Mickey Mouse Magazine
In November 1933, the second version was launched as a promotional giveaway for local dairies, edited by United Artists publicist and gag writer Hal Horne.
In summer 1935, the third Mickey Mouse Magazine was published by Horne, with the support of Kamen and Walt Disney Enterprises.
This was a full-size newsstand magazine of short stories, poems, puzzles and comic panels, which promoted Disney films, cartoons and products.
[4] Rather than a money-making venture, the magazine was intended to be a tool to lure children and their parents into "Official" Mickey Mouse stores, and movie theaters that promoted Disney cartoons.
[3] To promote the password, a pinback button was given away at stores and theaters adorned with the picture of Mickey Mouse and the words "Spingle-Bell-Chicko-K".
The new series looked very much the same as the previous magazine, but had the name of a local dairy printed on the cover, and vigorously promoted the benefits of milk consumption.
[1] The magazine was edited by Hal Horne, director of advertising and publicity for movie company United Artists, who began distributing Disney cartoons in 1932.
[8] A 1936 newspaper article reported: "Horne's office, in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, is probably the world's largest commercial gag factory.
His storerooms are piled with magazines containing the earliest known printing of many of these jokes... Horne's clients are comic strip artists, stage, screen and radio comedians, playwrights, columnists, governors, senators, house organs and advertising agencies.
Unfortunately, that kind of material was only useful for short cartoon panels, and the comic pages in the magazine tended to be collections of puns and single exchanges, rather than stories.
There were occasional one-page illustrated features telling the story of a contemporary Disney short, starting with the December 1933 adaptation of Mickey's The Steeple Chase.
Poetic tributes to dairy culture were also prevalent as in the December 1934 Christmas edition, wherein Mickey declares, 'The Milkman is like Santa, / He also brings you cheer.
'"[10]The recurring feature "Gallery of Hollywood stars who Drink Milk" included caricatures of celebrities like Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable, Jack Dempsey,[10] and Babe Ruth.
"[4] Horne was very enthusiastic about his new magazine's prospects for success, as he wrote to Roy O. Disney in May 1935: "Last week both Kay and I addressed two important gatherings.
[1] Horne remained optimistic, writing to Roy Disney in October 1935, "The actual net sales on the twenty-five-cent issue is, at this time, 150,000.
[8] Kamen sold a large number of excess copies of the early issues to foreign countries, which made the magazine profitable.
The gags, in dozens of categories bearing such titles as “Absent Minded,” “Dumb Dames,” and “Laziness,” seem to have been received by the Disney writers with a predictable lack of enthusiasm, even after Horne gave them a pep talk in November 1936.
Western had been producing the popular Big Little Books series since 1933, which featured many Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck titles, and Wadewitz understood the characters' appeal.
[18] The new collaboration brought an influx of Western-produced non-Disney content to the magazine,[13] including adventure strips Roy Ranger, Ted True and the long-running Peter the Farm Detective.
Along the same lines, issue #27 (Dec 1937) began a four-part text/illustration adaptation of the upcoming feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which went into wide release in February 1938.
The magazine ran a similar promotion for Disney's 1940 Pinocchio feature, with a three-part adaptation beginning in issue #51 (Dec 1939).
Other spotlighted cartoons included Brave Little Tailor (issue #37, Oct 1938), Ferdinand the Bull (#39, Dec 1938), The Practical Pig (#44, May 1939) and Donald's Penguin (#48, Sept 1939).
Silly Symphony Sunday strips featuring Donald were added to Mickey Mouse Magazine in issue #28 (Jan 1938).
[7] The magazine tried to keep up, introducing the first serialized reprint of a Mickey Mouse daily continuity (Mighty Whale Hunter) beginning in issue #41 (Feb 1939).
Still, Barrier says, "Converting Mickey Mouse Magazine to a comic book might have seemed like an obvious and appealing response [to the competition].
But by mid-1939, two years after reprinted Disney comic strips began appearing in the magazine, they had never established much more than a toehold, usually taking up only five pages.
The comic did still include a few pages of riddles, poems and a crossword puzzle, as well as three text adaptations of Disney shorts, but the era of the children's magazine was decidedly over.
The magazine hit its peak circulation at 3,115,000 copies of issue #144 (September 1952),[23] and is regarded as one of the best-selling comic books of all time.
