Marvel superheroes for sale at Downtown Disney
Featured, Matt Palm, Merchandise — By Matt Palm on July 27, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Captain America's at Walt Disney World. (AP photo)
The reality of Disney’s acquisition of the Marvel superheroes hit home on a weekend visit to a Downtown Disney store: It was the first time I had noticed a prominent display of the crime-fighting comic-book characters mixed with the standard Disney fare.
One wall of Downtown Disney’s D-Street was displaying items such as Captain America T-shirts, Spider-Man toy vehicles and action figures of The Thing and others.
They were grouped with Stars Wars merchandise and T-shirts for Disney’s upcoming Tron movie so it wasn’t as though they were next to stuffed Simbas or Snow White princess dolls.
Still, it was a bit jarring: Superheroes still bring Islands of Adventure to my mind, not the more cuddly House of Mouse.
(Incidentally: $30-plus for a Tron T-shirt. Does Tron have that big a fan base? Or maybe Disney has high hopes for the new film?)
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Tags: Captain America, D Street, Downtown Disney, Marvel, Merchandise, Spider-Man, Superheroes, The Thing
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9 Comments
This isn’t really that new anymore. Marvel stuff has been in DTD and DHS since late April/Early May from what I remember.
Yeah, I know it’s not really new. I’m not a big shopper, though, so it was the first time I experienced it. And I imagine for people coming down on vacation for the first time in a while, it will be new to them too.
Once Upon a Toy has been selling Marvel toys for at least 3 years that I can remember
Nothing really new here. I remember buying some X-Men merchandise at the former Disney-MGM Studios in the early nineties.
I can see that as Universal’s Islands of Adventure had not been in operation yet. (It didn’t open until near 1999 if I remember correctly.)
We saw a whole gift shop at DHS (one between the Planet Hollywood store and the main street) selling Marvel merchandise on Sunday. I really thought it was interesting that two competing theme parks in Orlando are basically selling the same stuff.
It is a bit un-nerving to think that the Hulk and Mickey Mouse could be sharing the same retail space in Downtown Disney Stores. I wonder if we will be seeing Marvel tshirts and toys in the Disney theme parks next? The Xmen on the Disney Channel?
X-Men has been on DisneyXD for a while now; even prior to the purchase of Marvel.
I agree with the last post. Disney has the Spiderman and Xmen, Viacom has Nick, and Nick has the Xmen, but Universal has NickStudios. Warner has Batman and Xmen on CartoonNetwork, but Fox has live action Spiderman and Xmen. Warner has live action Batman, while Uni has live action Hulk movies and Marvel in the parks. But only in NorthAmerica, and only east of the Mississippi. Thus, Disneyland could have a Marvel Ride, but not DisneyWorld… yet. It is all too confusing, so I try to just show up with my son and have fun.