Walt Disney Place Mats at Gulf – Dec. 1970

These days, The Walt Disney Company seems to own just about everything in the entertainment industry. 

You head can spin just trying to take it all in. There are the studios (its own namesake studios as well as as Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Blue Sky Studios, 20th Century Studios, etc.), the theme parks, resorts and cruise lines (Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, Disney Cruise Line, etc.), the networks (Disney Channel, ABC, ESPN, FX, National Geographic, etc.) the various film franchises (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Avatar, Ice Age, etc.) Even the Muppets.

And that’s not even mentioning the incredibly popular actual Disney film series of recent years (Frozen) and the live-action remakes of animated classics, the musicals based on the films...

Whew!

That’s why it’s almost comical (to me, at least) to see that fifty years ago, Walt Disney was pushing... place mats. 

Yes, place mats with Mickey Mouse (who’s he?), Donald Duck and the whole Disney cartoon menagerie, FREE at your local Gulf dealer with a three dollar gasoline purchase. Here’s the promotional ad that ran in the Journal on December 4, 1970.

What’s interesting is that the ad appears to have been put together at the Journal. The off-model drawings of Donald Duck and Jiminy Cricket aren’t bad, but they would probably trigger the Disney lawyers picking up the phone today, and threatening legal action.

What’s funny to me is that we had some of those place mats in the Brady household, although the connection with Gulf gasoline surprised me. Dad was more of a Sohio or Sunoco guy.

Anyway, here are a few that I know we had in our collection, which I found on eBay. (They were photographed against a wooden backdrop.) I always thought the one with Donald Duck and a miniature Mickey Mouse looking up at him was strange (although Mickey is a mouse, after all).

All I know is that the place mats were in our basement for years. They may still be there.