Broke Hoedown

I just love the PhotoshopDisasters blog . . . they entertain me every ding-dong day! Today, my blogreader brought me this gem, which shows a bit more impalement and extra digits than one would have expected from the squeaky-clean HSM crew.

Apparently Disney found the problem, and fixed it in subsequent products. But that doesn’t make it any less funny.

Slate.com has an interesting article about a the billboard above, spotted recently in Beijing, which came to mind after the reporter had been reading about the Miley Cyrus controversy.

It is legitimately difficult for a company as big as Disney to keep track of all its subcontractors. Then again, Disney has learned the hard way the importance of keeping track: Disney’s response to the billboard recalls its response to exposés of labor conditions in the factories of its Chinese licensees’, where subcontractors were actually breaking local wage, health, and safety laws. Here, of course, it’s rules of taste and propriety that are involved, and the ad may play differently to a local audience than it did to me and [Disney consumer-products division spokesman Gary] Foster. The age of consent in China is 14, compared with 18 in Disney’s home state of California. “I don’t want to make excuses for them at all because it is not anything that we would ever approve, but in other parts of the world this is not unusual at all,” Foster said. “In fact, in Europe, they have similar type of taste, if you will. Here in China that’s not unusual at all, but it’s not usual for the Disney brand.”

Inquiring minds want to know: Is there any truth to the rumors that Prince Caspian is one of the Final Five? Well, it sure looks that way from this picture spotted on the side of a San Francisco MUNI bus, courtesy of DocPop:

Hat tip goes to PhotoshopDisasters, one of my new favorite blogs.

Oh, and by the way, I am way behind in Battlestar Gallactica (still watching Season 3 on DVD), so as far as I know, the rest of the world already knows who the Final Five are. So do not tell me!

Mr Broke Hoedown (aka Collateral Damage) has a few comments on a recent Yahoo News article about Disney’s recognition of the buying power of older boys. (And I thought his headline was funny, so I stole it. It’s community property anyway, right?)

In other words, after years of pretending that this market didn’t exist The Mouse has found that Pirates of The Caribbean is bringing in the boys. I say “pretending the market didn’t exist” because three years ago the head of their consumer products division explained their all-girl approach by saying no one had success connecting with older boys. It was such a preposterous statement from such an otherwise smart guy that I translated it to mean, “we haven’t come up with it yet.”

We’re all familiar with the Christian skywriting over Walt Disney World, right? Well, what if that same airspace was transformed by clouds in the shape of the Mickey Mouse logo?

Mr Broke Hoedown’s blog, Collateral Damage, has more on Flogos, the company currently testing this technology.

I think the headline here makes it clear . . . but the links below are probably not appropriate to follow from your office computer, or if your kid is reading over your shoulder. I even starred-out a blog name in the text below, to try to stay PG-13.

Apparently some of Disney’s ad buys are showing up in places you wouldn’t expect them . . . like smut sites. At least, that’s what Defamer tells me:

Occasionally, when the planets align just so and the sun strikes the Earth at the exact right location, we witness that rarest of phenomena known as Disney Ads on Smut Sites. Or at least that’s what gutter-minded rabblerouser [*******] calls it, having caught as many as six different instances of Walt Disney World Web ads aligned beside Egotastic’s recent coverage of sex tapes, flashings and other NSFW (and definitely NSFDW) mini-scandals.

I had to think twice about whether I wanted to blog about this, because I already get plenty of traffic from people looking for materials I don’t carry here, and I’m sure this will lead to more disappointed people, hunting for something salacious and finding me whining about bus service at Saratoga Springs. Man, what a buzz kill.

But it struck me as kinda funny, plus I have to admit I was amused to discover the acronym “NSFDW.” I initially took it to mean “Not Safe for Disney World,” but now I wonder if it means something else. My friend Google introduced me to Malaysia’s National Standards for Drinking Water, but I’ll bet that wasn’t it. In any case, I think we need a new interweb meme: NSFWDW.

DLRP Today has some great pictures of a marketing installation in the UK’s Leicester Square, as well as the related press release from Disneyland Paris.

Brummies beware! According to new research out today from Disneyland Resort Paris, Birmingham is the twilight zone capital of the UK, recording the highest levels of supernatural phenomena.

The research, which looked at strange happenings and unexplained mysteries across the country, reveals the UK’s ‘capital’ and 13 hotspots for twilight zone activity. Commissioned to celebrate the launch of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror™* - a new attraction at Disneyland Resort Paris, inspired by the 1950s TV series The Twilight Zone® - the research has formed the basis of a spotter’s guide to the UK’s real twilight zones.

And the winner for weird ad campaign for the month is . . . Keith Richard for Louis Vuitton!

See Mr Broke Hoedown’s blog for details.

I look at that picture and all I can think of is, “What becomes a legend most?”