In Which Barbie and I Both Celebrate Our Birthdays In EPCOT!

😍😍😍 HEY WOW WOWIE WOW AWESOME COOL FUN PARTY BARBIE BIRTHDAY AWESOME WOW YIPPEE YAY WIZARD WOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😍😍😍💩🍹🍰



😨
Okay, this one is going to take some explaining.

If you spend any significant amount of time in the Disney fan portion of this vast sea we call the Internet, you'll find that one thing Disney Park fans like to complain about is the inclusion of popular established characters in Epcot attractions.  This hasn't been bothering me nearly as much as it does others, but after watching "BARBIE BIRTHDAY PARTY AT WALT DISNEY WORLD EPCOT '94!!!" (henceforth, "BARBIE IN EPCOT" because I just... can't) I can see where the dissent is coming from.

The whole "BARBIE IN EPCOT" thing was actually a contractual obligation between Disney and Mattel and ye gods, does it ever look like it.  I feel like this must have been the Faustian bargain for all the Mattel characters they got to include in "Toy Story".  The stage show lasted a little over a year and a half, and just about the only real evidence that it wasn't some kind of group hallucination is this video.  The video was available for purchase with special Barbie dolls for a penny, which seems about right.

On the one hand, it's always neat to get a behind-the-scenes look at Disney stage shows, and the segments about how birthdays are celebrated around the world are very nice.  On the other hand, you have the screaming 90's child actors.  Do anything you can to prepare yourself, because the screaming 90's child actor hosts of this special are like entire seasons of "Full House" made flesh.  I hate them, I hate them so much, and it's as much about the screaming and their being genuinely horrible (get your damn fingers off that beautiful cake you monsters!) as it is that I wish I could get as excited about anything as these screaming 90's child actors get about literally everything.

-----

Because it's my Birthday and I love you (and also because Faebruary's still in my rear-view mirror and St. Patrick's Day is this weekend) have a Bonus Especially Weird Disney Thing!  Let me show you the traditional dances of my people:



This isn't what I saw a few nights ago in Raglan Road after downing two Kilkennys (though it's close).  This is "Light Magic".  It's from 1997 and was meant to be the replacement, in Disneyland, for the Main Street Electrical Parade.  Once again, home videos like this are about the only real evidence this wasn't a mass hallucination.

It's also from that very weird, very specific, and thankfully very over period where Disney Parks defined "parade" as "Three or four floats that ride down the street, then stop and stay still for several minutes at a time to do a long elaborate show, then start moving again to suddenly stop and do another show and so on".  It went over even less well than "BARBIE IN EPCOT", not even surviving one whole year.

To paraphrase Cap'n Wacky,

May the good Fairies draw near to you,
And spread love and luck with their weird little dances every day.
And may a good strong drink
Make the memories of horrible screaming 90's child actors go away.

"Faeries" - The Animated Television Special

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to work through everything in my YouTube "Watch Later" queue, IE the aforementioned "Dinosaur Revolution".  If I find anything especially unusual or noteworthy, I'll share it here.  For example, here's a particularly weird artifact dug up by the kindly YouTube elves. 



"Faeries" (not to be confused with a far less interesting 1999 film), was inspired by the artwork in the famous and gorgeous illustrated book of the same title by Brian Froud and Alan Lee.  It dates back to 1981, and this would have been around the same time as the (relatively) better known "Flight of Dragons" and "Gnomes", though somehow I managed to miss it until now.

Now, you'll immediately notice that "The Dark Crystal" or "Labyrinth", this isn't.  The animation is very wonky.  Froud's elaborate creature designs suffer badly under the limitations of the television budget. But the short is weird enough to be worth a look, and the story is pretty cool as far as 80's fantasy goes.  You need something a little weird to ring in the new year.

-----

Sketch of the Day!

Yeah, it isn't Christmas anymore, but while we're on the subject of strange book-based fantasy-themed made-for-television animation from the early 80's...