Hats off to (Disneyland) Hats (and the Invention of Mickey Mouse Ears)
Social media makes it sound like Disneyland hats started and ended with today’s Mickey and Minnie ear headbands, as if someone invented them five minutes ago and immediately launched a thousand Instagram poses. In reality, Disney fans have been wearing playful park headwear for decades, and the ears have a much longer (and more interesting) origin story than most people realize.
Mickey Mouse Club “Big Mooseketeer” Roy Williams credited himself with inventing the Mickey Mouse ears, saying he drew inspiration from a sight gag in the 1929 animated short Karnival Kid, where Mickey tips his ears to Minnie.
Disney didn’t invent the “ear tip” gag from scratch for Mickey. Before The Karnival Kid reused it in 1929, Disney’s artists had already played with the same bit in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit era—most notably in the 1928 Oswald short Sleigh Bells, where Oswald “tips” the top of his head like a hat when he meets his sweetheart. In other words, the joke already lived in Disney’s toolbox while the studio still produced Oswald cartoons, and Mickey later inherited it (along with a lot of Oswald-era visual comedy). It’s also imagined that Disney borrowed the same gag from Felix the Cat.
I ran across a one-page piece for Disneyland hats in the Winter 1976 Disney News…years before Instagram-posing became the norm!
Wear a Disneyland hat
With a ribbon or a feather,
No matter the season,
No matter the weather.
All kinds to choose from,
All sizes and styles.
They’re wonderful hats: they
Bring on the smiles.So once you’ve “ooh”ed the chapeaux
And “ahh”ed the frilly bonnets,
Have priced them in poems
And written cap sonnets,
There’s one thing to do
To honor them: that’s
Bow very low-and take your
Hats of to hats!
At the time, film and the process of developing photos was still an expensive process. A professional photographer and model would have staged and shot a photo spread like the one featured on the one-page piece. Still, it’s interesting to see that things haven’t changed!
Looking for a great book on the history of Disneyland?