Disney’s Vinylmation

VinylmationMickey Vinylmation is about expressing creativity and the mysterious thrill of the chase. It’s a thrill for our Disney Artists who see the Vinylmation figure as a blank canvas. Their inspiration comes from everywhere Disney Park icons, urban landscapes and even holidays. With each figure having a distinctive art style and personality, there’s a Vinylmation figure out there for everyone!-Vinylmation

In my ongoing quest to find things that I find a bit odd, I recently ran across Disney Vinylmation-in which Mickey Mouse is given new and exotic paint jobs. The vinylmation idea seems to be to turn the standard issue Mickey Mouse into an Ugly Doll, or one of the countless odd and strange little figures from Japan. There seems to be a product called Bud Buddy Bear that is the same thing as the Vinylmation model-take a basic figure and give it an odd paint job.

As with Beanie Babies of yore, the whole gimmick with the Mickey Mouse Vinylmation is that once you have one vinylmation, you’ll want them all-and they are cranking out more vinylmations all the time.

When I went to Disneyland as a child I got one of those solid plastic figures of Mickey Mouse. It was one where he was waving and it was a nice red that turned a shocking pink over time. I really loved that hunk of plastic. This was a figure that looked a lot more like Mickey Mouse than the rather amorphous figure they use to make the Vinylmation figures. The little vinylmation figure is designed to be easily transformed into whatever the artist wants to create.

It is still very interesting to see how much can be done with one basic figure and a lot of Disney personal with way too much time on their hands. You can, of course, create your own Vinylmation figures.

Taking the empty slate of a clean white Mickey Mouse vinylmation blank, what would you do?