Buried Treasure Planet: Unreleased Disney Wild Racers

Disney Wild Racers Treasure Planet John Silver

Recently I was the victim of eBay sniping.  At literally the last second of the auction, a bloodthirsty pirate took away my chance at getting a highly coveted collectible that I'd known about for years, but never seen.  A John Silver Treasure Planet Disney Wild Racer.

What is interesting is that this particular eBay auction listed the car as "BEN" (the obnoxious robot) from Treasure Planet.  This car is clearly not BEN, it is Silver.  It is Silver's arm as a car.

The popular Disney Racers die cast car collection started out as "Disney's Wild Racers" made by Hasbro back in 2002.  The cars were sold at toy stores and retail giants like Walmart.

New waves of Disney Wild Racers were announced, but never released.  Among those announced was a set of cars for Disney's 2002 animated film, Treasure Planet.

The Treasure Planet set was going to feature BEN and Silver.  I have to admit this Silver car looks better than I ever imagined.

There was also an eBay auction for a different, unpainted prototype version of the Silver car.

I lost that auction, too.

The unpainted Silver car is pretty slick, too.

It's not surprising that the Silver car was never released.  Treasure Planet did not do well at the box office, and the Disney Wild Racers line was discontinued at toy stores.  Luckily, the line became Disney Racers and continues to be sold at Disney theme parks.

Another unreleased Disney Wild Racer is Buster the dog. *

UPDATE 02/18/2025:  OK, I wrote this a long time ago, and I now think this is Baloo the Bear from The Jungle Book.

Baloo was announced as a Wild Racer, to be sold with Shere Khan. But Baloo was never released.

Buster the dog was the villain in the 2001 movie Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure.  The paint scheme and nose made me think it was a dog, but the ears do look like a bear, and it has Baloo's tufts of hair.

I'm not sure who this character is supposed to be.

Is this the long lost Jungle Book Baloo Disney Wild Racer?  I'm leaning towards yes.

Disney Wild Racers of Shere Khan and Bagheera were made and sold (as was a Kaa the snake track).  It is curious that the planned Baloo car was never made.

It is rather shocking that Zero dog did not make it past the prototype stage.

Zero Disney Wild Racer

Zero the dog (with Skeleton Jack) from The Nightmare Before Christmas seem like they'd sell like crazy during the Haunted Mansion Holiday season at Disneyland in California.

It looks like Zero would have been similar to the "invisible" Cheshire Cat Disney Racers.

Dr. Finkelstein from The Nightmare Before Christmas was also made into a prototype Disney Racer.

Dr. Finkelstein also seems like a no-brainer to sell at Disneyland.

Jack, Oogie Boogie, Zero and Finkelstein could sell really well as a boxed set.

Rex and Woody had been announced many years ago as a set for Disney Wild Racers.

Eventually, Woody was released at the Disney Parks.

Given how many Toy Story character Disney Racers have been made, I'm rather shocked that Rex was never produced.

I failed to get any of these Unreleased Disney Racers when they were being sold on eBay.

By 2016, the Disney Racers line has morphed and grown into something very different. Star Wars and Marvel are the big focus now, which isn't that shocking, because they sell.

The search continues for more buried Treasure Planet Disney Racers...

Disney's Monkey King At Sears: A King Louie Jungle Book Mystery

The jungle is full of mystery.  Just like the curiosity that is Disney's Monkey King, a plush version of King Louie that appeared in a late 1980s Sears Catalog Wishbook.

n the 2016 movie version of Disney's The Jungle Book, King Louie is re-imagined as a King-Kong type Gigantopithecus ape---a large creature that used to exist in India.  The King Louie character was a Disney creation not featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book---orangutans are not native to India.

The introduction to Disney's Monkey King in the Sears catalog stood out to me for a few reasons.

Why did King Louie get a name change for this toy?  If you want to get technical, apes are not "monkeys".  So that drove me crazy.

Another big question:  Why was the Monkey King so off-model?  This does not look much like King Louie from the animated movie.

If anything, The Monkey King from Sears looks like a relative of Donkey Kong.

The Monkey King was part of a larger Disney collection of toys sold at Sears during the 1980s.

Of course, there was also a Baloo plush toy as part of this collection.

Baloo's name was not changed to "Bare Necessities Bear" or anything like that for the Sears toy.

The folks responsible for the Sears Jungle Book plush was the TCA Group Inc.

The Sears Baloo plush is really interesting, too.

While a lot of plush Baloo toys tend to stick pretty close to the character design in the movie, this one goes for the cuddle factor instead.

The Sears Baloo actually looks like a sloth bear (what Baloo is).

Sears made a point of making a big deal out of Baloo's tongue, which you don't typically see.

Shere Khan also appeared as part of the Jungle Book plush collection from Sears.

This is among the best plush toys I've seen of Shere Khan.

The Sears Shere Khan has some nice glass tiger eyes.  Glass Tiger was big in the 1980s (Google it).

I really like the Sears Jungle Book plush toys.  It seems like they predicted the future of the characters for the 2016 version of The Jungle Book.

Maybe Jon Favreau (director of the 2016 Jungle Book) saw or owned these toys at some point and thought of them when he was making his movie.

Disney's The Jungle Book In 3D

Yes, there were 3D versions of Walt Disney's characters from The Jungle Book back when the film debuted in 1967. Before computer animation, two dimensional characters were often brought to life with sculpted figures created for lenticular photographs.

Bagheera, Kaa and Shere Khan are featured in an 8 inch by 10 inch picture displayed in a groovy yellow frame measuring roughly 10 inches by 12 inches. There were also 3D lenticular postcards for this series, too.

There was no Internet when I got a few of these lenticular cards as a kid many years ago, so the 3D Jungle Book was a mystery to me for a long time. I got these as a gift in the 1980s, and I know they were purchased at a consignment shop. I was mesmerized by this unique Jungle Book world.


It seems the figures were set up in a mix of different ways, and there were more characters, including Baloo the bear, with different backdrops and props.

I have seen a postcard of King Louie and Mowgli with the monkey in the tree cropped out.


These images are reminiscent of the 3D ViewMaster Jungle Book reels, which also featured sculpted "puppets" and detailed sets.

I have to admit, after seeing Disney's "Tangled" I'm really curious to see what some hand-drawn Disney animated features would look like rebooted as CGI films. Beauty and the Beast is at the top of my list (I think it could be amazing) and The Jungle Book seems like it would work well, too.

I always thought The Jungle Book would make a great musical Disney theme park attraction. It could be cool to see an Adventureland version of Splash Mountain for Disneyland Paris in France themed to the Jungle Book (I know The Jungle Book has always been really popular in Europe).

I'd love to see an interactive safari Jeep dark ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, featuring animated Disney animals from films like The Jungle Book and The Lion King. The vehicles could feature "cameras" (like the laser guns at Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin attraction) and the rider with the most animals "photographed" would get the highest score. The attraction could end with the vehicles passing by the Dragon, Griffin and Unicorn characters from Disney's Fantasia 2000 animated feature.


Mickey Mouse was also given the 3D lenticular card treatment. This is one of the most bizarre Disney items I've ever seen.

It's Mickey Mouse standing on his birthday cake, with a psychedelic 1960s Christmas tree in the background.


I can easily imagine seeing this picture hanging up in someone's wood-paneled basement playroom. You know, the one with the funky-smelling orange shag carpet.

It looks like Mickey is dressed up to play golf at a retirement center after the birthday party is over.

Disney's TaleSpin: A Banned Holiday in Thembria

Walt Disney's Holiday Parade was a special comic book released by Disney Comics featuring stories spanning the decades. The content included a Carl Barks Donald Duck story, plus classic comics starring Li'l Bad Wolf, Pluto, Uncle Scrooge, Super Goof, Chip 'n' Dale, and Mickey Mouse. This great cover was drawn by Rick Hoover and colored by Gail Bailey.



New for this comic book was a TaleSpin story called "Shine a Little Light." There's no date anywhere on this comic book, but since TaleSpin was new for 1990, I'm guessing that's the year this comic was released.


In the TaleSpin story (written by Cherie Wilkerson, drawn by Cosme Quartieri), Baloo the Bear must make a delivery to Thembria, a cold and oppressive nation inhabited by an army of boars. Unfortunately, the diminutive Colonel Spigot decides to ban all private holiday celebrations.

Luckily, with the help of Spigot's gentle-giant assistant, Sgt. Dunder, Baloo is able to help the citizens of Thembria.

In the animated series, Colonel Spigot was voiced by Michael Gough (he played Gopher in the Winnie the Pooh series) and Sgt. Dunder was voiced by Lorenzo Music (Garfield the cat and Tummi Gummi on the Gummi Bears).

The TaleSpin coloring book offers a glimpse of a different spin on the Thembrians.



I'm guessing the Coloring Book was created when the show still had some development going on. It appears that Colonel Spigot was originally going to be a small lion.



Meanwhile, Sgt. Dunder was a big bobcat!



I think these designs are appealing, but I'm glad the characters were changed to boars.


I'm very curious about the original versions of these characters and how they changed during the development of TaleSpin.

Baloo, Is That You?-Early TaleSpin at Walt Disney World

I got a HUGE foldout map of the Walt Disney World Resort back in 1990. It features a slew of characters, including the Gummi Bears, the Fox and the Hound, The Rescuers, Ducktales, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, Roger Rabbit, Oliver and Company and some of the fair folk from The Black Cauldron.

What I remember most about this map is the image of Baloo the Bear and Molly from the (then) new TV series, TaleSpin. The show was clearly still in development when the map was being made, as the character designs and airplane are different from what was used in the show.

So here's a little nugget of fun for fans of the Disney Afternoon!

Spin It Again--Disney's TaleSpin Valentines

My intention was to post all sorts of Valentines in February, but it just didn't happen.

This box of TaleSpin Valentines from the early 1990s is very stylish, and still sealed. The price was marked $2.69, but I got these for 99 cents many years ago.

From an artistic standpoint, I think the TaleSpin series would have looked especially cool if the characters had been drawn in this fashion.

Wild Baloo Yonder: TaleSpin Cereal Prize Stamper

The 1990 animated TV series TaleSpin was a very unique project for Disney, and unlike any spin -off they've done. This was not a sequel to the film The Jungle Book by any means. Disney TV Animation took Baloo the bear, King Louie the orangutan, and Shere Khan the tiger and put them in new roles and a whole new world. Baloo became a cargo pilot and interacted with a whole new set of characters, along with Louie (now a nightclub owner) and Shere Khan (a ruthless business tycoon). I enjoyed the show and its inventive stories and colorful characters (and I love the theme song).

Disney hasn't tried anything like it again. How about using characters from The Lion King? Let's go crazy here! There could be a series with Simba and Scar as dueling race car drivers. Simba's pit crew could consist of Timon, Pumbaa, and Zazu. Scar would have Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. It could be called Roarin' Racers! How about it? Too much?

Kellogg's cereals promoted TaleSpin and other Disney Afternoon shows for multiple years. This Baloo stamper has a 1990 copyright and was from a box of Frosted Flakes. The logo is the old version seen in concept art shown in The Disney Channel Magazine prior to the show's Spring 1990 sneak preview (I have that somewhere---some media slipped by featuring slightly different character designs for Kit, Rebecca, Molly and Baloo).