Ahhhh… 1989. It was a good year. I was stoked to be in the “upper grades”, wearing fluorescent colors, and hitting my friends with slap bracelets. Music was all about Michael Jackson, Tiffany, and Debbie Gibson. We were swooning over George Michael and never for one second did we think Milli Vanilli wasn’t actually singing. Politically, the Berlin wall came down and there was protesting in Tiananmen Square. Disney revived animation with the release of The Little Mermaid, Disney’s MGM Studio opened, the third generation of The Mickey Mouse Club debuted, and the best advice anyone could give you was “Don’t worry… be happy”. 1989… Heck yeah!
1989 also had some beautiful Disney art you could collect! Just feast your eyes on this catalog from The Disney Gallery Collection, courtesy of reader Steve “sb-illustrations”. (The copyright is from 1988 but it seems to have been used in 1989.) Inside you could purchase a Blaine Gibson maquette of Cinderella, posters by John Hench and Herb Ryman, and a Ken Anderson and Sam McKim concept painting for Haunted Mansion. Do note that you were ordering directly from The Disney Gallery inside of Disneyland. Pretty cool!
The prices were still… well… “Disney” back in 1989, but if we take our flux capacitor-equipped DeLoreans back with a full wallet of cash, I think we’d be feeling like we scored, more or less! Have a look!
