What? No "Mickey Mouse Club"? On it's 70th Anniversary?
The Mickey Mouse Club premiered on October 3rd, 1955, on ABC, becoming an overnight phenomenon that introduced the world to Mouse Ears and weaned a generation of Baby Boomers on a daily dose of Disney, helping to shape the generational affinity the company enjoys today. Disney Store is celebrating the show’s milestone 70th anniversary in a big way, with a reproduction Mousegetar, a Talent Round-Up Day collector doll, a musical figurine, plus retro-style apparel, including a Mouseketeer Ear Hat. But if any contemporary Disney fans wanted to celebrate by actually watching the Mickey Mouse Club, they’re left with shockingly few options for a series this iconic.
The Mickey Mouse Club was a daily kids' variety show that welcomed viewers into the MouseClubhouse. Hosted by Jimmie Dodd and Roy Williams, each day had a different theme (Monday: Fun with Music Day, Tuesday: Guest Star Day, Wednesday: Anything Can Happen Day, Thursday: Circus Day, and Friday: Talent Round-up Day) that encouraged kids to return each day for more fun. The core group of Mouseketeers would perform in musical numbers, and each episode included a classic Disney animated short and a new serial episode. The first two seasons of the show's original run consisted of hour-long episodes, while the third season was condensed to a half-hour format. A fourth season was primarily made up of recycled elements from the first three years, with some new introductions.
When it comes to the original series, Disney+ offers only two options. The first week’s worth of episodes is available in their full hour-long format, thanks in large part to the work Leonard Maltin put into the show’s Walt Disney Treasures set back in 2004 ahead of the show’s 50th anniversary. One of the show’s popular serials, The Adventures of Spin & Marty, is also available on Disney+, but just the first of its three seasons (also courtesy of Leonard Maltin). And that’s all that’s available on Disney+.
Two other Mickey Mouse Club serials received Walt Disney Treasures releases. The Hardy Boys set collected the first of two seasons, telling the story of “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure" (The Disney Movie Club later re-released this same season). The only other serial to get a DVD release was Annette from the show’s third season, a fictional story starring the most famous Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello.
The original run of the Mickey Mouse Club ended in 1959, a casualty of Disney’s falling out with ABC, which also led to the end of Disney’s other popular TV shows, Zorro and Disneyland (The latter of which essentially continued on NBC as The Wonderful World of Color). Thanks to repeated demand, the show entered syndication in 1962 where all episodes were trimmed down to their more well-known half-hour format. This version of the show became a staple of the Disney Channel from its inception in 1983 until the end of the Vault Disney nighttime programming lineup in 2002.
In 1985, Walt Disney Home Video began releasing VHS volumes as the Mickey Mouse Club Collector's Edition Library. Utilizing the half-hour syndication edits, each volume continued three episodes of the show, often grouped by themed day. Ten volumes were released in total, the first five of which contained newly-recorded introductions by Annette Funicello, who shared memories associated with the show. To celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary in 2005, The Best of The Mickey Mouse Club was released on DVD, offering one episode for each day of the week, all of which were repeated from these VHS releases.
It wasn’t just the Baby Boomers who got to grow up with the original Mickey Mouse Club. The original series was a popular syndicated program for Gen X and Millenials, both of which had their own revivals of the show — The New Mickey Mouse Club (1977-1979) and The All-New Mickey Mouse Club/MMC (1989–1996). Disney Store seems to recognize the multigenerational nostalgia that fans have for the original series. It’s a shame that Disney+, which should be a repository for all of Disney’s classics, is limiting fans to just one week of the original series and one popular serial.
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