Check Out This Creepy Mickey Mouse Gas Mask and Other Strange Products
Yes you read that right, a Mickey Mouse gas mask. This has to be one of the oddest Disney products that I have ever seen. I have the second oddest, which is a Disney character back scratcher.
These gas masks went into production during WWII when there was a fear of attacks on American soil. Apparently, these were the first of what was planned as an entire line of cartoon-themed gas masks.
Former Army instructor Major Robert D. Walk had this to say about the mask:
On January 7th, 1942, one month after Pearl Harbor, T.W. Smith, Jr., the owner of the Sun Rubber Company, and his designer, Dietrich Rempel, with Walt Disney's approval introduced a protective mask for children. This design of the Mickey Mouse Gas Mask for children was presented to Major General William N. Porter, Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service. After approval of the CWS, Sun Rubber Products Company produced sample masks for review. Other comic book character designs were to follow, depending on the success of the Mickey Mouse mask [...]
The Sun Rubber Company produced approximately 1,000 Mickey Mouse gas masks and earned an Army-Navy ‘E' for excellence in wartime production in 1944.
Check out this cool video that takes you inside the Disney Archives to see some of the other strange products:
Luckily Mickey does not look that eerie in movies or at Disney World. What do you think of these Mickey Mouse Gas Masks?
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