Classic Disney World character Orange Bird quietly gains popularity

[Disney4me]

Orange Bird is red-hot. The animated character, created for Florida Citrus Growers as Disney World prepared to open, maintains a legion of fans more than 50 years after his debut

View the full article

 

By DEWAYNE BEVIL

ORLANDO SENTINEL |

MAR 26, 2021 AT 6:19 AM

 

Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Orlando Sentinel.

 

Disney Springs visitors walk by a mural featuring Orange Bird in a retro citrus ad, which fits with the turn-of-the-century theme of that area of the shopping and dining complex. (Dewayne Bevil / Orlando Sentinel)

 

Orange Bird is red-hot. The cartoon character, created for Florida Citrus Growers as Walt Disney World prepared to open, maintains a legion of fans more than 50 years after his debut.

Disney does not make it hard to show devotion to the little guy. The company sells many Orange Bird products, from trendy tie-dye spirit jerseys to dolls, frilly dresses, kitchenware and bright, fuzzy, orange mouse-ear headbands.

 

The cuteness factor is at play. His head is merely an orange with big eyes with leaves for hair, wings and tail. His little body is yellow, orange and pudgy. He’s round; he’s retro.

Some devotees have emotional connections to the bird, playing off theme-park nostalgia and the very fact that he remains silent.

Not a chirp.

If he concentrates hard enough, his thoughts appear in a cloud of orange

Early on in Disney World's history, the Orange Bird nested in Magic Kingdom's Adventureland. (Walt Disney Co.)

Heather Stiles’ first Orange Bird sighting — a bin of plush dolls at Disney’s Animal Kingdom — was in 2017.

“I feel like it was love at first sight … being just such a cheerful character with a really great backstory and background,” she says.

Thus, began her Orange Bird collection, which now numbers in the hundreds of items.

“I get everything Orange Bird is on,” Stiles says. “If he’s depicted, then it will become part of the collection.”

The Orange Bird character can be found as a design option in Disney World's MagicBands lineup. (Dewayne Bevil / Orlando Sentinel)

Her stash includes trading pins, jewelry, dishes, rare cels from commercials and plain, white Funko prototypes. But there’s more than merchandise to Orange Bird, she says.

“A lot of people love the character for the way that it looks but don’t really dive into the backstory, and they definitely should because it has a 50-year history with Disney and was an integral part in the creation of Adventureland as a whole,” Stiles says.

In the '70s, a costumed Orange Bird would interact with Magic Kingdom visitors. (Disney D23)

A symbol is hatched

Back in the planning stages of Magic Kingdom, Florida Orange Growers wanted to be a corporate sponsor of an attraction, and it wanted a mascot to go with it. Disney designers dreamed up Orange Bird, which became the symbol of Tropical Serenade, the animatronic-bird show now known as Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. It was a way to sell orange juice in Adventureland and beyond.

Orange Bird mostly pulled theme-park duty. There was a walk-around character for awhile. He was on an album featuring singer Anita Bryant, an orange-juice spokesperson herself, and that record included songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, the minds behind Disney classics such as “It’s a Small World (After All)” and “Chim Chim Cher-ee.”

The bird made a few appearances in educational films. In one storyline, he is mocked by other birds but overcomes adversity and, in the end, saves a family from calamity.

“It’s really emotional, because, you know, I was bullied in high school,” Stiles says. “The poor thing just wants to be accepted.”

Eventually, the orange character faded. His comeback included appearances at Tokyo Disneyland, followed by his incorporation into activities for the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival in 2017.

“I always have an affinity for whenever there are characters that are unique to the theme parks. So, when Orange Bird started coming back … I got really excited,” says Theresa Mabe, who lives near Baltimore.

“I’m very passionate about accessibility and disability advocacy. I really appreciate the fact that there’s this character that is a nonverbal, nonspeaking character,” she said. “It’s not out of the fact that he is disinterested in communicating or doesn’t have the capacity to do it. He just does it in a very different way.”

Jack Turnquest, who lives in Chicago, also feels ties to the character.

“You can’t not fall in love with this face,” he says. “It’s a little deeper for me because he doesn’t speak or talk. … I kind of connect with that nonverbal aspect because I have autism spectrum disorder, and sometimes being nonverbal is the thing,” he says.

[Popular on OrlandoSentinel.com] Nassal and interior-design company team up for at-home themed concepts »

“It’s my little connection to the Disney company, feeling represented, you know?”

While working for Disney College Program last year, Turnquest got an Orange Bird tattoo on his forearm.

“It feels nice to have people compliment it because I enjoy having it on my arm,” he says. “Why not show it off?”

A rare bird

The relative obscurity of Orange Bird might be key to his appeal, says Robert Thompson, who teaches a pop-culture course at Syracuse University.

“It either shows that you are really, really knowledgeable about the complete canon of Disney characters … or the only Disney character that’s cool enough for you is one that nobody else really knows much about,” Thompson says.

It could also be seen as a relief from the omnipresence of Disney characters and princesses, he said. There’s been no Orange Bird origin story on Disney+ or “O.B.: The Musical” on stage.

“It’s the relative in the family that we never see or hear about. There’s a mystery to this,” he says.

In 2019, an Orange Bird-inspired, orange-scented chocolate mousse was sold at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom. (Dewayne Bevil / Orlando Sentinel)

Disney World visitors currently can buy Orange Bird’s image on T-shirts, bucket hats, windbreakers, aprons and a MagicBand that reads “Squeeze me.” A second version of an Orange Bird sipper cup (filled with a lemon-orange smoothie) debuted at the Epcot flower and garden festival this year. He is incorporated into products that feature well-known Disney characters, such as Snow White, Donald Duck, Ariel and Dumbo.

He represents “O” in a set of alphabet-driven products, when the company could have gone with Olaf (“Frozen”), Owl (“Winnie the Pooh”) or Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an early creation of Walt Disney.

He’s used in non-revenue-making ways too. Disney World is mailing free Orange Bird magnets to its annual passholders, and he is featured in murals at Disney Springs and Magic Kingdom.

How Bowers, who lives in St. Petersburg, remembers the bird from his childhood and shopping for Orange Bird merchandise by driving from orange stand to orange stand.

“I was able to pick up an Orange Bird bank, and I still have that on my desk,” he says.

He eventually made a profit via eBay sales.

“I ended up flipping a bunch of stuff on eBay about 10 years ago because it was like there was a vacuum,” Bowers says. There’s no lack of options now, thanks to the surge in popularity of nerd and geek culture, he says.

“The character is obviously incredibly cute and appealing. … You know, very Florida. I mean, it is part and parcel of the Florida experience,” he says. “And he’s just slightly weird enough.”