Aladdin (movie) reached the age Aladdin (character) today. Seventeen years ago today was the US wide premiere of Disney’s Aladdin. I can hardly imagine that time has flown by so quickly.
Well to celebrate this joyful day I uploaded a collection of scans I made from the Art of Aladdin book I purchased some months ago
A futuristic looking commercial for Aladdin toys at McDonalds happy meals around 2004.
Promoting the Disneyland musical Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular
Mattel Aladdin and Jasmine dolls commercial around 1992. I have Genie sitting on a shelf for quite a few years now.
Kellogs Fruit Loops came with Aladdin coloring changing spoons in the mid 90’s. Check out the animation at the end looks like original to me.
More crunchy nugget free stuff came in a box of Captain Crunch because buried beneath was an Aladdin Fortune Top featuring Genie.
Burger King had Aladdin coloring chancing cups with the meals. Kids should come back often to collect all four. The tough rap guy is kind of lame now but back then it was cool.
The Kellogg’s Corn Flakes is probably the best known breakfast product. Like the others it had an Aladdin tie-in. They had a nice looking box and original animation in the TV commercial.
I downloaded the short 1-minute intro music used in the Amiga and Personal Computer versions of the Virgin Aladdin video game dating 1992. It came with a second track but that’s not worth listing to.
Intro music Aladdin video game for PC and Amiga
I just finished A Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD. I’ve seen the movie on TV a couple of times because the music is on Disneytunes allot I wanted the soundtrack but could only find the DVD which is fine too.
Anyway A Muppet Christmas Carol and Aladdin share the same premiere year, both came out in 1992 and so where promoted alongside by Disney. I have an ad for “Muppet Christmas” in my copy of Entertainment Weekly Nov. 1992.
Watching the movie took me back to 1993, that’s when both movies where released in Netherlands, it was a lovely holiday season I was almost half a lifetime younger and was halfway high school that year I think glad to be out of primary education not to say I hated it but I was picked on allot. Anyway the movie also reminded me that an Aladdin Christmas Carol was discussed in the premature days of the fandom.
I couldn’t find a ‘cast list’ in the archives but in the spirit of A Muppet Christmas Carol and Mickey’s Christmas Carol the lead male character would be casted as Bob Cratchit, Jasmine would play his wife. The Sultan as Scrooge’s schoolteacher and Thundra as Belle.
The spirits could be various characters Genie as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Jafar could be Marley Scrooge death partner. Scrooge himself should be portrayed by Iago as the bird is very greedy; looking for a deal the parrot is casted for the role as the old businessman. Of course then Iago should be a human character named Iago.
That leaves us with two ghosts, The Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Future to cast. On the Aladdin character side there’s Abu, Carpet, Rajah and Rasoul as big supporting characters in the universe plus the slew of minor TV series characters as extras like we saw Pluto in Mickey’s Christmas Carol and many minor Muppets in the Muppets Christmas Carol.
In 2004, around the time Aladdin got the DVD treatment, Jim Hill wrote an article on two canceled Mickey projects. The first was Mickey Columbus based on the story of how Columbus discovered America with Mickey and Company in the lead. The Arab Mickey short was set to play in front of a different Beauty and the Beast version that never got past storyboard stage. “Mickey’s Arabian Adventure” got canceled according to Jim because the Studio bosses felt the talent of the Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida shouldn’t be wasted on shorts.
The irony is that Pixar is doing just that today, use key people to produce a short connected to the main film who made that feature film examples include Jack-Jack Attack (The Incredibles), Mike’s New Car (Monsters Inc.), Mater and the Ghostlight (Cars) and the upcoming Wall-E short Burn-E. Not the mention the shorts that don’t tie in with a feature film like my favorite the cute For The Birds. I’m just saying if it works for Pixar now why wouldn’t it worked for Disney a decade ago when everything they made was (still) pure gold.
I for one would’ve loved to see a new Mickey short set in the desert before Aladdin.
