tikichris

A couple of weeks ago I was blathering on about doing the Disney Florida Holidays thing as a kid and how salient the memories from that trip still are in my mind. Since writing that post, I’ve been a little more aware of how all pervasive and lasting Walt Disney’s vision has proven. Such ubiquity was particularly noted when I helped host a screening of the Disney/Pixar flick Toy Story 3 at Apollo Cinema last week. The screening brought out 160 people to see the movie – all of whom were adults save for a very few kids. It’s great (and, I suppose, important) to connect with that “inner child” and helping us do that is what Disney does best.

Connecting with my inner young’un and reminiscing about visiting Florida when I was little has brought about a recollection of a bizarre character I encounter on that trip: the Florida Orange Bird. Created by Disney as a marketing tool for the Florida Citrus Growers, Florida Orange Bird was a small bird with an orange for a head and leaves for wings and a tail, which may sound like some sort of mutant monster but I assure you it was ultra cute and adorably dinky.

Having seen TV commercials featuring the bird before the trip and a slew of Orange Bird billboards on the family drive down to Orlando when I was four years old, I half expected to see him fluttering about when my family stopped at an orange grove for a glass of fresh of OJ. I asked my mom where the Orange Bird could be and was crushed when she broke the news to me that this feathery fruity dude was just a cartoon. I really wanted there to be a bird with a fruit head. Oh well, luckily back then (1976), there was a Sunshine Tree Terrace concession at Disney World where someone dressed up in a Florida Orange Bird costume shook my hand and offered my a drink of orange juice in a container shaped like a giant orange. It didn’t make up for the fact that hybrid bird/plant creatures did not exist but it made me a happy boy anyway.