User:Toughpigs/Draft:Mickey Mouse watch

A Mickey Mouse watch is a timepiece decorated with the image of Mickey Mouse, a cartoon character created by Walt Disney. The first Mickey Mouse watch was produced in 1933 by the Ingersoll Watch Company, and was an immediate popular success.

1933 wristwatch
In 1932, a buyer from Montgomery Ward suggested producing a Mickey Mouse wristwatch to Kay Kamen, the merchandise representative for the Walt Disney Studio.

Walt Disney was unenthusiastic about it, and believed that it wouldn't sell.

Kamen submitted preliminary sketches to the Ingersoll-Waterbury Company, which at the time was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The watch was introduced in June 1933 at the Chicago World's Fair, where Ingersoll set up a pavilion with a mini-factory so that people could order a watch and then see it get made. The watches sold for $3.75 each, and it outsold the official commemorative World's Fair watch by three to one.

When they started selling the watch at Macy's department store in New York City, they sold 11,000 watches in one day.

Sales estimates: 900,000 by December 1933. 2.5 million by June 1935.

After two months, the number of employees at Ingersoll rose from 200 to 3,000; it saved the company. Two and a half million watches were sold between June 1933 and June 1935.

The face of the watch pictures Mickey Mouse, smiling happily as he points to the hour and minute. The "animated" arms was a unique feature at the time. The second hand was replaced by a small dial at the bottom of the watch face, which was decorated with three small pictures of Mickey Mouse running; the dial would spin to indicate that the watch was wound up and keeping time.

The first Mickey Mouse watch was designed by August Shallack, an ad designer working for United Artists.

The patent, awarded in June 1933, describes the watch as "a time instrument comprising: a dial having time indicia thereon, rotatable seconds, minute and hour members; a figure mounted on said rotatable seconds and fixed thereto so as to rotate therewith and simulating the body of an animate being; and a time indicator mounted on and rotatable with each said rotatable minute and hour members and simulating a part of said animate being."

1930s watches
Ingersoll made Big Bad Wolf pocket watch in 1934, with blinking eye acting as second hand. Three Little Pigs are on face and an enamel fob with Three Little Pigs playing instruments. (Collings 107)

In 1934, Ingersoll released their second Disney product, an alarm clock based on the popular 1933 Disney Silly Symphony cartoon, The Three Little Pigs. The alarm clock face was decorated with a picture of Fiddler, Fifer and Practical Pig reacting to the presence of The Big Bad Wolf. The Wolf's arms are animated, and he points to the hour and minute. There's text across the top of the watch that reads "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", a reference to the popular song introduced in the 1933 short.

In 1935, Ingersoll produced prototypes for a Donald Duck wristwatch modeled on the Mickey Mouse design, but they decided not to produce this commercially, for fear of hurting the sales of the Mickey watch.

In 1938, for Mickey Mouse's tenth birthday, Ingersoll released a new Deluxe Mickey Mouse watch with an updated character design. This watch was rectangular, and pictured a straighter-legged Mickey Mouse. The second hand dial only featured one running Mickey, instead of the 1933 design's three Mickeys.

In 1933, after the successful release of the first Mickey Mouse wristwatch, Ingersoll-Waterbury produced a Mickey Mouse pocket watch with a chromium watch fob and a leather strap. The character design was the same as the 1933 wristwatch. In 1935, Ingersoll-Waterbury also produced a smaller Mickey Mouse lapel watch, with a silk strap that men could attach to their lapels.

1940s watches
No Mickey Mouse watches were produced from 1941 to 1945, because resources were needed for war production during World War II.

In 1946, Ingersoll released the first postwar Mickey Mouse watch. The design featured Mickey Mouse's head "floating" on a post at the center of the watch, with short black arms ending in Mickey's yellow gloves radiating from the central image to point to the time. This watch design was unsuccessful, and was only produced for one year.

In 1947, Ingersoll followed this with a more traditional full-figure design, with another updated character design.

To celebrate Mickey Mouse's twentieth birthday in 1948, Ingersoll -- now known as US Time -- produced a set of 10 character watches called the Mickey Mouse Birthday collection. The watches, produced with radium dials that glowed in the dark, sold for $6.95 each.

The Birthday collection watches featured an unusual assortment of characters -- Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto, Dopey from the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket from the 1940 film Pinocchio, Bambi from the 1942 film of the same name, José Carioca from the 1944 film The Three Caballeros, and Bongo from 1947's Fun and Fancy Free. Two of the characters -- Bambi and Pluto -- are four-legged animals, and don't have hands to point at the time; on their watches, the time is indicated with their ears.

Mickey's 1948 birthday watch uses the full-figure design of the 1947 watch, but slightly smaller and surrounded by a circle.

Other Disney watches made by Ingersoll in this decade include a 1947 Danny the Lamb watch from the 1949? movie So Dear to My Heart (animated hands), along with Donald's nephew Louie, Fiddler Pig and Snow White (regular hands).

1950s watches
By Mickey Mouse's thirtieth birthday in 1958, the character had lost some of his popular appeal; the 1955 television show The Mickey Mouse Club was a success, but Mickey himself had become a figurehead, more an icon than a character. Instead of a full-body image of the character, Ingersoll's 1958 Mickey Mouse watch was decorated with the words "MICKEY MOUSE" written in red on the face, with the watch's hands ending in Mickey's yellow gloves. In 1960, Ingersoll's Mickey watch removed the gloves; the watch only said "MICKEY MOUSE" in red letters.

The Mod Mickey watch
There was a resurgence of interest in the Mickey Mouse watch starting in 1967; it became the fashion among hippies to buy cheap old Mickey Mouse watches from antique stores, adopted as a sarcastic symbol of the counterculture. Ironically, the hippies' purchase of these cheap watches made the value of the old watches in the market rise, which attracted the notice of the public at large. In 1968, Life magazine celebrated Mickey Mouse's fortieth birthday with an article about adult collectors who bought old Disney merchandise, with a spotlight on the Mickey Mouse watches.

This triggered a new iteration of the Mickey Mouse watch craze. Ingersoll (now renamed Ingersoll-Timex) released a new watch -- the first Mickey Mouse watch in ten years to actually feature a full-body picture of Mickey Mouse. The character design was borrowed from Ingersoll's 1947 watch, but the new watch had a wide strap, which was in fashion at the time. People called this the “Mod Mickey” watch. The new watches sold for $12.95 each, and the stock sold out by the end of the first month.

At that time, there were a lot of celebrity sightings where famous people were wearing Mickey Mouse watches, including John Lennon, Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, Andy Warhol, Grace Kelly and Liberace.

Ethel Kennedy, Carol Burnett, Sammy Davis Jr, Rich Little.

The most notable celebrity sightings were astronaut Walter Schirra, who wore a Mickey Mouse watch into space on the Apollo 9 mission, and his fellow astronaut Gene Cernan, who wore one on the Apollo 10 mission. A 1971 photo of astronaut Buzz Aldrin pictures Aldrin wearing a Mickey Mouse watch.

Later Mickey Mouse watches
Despite the popularity of the 1968 Mickey Mouse watch, Ingersoll allowed the license to lapse in 1971.

In 1972, Bradley Time introduced their first Mickey Mouse watch, which featured a "retro" nostalgic design; the Mickey Mouse pictured on the watch face had "pie-cut eyes", a design that evokes the 1930s-style Mickey. This watch did not use any of the actual watch designs from the 1930s.

In the 1980s, there was an explosion in character watches, and there was more than one design at a time.

In 201?, an animated Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse appear as options on the Apple watch.

More Disney watches
Many other Disney characters have been pictured on wristwatches.

Influence
Other watches decorated with pop culture characters were introduced very soon after the Mickey Mouse watch proved a success. In 1934, Little Orphan Annie's watch was produced by the New Haven Watch Company, and a Betty Boop pocket watch was also introduced that year by Ingraham. New Haven followed in 1935 with wristwatches featuring Popeye, Dick Tracy and Smitty in 1935. Popeye's wristwatch used the Mickey Mouse watch's gimmick of having Popeye's animated arms form the hands of the watch.

While Ingersoll made XX wristwatches with Disney characters and animated arms, other companies only used the gimmick sparingly. Betty Boop's 1934 pocket watch (Ingraham), Popeye on a 1934 pocket watch (New Haven), Popeye on 1935 wristwatch (New Haven).

Ingraham made a Porky Pig wristwatch with animated hands in 1949. (Collings, p65)

Then a fad of comic wristwatches with animated arms broke out in the early 1970s, including Snoopy (1969, Timex), Bozo the Clown (1970, Capitol Records), Scooby Doo (1970, ???), Sylvester the Cat and Tweety (1970, Time Setters), Fred Flintstone and Pebbles Flintstone (1971, Prince Roable), Howdy Doody (1971, ???), Smokey Stover (1971, Hi-Time), Yosemite Sam (1971, Time Setters), Underdog (1971, Leonardo), Andy Panda (1972, Endora Time), Cat in the Hat (1972, Lafayette), Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy (1972, Bradley), Barbie (1973, Bradley), Bugs Bunny (1974, ???), Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Ernie and Oscar the Grouch (1974, Bradley), Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt (1974, ???), Popeye (1974, Bradley) and Dennis the Menace (1974, ???).

A watch with a three-eyed Mickey is also worn by an alien in the 2005 Disney film Chicken Little.

Legend
There is a commonly-held misconception that a Mickey Mouse watch was buried in a time capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The actual Mickey Mouse item buried in the time capsule was a Mickey Mouse cup; this can be seen in the time capsule manifest at this website.