The Change Mariner

Decline of Mickey in the Digital Era

NYT:
... Revenue of Mickey-related products sold by Disney's consumer products division, for example, has shrunk to less than 40 percent of the division's $2.3 billion annual total, down from 50 percent during the peak in 1997, according to Disney executives. Winnie the Pooh merchandise is now outselling Mickey items.

Even the company's own research suggests that the 75-year-old mouse is becoming increasingly difficult for Americans of all ages to relate to - particularly children, whose entertainment world is filled with online computer games and other distractions.

"Mickey hasn't really changed, and I guess the question is, have the times passed him by?" said Tom Wolzien, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Company who covers Disney. "I think they've had chances to upgrade the character, but they haven't done a lot with it."

...Mickey is competing against streetwise and sophisticated animated newcomers like Viacom's SpongeBob SquarePants. So Disney is literally taking Mickey to the streets, painting black and white murals of him on the sides of buildings around Los Angeles.

Disney is also planning new feature films, including next year's "Three Musketeers," the first full-length film starring Mickey Mouse and his friends, and for 2005 the first computer-animated Mickey movie, "Twice Upon a Christmas." The movies will not be released in theaters, instead going straight to home video, under the theory that it can be difficult to muster cinema-size crowds for animated characters older than many of today's children's grandparents.

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