THE Queen of England’s refusal to leave a film performance before the Mickey Mouse comedy came on, even though her ladies-in-waiting insisted that she’d be late for tea at the palace (Queen Mary said she didn’t care about tea; she wanted to see Mickey Mouse), hasn’t any obvious connection with dollar watches or cheese or boys’ pants. But the connection is there. For if the Queen would rather miss tea than miss Mickey Mouse, then there is very good reason to believe that inexpensive watches with a Mickey Mouse dial will sell very well. They do, and Mickey’s creator, Walt Disney, reaps his reward. He is still rather surprised.
When Mickey first began his rise to his present position as the world’s most famous contemporary mouse, a few astute merchandisers wrote in and asked if Mr. Disney had any objections to their using Mickey as a part of their trade- mark. If Mr. Disney wasn’t too busy he would tell them to go right ahead. If he was busy he’d throw the request in the wastebasket. But Mickey got around and Mr. Disney wasn’t at all interested until a mail-order house executive told him that he was losing a lot of profit by not selling the right to have a picture of Mickey on a watch or an ice-cream cone. So Mr. Disney, still only mildly interested, got hold of a Mr. Kay Kamen, who now takes care of Mickey Mouse in business.
LAST year mickey mouse was on $1,000,000 worth of merchandise. This year he sells at the rate of about $5,000,000 a year, which means at least $250,000 for the Disneys. There are more than a hundred companies using the Mouse trademark—National Dairy Products, International Silver, Ingersoll- Waterbury (watches), Dennison (paper), Hicock (belts), Seneca (textiles). A recent issue of a boys’ outfitting magazine had twenty-two pages out of seventy-four devoted to stories and proud advertising displays of pants and sweaters and caps decorated with Mickey Mouse. McCall’s Magazine uses him and his Minnie for patterns. National Dairy, which uses the trademark on ice cream and cheese and such, ordered 30,000,000 Mickey Mouse ice-cream cones this year and an affiliate company in the South sold 6,000,000 Mickey Mouse ice-creams-in-a-cup in the first six weeks of sales.
NOT anyone may use the trademark. Users must have an A-1 rating, must promise not to allow Mickey Mouse merchandise to be sold at marked-down or cut-rate prices, and must submit their products and advertising to Mr. Kamen. If he doesn’t like the drawing—Mr. Disney doesn’t draw all the Mickey Mouses but he gets mad at a poor imitation—the user has to try over again. If Mr. Kamen doesn’t approve of the company the company gets along without Mickey Mouse. No maker of laxatives, beer, or cigarettes may use Mickey Mouse. It’s too undignified or unwholesome for the children. Nor may Mickey make radio appearances. Disney thinks the voice would be disillusioning. As a side line, Mr. Kamen edits the Mickey Mouse Magazine, a simple little monthly full of good sentiments and bad puns. It is distributed through department stores and had a circulation in June of 300,000 copies. Now it’s about double that.
Now that Mickey is tied up with things like ice cream and cheese, his mousey- ness is soft-pedaled to make the connection a bit more proper. Anyway, a current survey shows that children don’t think of Mickey as a mouse. A good many of them were asked whether Mickey Mouse is a dog or a cat. Almost half of the tots answered brightly: “A cat.”
MICKEY, THE INTERNATIONAL MOUSE ...
is as much at home in Le Printemps in Paris as in Macy's in Manhattan. The French placard is one of the many you may find in the Paris department store. The French like to put Mickey and Minnie together in loving poses. Macy's, less romantic, makes a window display of the Ingersoll-Mickey Mouse watches and clocks — with Mickey chasing Minnie around the face. Mickey had a great triumph in Worcester, Massachusetts, as king of last spring's Prosperity Festival, A Mickey Mouse Mall was set up in front of the City Hall. School children, the Mayor, and the City Council paid homage, restaurants had Mickey Mouse on their tablecloth, clerks had Mickey Mouse on their smocks, and the Boston Herald began its lead editorial: "They are making history today in Worcester," They also made money.
