Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bongo the Wonder Bear






"Fun and Fancy Free" was originally released in American cinemas on 27 September 1947 after the war.It featured a collection of short films connected by short Jiminy Cricket introductions to each cartoon.,one of which is "Bongo".

Bongo is a unicycle riding, tightrope walking, juggling circus bear who escapes from the circus into the forest where he meets a lovely lady bear,Lulubelle.The much later Hanna Barbera characters of Yogi Bear and his girllfriend Cindy owe a little to these designs,in my opinion.

This figurine wasnt produced in the USA to my knowledge,and stands roughly six inches tall.I have yet to be able to nab one,he is very quickly snapped up on ebay.Note the sticker is identical to the Evan Shaw sticker just re-worded.

2 comments:

Kevin Kidney said...

Oh gosh, is he GREAT!

Anonymous said...

Great piece. Great blog, Chris. Just stumbeld on to it. Vintage Disney Pottery/Ceramic collector here in New York. I have about a dozen of the MCP pieces. Hope to see more posts here. Very curious to know abut the MCP out-put of pieces. I find it so interesting that some pieces were direct cast copies of American Shaw and Itallian Zaccagnini pieces, while others were completely original exclusive sculpts. (The small sitting Dumbo is, by the way, a copy of the origianl Zaccagnini piece - I have both versions in my collection.) Would love to hear if anyone has information regarding any catalog of all the Disney pieces produced. jonatlast@hotmail.com.
Cheers - Jon