Rescuers, however, does look very contemporary, very early 80s. With the way that poster is constructed, making room for the featurette Mickey’s Christmas Carol – which gets a very fitting logo of its own, I get more of an 80s video game box vibe out of that than anything else. They even re-used the artwork from the original poster for this, instead of a new promo image. Still, the letterforms are interestingly shaped, once again fitting the plot of the movie well enough.
The 1989 re-release poster introduced a longer-lasting font that follows other Disney fonts of the era. Simple, non-gradient, white border…
Perhaps not making “The” capital makes it line up nicely with that humongous “R”, but I do enjoy this one. The wave-live curve to the title kind of lines up with where the adventure takes the two mice, in air, on land, on water, etc. What is it with this movie and wavy fonts?
By the by, trailers and TV spots for this re-release used a gradient version of the logo.
Home Video…
The same font is used for the film’s first video release, which came out in 1992. Fun fact, the video cover almost used the 1989 poster, but opted for a redrawn cover.
The 1999 release introduced an all-new logo for the film, one that was later re-used, along with the cover artwork, for the 2003 DVD release.
By contrast, this one feels a little too basic to me. Just a serif font, but stretched. The “R” and “S” kind of go off, but little else. At least it’s nice to look at.
The 2012 Blu-ray release, which paired it up with its sequel The Rescuers Down Under, is very basic as well.
Just… A sans-serif font. The “R” in “Rescuers” looks to be going off into some scimitar-like formation, but is obscured by the “35th Anniversary Edition” byline. You can see something similar going on with the Rescuers Down Under logo as well.
I want to talk about this release for a second… This Blu-ray release was one of the first of those 2-Movie Collections that Disney Home Ent. churned out over the course of roughly two years. Some covers integrated sequel titles and characters from the sequels, some successfully, some not so much. I like the Rescuers 2-pack cover itself, and how it integrates characters from both Rescuers movies into it, making a nice frame structure around Bernard and Bianca reading a map. However, it seems as if little room was left for the two film titles. It feels like both were sort of crammed into this picture, and as a result, the fonts don’t do much for me nor does the integrate of “35th Anniversary” edition. Perhaps they should’ve had “2-Movie Collection” be the header on the blue border, and make some space? Or maybe the slipcover should’ve read “The Rescuers Collection” or something like that…
THE FOX AND THE HOUND
The Film Proper…
Here, a Disney animated movie title card uses a pre-existing font… Oh, and this one is not on any poster or video cover for this movie. The font is called Bookman, this variant is known as Bookman Swash, which was a very common font used throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Even today, you’ll see it somewhere. Ken’s salad dressing, anyone? However, the title card designers play with it a bit, making this serif font branch out, making for an eye-catching logo. Perhaps this font was used because they wanted to channel the source material? The font is used for the entire credits sequence, much like how The Rescuers‘ opening credits were done.
The Theatrical Releases…
Originally released in 1981, The Fox and the Hound was very much a video age Disney animated feature. As such, it would only receive one theatrical re-release before heading to home video formats.
Both the original release and the 1988 re-release posters for this film use the same logo. The letterforms here suggest a more country-and-western flavor, given the movie’s setting, but retains some of the flourish from the title card’s Bookman logo. This is actually one of the best logos for the film, it’s really distinctive amongst the Disney animated features, and is very nice to look at. Perhaps it fits the film’s sort of middle-of-the-road nature, the film attempts to channel the more dramatic likes of Bambi, while not quite achieving that goal. Similarly, it has remnants of the sort of goofy Aristocats/Robin Hood-isms of the early ’70s Disney animated features. I feel this logo somehow captures that…
Home Video…
The Fox and the Hound‘s 1994 video release honors both fonts with a similarly branchy typeface. The “x” in particular is a lot of fun, one point becomes a scimitar, the other a fleur-des-lis piece. Maybe that extending point of the “x” is supposed to be a fox tail? Actually, come to think of it… In the title card for the movie… The drooping “H” and “d” could be read as drooping hound dog ears.
I still think that a font like this lines up with the country setting, while hinting at the tone of the whole picture.
I don’t quite get that from the 2000 video release’s logo…
Well, it’s not a bad-looking font, just a sort of simplistic wavy near-cursive one. It just doesn’t line up with any previous version of the movie’s logo, and just kind of feels generic. Maybe those swooshy letters have a fox tail-like look, maybe not. It was re-used for the 2006 DVD release…
However, the 2011 release went back to the 1994 logo… Sort of…
It’s not the same exact logo, but it’s very reminiscent of it, I’d say. The big difference here is that the letterforms aren’t as varied, you can certainly see that in the “x” in “Fox”. “AND THE” is in all-caps this time, kind of distracting considering that the first “The” is in regular form.
Here’s where things get a little interesting. The Fox and the Hound saw two more Blu-ray covers, one in 2017, and the second in 2018…
The 2017 cover is basically the 2006 cover with some removed characters and some other minor little differences. The 2018 cover, a Disney Movie Club exclusive as you can see, however…
The all-new font is not only all-caps, but also… Check out the little flourishes on the “X” and the “D”. Now that top-right point of the “x” has kind of a fox tail-like shape to it. They just keep going back to that, it seems. The integration of an animal shape into a letterform, if that was indeed ever the intention…
Much like the 2011 Lion King logo, “AND” and the second “THE” are housed within the “O”s of “Fox” and “Hound”… Interesting choices right there. I also find it interesting that a video cover is depicting Tod and Copper as adults. When do you ever see that? There was that one international re-release poster from the early 90s that shows them as adults, but with video covers? Nada.
All of the Fox and the Hound logos work in some sort of flourish to the letterforms, some are wavier than others, but the basic idea has been there throughout the picture’s lifetime. Maybe that’s because it’s not as old as some of the other films out there… Talk about consistency!