The film buff’s guide to newly-added vintage cartoons on Disney+

The group of vintage cartoons added to Disney+ in July 2023 includes one “Silly Symphony” cartoon, one short starring Mickey Mouse, two starring Figaro the cat, and two starring Goofy.

Rediscovering Early Disney Animation

If you plan to watch them all, I’d recommend chronological order as you’ll notice the progression of style and story through different eras of Walt Disney Animation Studios, beginning with its earliest years and continuing through the end of Walt’s lifetime.

Disney+ will add a total of 27 cartoons now through October as part of Disney100. Kevin Schaffer and his team at Walt Disney Studios Restoration and Preservation led the process of polishing up the shorts with input from Dorothy McKim, Mike Giaimo, and Eric Goldberg at Walt Disney Animation Studios — and the cartoons all look fantastic.

Let’s begin our journey through the history of all six shorts now available on Disney+ starting in 1929, with the advent of a new venture for Walt Disney.

The Skeleton Dance

“The Skeleton Dance” debuted in 1929 as the very first entry in Walt Disney’s “Silly Symphony” series. Disney produced the “Silly Symphony” shorts concurrently with his early Mickey Mouse cartoons as explorations of folklore and the retelling of fairy tales.

The animators were able to push themselves artistically in “Silly Symphony” shorts more than in Mickey’s adventures. Their work on the series — which also yielded classics like the “The Old Mill,” an Oscar winner, and “The Three Little Pigs,” the “Frozen”-level Disney phenomenon of its day — proved as a testing ground of sorts for Walt’s crew, both stylistically and narratively, before they tackled full-length animated fairy tales.

You might observe how “The Skeleton Dance” is essentially a collection of visual gags loosely strung together. As the studio continued its filmography in the years to come, its cartoons organically transitioned to being more narrative-driven. For now, though, the funnies come loose and fast. Things sometimes get weird.

Like, really weird.

You may notice some familiar names in the opening title card. Ub Iwerks animated many of the early Disney shorts, sometimes single-handedly. He eventually left the studio to pursue his own animation ambitions, but returned years later to innovate new technology for animation and special effects. His son, Don Iwerks, is a former Disney technician who helped bring to life many mid-century film and theme park projects. Ub’s granddaughter and Don’s daughter, Leslie Iwerks, is a film director who recently helmed “The Imagineering Story” on Disney+ and “100 Years of Warner Bros.” on Max.

Meanwhile, composer Carl Stalling created the “Silly Symphony” concept and later worked at Warner Bros., writing music for “Looney Tunes.” You might recognize Stalling’s theme for “The Skeleton Dance” from its use in Disney’s Not-So-Spooky Spectacular, the fireworks show performed during Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.

Building A Building

An underrated Mickey Mouse short that I’m thrilled more people will get to experience is “Building A Building,” which debuted in 1933. The adorable storyline follows Minnie visiting Mickey during his lunch break on a construction site. Unfortunately, Pete is Mickey’s foreman, and of course, he’s not too happy with Minnie’s visit. Naturally, cartoon antics ensue. In comparison to “The Skeleton Dance,” “Building A Building” has more of a plot. Its gags service the story rather than simply being presented on their own.

Walt and his animators had five years of experience with Mickey under their belt by 1933. They’d learned what makes an endearing Mickey story, and how to animate that story well. Inanimate objects have faces and personalities. Music and sound inform every beat of the visuals. The artistry on display in “Building A Building” is a quintessential embodiment of the heyday of early animation. It’s this era we see celebrated in later ventures like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and Disneyland’s Toontown.

If you grew up watching “The Fairly OddParents” on Nickelodeon, the made-for-TV movie “Channel Chasers” directly parodies “Building A Building.” In the film, Timmy Turner jumps across different story universes that parody different animation styles. This includes a black-and-white world that duplicates a handful of gags straight out of “Building A Building.”

Also of note, “Building A Building” features quite the lead voice actor. Listen closely… that’s Walt Disney voicing Mickey Mouse, as he did in every cartoon of the mouse’s early days.

Bath Day

You might know Figaro as Geppetto’s cat in 1940’s “Pinocchio;” however, by 1946, the pet inexplicably belonged to Minnie Mouse. One of very few Figaro-branded cartoons, “Bath Day” involves Minnie giving Figaro a bath, his pampered appearance later embarrassing him in front of the alley cats.

In the 13-year gap between “Building A Building” and “Bath Day,” the Disney animators had crafted a different style for the animated adventures of Mickey and pals. While obviously the characters are still anthropomorphic animals, the zany world around them seems to have faded away in favor of, essentially, our world. Minnie’s home and neighborhood in “Bath Day” look more like the mid-century American suburbs than a toon-ruled alternate dimension.

Even though this is a Figaro cartoon, not a Minnie cartoon, it’s still nice to see Disney’s leading female star in an environment atypical of her usual role (in other words, not just in service to Mickey).

Unfortunately, these types of appearances were few and far between. Minnie never starred in a cartoon series of her own during Walt’s lifetime. That distinction wouldn’t come until over 50 years after “Bath Day,” when the television series “Mickey MouseWorks” and its successor, “House of Mouse,” regularly featured new Minnie cartoons among its roster of programming. The Mickey cartoons of the past decade also occasionally gave Minnie top-billing in adventures of her own.

Figaro and Frankie

Another Figaro cartoon, 1947’s “Figaro and Frankie” sees Minnie adopting a new bird, Frankie, much to Figaro’s disdain. As the black-and-white cat preys upon the tiny, yellow, tweeting bird, it’s easy to compare the premise to another set of cartoon foils of the same era, albeit of the loonier persuasion.

Again, it’s likely that many fans today might not realize Figaro became Minnie’s cat after belonging to Geppetto, much less starred in his own handful (pawful?) of cartoons. Here we see Figaro face off against Butch, a frequent adversary of Pluto.

Goofy Gymnastics

Sticking to the traditional format of most Goofy cartoons, 1949’s “Goofy Gymnastics” involves poor Goofy trying his earnest to follow instructions of an offscreen narrator — which, in this case, emanates from a record he listens to — to complete some sort of task. Often these were structured in a “How-To” format (i.e. “How to Swim,” “How to Play Football,” etc.). This time, Goofy has taken up gymnastics in an effort to gain muscle. This being Goofy, he spectacularly fails in every single direction, yielding delightful visual gags. We also hear a few incredible instances of Goofy’s classic scream.

The “How-To” shorts mostly remained in the ’40s and ’50s. Despite this, Disney has continued to connect the motif to Goofy’s modern projects. In 2007, Disney Animation created a one-off Goofy short, “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater,” that brought the format into the 21st century. During the pandemic, Disney+ dropped “How to Stay at Home,” showing Goofy learning how to wear a mask, cook, and binge-watch television. Most recently, the Imagineers themed Goofy’s yard in the 2023 remodel of Mickey’s Toontown at Disneyland after the “How-To” concept.

Aquamania

“Aquamania” is an interesting outlier in this batch of newly-added vintage cartoons on Disney+, just as it was when it debuted in 1961. While starring Goofy, it’s not billed as a Goofy cartoon. Instead, the title card simply says, “Walt Disney presents Aquamania.” In the story, Goofy goes becomes obsessed with boating. He gets more than he bargains for when he enters a jet ski competition.

Audiences in 1961 might have considered “Aquamania” as something of a nostalgic throwback. It had been eight years since the last Goofy cartoon, and similarly eight years since a Mickey cartoon and 10 years since a Pluto cartoon. Donald still starred in shorts occasionally, but not with the frequency he once commanded. Simply put, audiences were out of the habit of seeing Mickey and friends in theatrical cartoon appearances.

Debuting the same year that the studio released “101 Dalmatians,” “Aquamania” has evident traces of that film’s art direction, sometimes literally. The look of the background artwork and the rough-sketch style of the character animation would easily feel at home in the story of Pongo, Perdita, and their pups.

Contemporary audiences may be surprised to see that Goofy has a son in “Aquamania” who isn’t Max. Many Goofy cartoons posit the goof as a placeholder for the mid-century American everyman (or, at least, the sanitized, picket-fence, Disney version of the mid-century American everyman). Often, these appearances inexplicably refer to Goofy as “George Geef,” a man with a wife, Mrs. Geef, and elementary-aged son, Junior. Max wouldn’t come along until the 1992 series “Goof Troop,” in which Mrs. Geef and Junior are absent just as bewilderingly as they were introduced.

More Cartoons on Disney+

If you enjoy this batch of cartoons just added to Disney+, there’s good news. Dozens of other vintage shorts are already in the Disney+ library. An easy way to find them all is in the newly added Disney100 Collection. Access the search function within Disney+, and you’ll see the Disney100 Collection at the top of your screen.

From there, in addition to the six newly added shorts, take your pick from 21 cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, 21 starring Donald Duck, 11 starring Pluto, seven starring Goofy, one starring Chip and Dale, two starring Roger Rabbit, 17 in the “Silly Symphony” series, two stand-alone projects (“Ferdinand the Bull” and “Lambert, the Sheepish Lion”), and three Pixar shorts.

And there’s more to come! Disney+ will add more classic cartoons Aug. 11, Sep. 5-8, and Oct. 6, 2023, leading up to the official Oct. 16, 2023, centennial anniversary of The Walt Disney Company. See the full list here.