The Disney empire definitely has its fans, but devout viewer TheDeadlySquid has compiled a video that features “every single variation of the Walt Disney Pictures logo, starting from 1985’s The Black Cauldron and going all the way until 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns.” The logo usually kicks things off with the Cinderella castle—stamped with Walt Disney’s signature—and a shooting star that, in olden times, used to be a spark from Tinkerbell’s wand.
The above video shows that the Disney creators enjoyed playing with the simple logo, no matter the theme of the film—see the robotic version used for Inspector Gadget or the countrified ones for The Country Bears and Home On The Range. Sometimes the logo change focuses on color, as in the neon version before The Lizzie Maguire Movie, or sounds, like the puppy barks in the background of 101 Dalmatians II. But as time passes, the logo gets more high-tech. It lands on a Christmas ornament in Mickey’s Twice Upon A Christmas, and turns into a doghouse-like structure for The Shaggy Dog.
The clip also notes that Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was the first film to use the all-CGI intro, turning the castle into a three-dimensional, heavily detailed structure surrounded by fireworks. That version went on to appear in films like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and High School Musical 3. In 2011, The Muppets became the first all-CGI intro to change the title from Walt Disney Productions to the simpler “Disney.”
Overall, the clip makes for an interesting journey through graphic design and technology, tracking the evolution of a certain company’s branding as it’s in the process of taking over the entertainment world.