Just in time for Thanksgiving, Eric Serves up a feast of Disney Turkeys from both onscreen and in real life. Turkeys in Shorts like Chicken Little, Cold Turkey with Pluto, and Turkey Catchers featuring Mickey Donald and Pluto. For a healthy portion of American History, he explores Disney’s ties to the Presidents and the original Modern Thanksgiving Celebration. He also takes a bite out of one of the most polarizing Disney Snacks from the parks…the Turkey Leg. Join us on this look into Disney Turkeys and make sure to stick around for some leftovers. You’ll be thankful you did!
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00:59 --> 27:52 Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. I'm Eric, and I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to listen to this episode. Today, I am thankful that you're here joining me and keeping me company. It is Thanksgiving in the United States, and that's a time for parades, for football games, for dog shows, and it's a time to get together with your family, maybe your friends, and just have a great time. It's also a time for the king of the grocery store poultry aisle. Turkey. Turkey is synonymous with thanksgiving. Some people even call the holiday Turkey Day. Not only do we eat turkey, but people put giant inflatable turkeys in their yard. Kids do school projects about hiding a turkey from getting eaten. And we even trace our hands and make our fingers into turkey feathers to draw these fun little turkeys. Turkey is tradition. We get this idea, we get this image of the Pilgrims at Plymouth and the Wampanag sitting down and eating a big juicy bird together. The truth is, in 1621 in Plymouth, they probably didn't actually even eat turkey. And for over 200 years after that, americans didn't even celebrate Thanksgiving. The way we think of it today, the Thanksgiving we know came about in 1863 during the Civil War as a way to heal the wounds of the nation. You see, for a while, author Sarah Joseph Hale had been lobbying for a day of national Thanksgiving. You might know Hale's famous poem, Mary Had a Little Lamb, but she also wrote a novel called Northwood, a Tale of New England, which featured a great celebratory feast featuring yep, you guessed it, a turkey. She kept asking lawmakers for a day of Thanksgiving, and Abraham Lincoln needed a little help bolstering the national morale during the war. So he took her up on the idea and he proclaimed the fourth Thursday of November Thanksgiving. People didn't know how to have a Thanksgiving, so they looked to the lady who made it happen, sarah Joseph Hale, the mother of Thanksgiving. And they modeled their celebrations after the feast in her book Northwood. But Eric, you're supposed to talk about Disney and Abraham Lincoln. Wasn't even an animatronic in that know. I know. Let's get to it. Turkey and Disney. Here we go. Let's start with where Disney started out with animation. Let's take a look at Chicken Little. No, not the movie from 2005. Well, kind of, but let's go back a little further to 1943 for the short Chicken Little. Just like the Tortoise and the hare and the Three Little Pigs, chicken Little is a retelling of a popular traditional tale. The cartoon short was retelling the tale. You know, Chicken Little gets hit on the head with an acorn, thinks the sky is falling, and then spreads the word and convinces the rest of the barnyard, the birds, that the sky is indeed falling and chaos ensues. It sounds like a pretty fun, silly symphony, except it's not. Chicken Little was actually part of the era of World War II propaganda films that Disney made in conjunction with the federal government to educate the public. The short is a wartime cautionary tale about the dangers of rumors and misinformation, and it takes a look at how people can be easily swayed and manipulated by outside sources. When tensions are high, it warns not to fall for conspiracy theories and sensational news stories. And it sounds like we could probably learn a little something from it still today, even though it's from all the way back in 1943. In the short, instead of an acorn falling on Chicken Little, he's actually set up. You see, Foxy Loxy feeds him some misinformation that the sky is falling after dropping a chunk of blue sky painted wood on his head. And literally, Foxy Loxy is behind the scenes, speaking to each group of the birds at their own level, at their own place, creating this manufactured hysteria as a ruse to manipulate them. The whole time. He's guided by this psychology textbook that he's reading that he's using to learn how to manipulate the masses. According to Leonard Malton's intro to the short from TCM. Originally, the book Guiding Foxy Loxy was Mind Comp by Adolf Hitler. Yikes. Disney decided this was a little too far, and they did change it before the short debuted. However, the story does still go a little far out of the standard Disney fare for a not so happy ending, frank Graham narrates the story and voices most of the characters, including Turkey Lurkey. See, we got to the turkey part in the short. Turkey Lurkey is a part of what's called the smart set. The turkeys are all dressed up in suits, drinking tea, and they represent the aristocratic academics. They sit around and they talk about what's going wrong with the world, but not doing much to change it. Then they also get wrapped up in the panic like the rest of the birds. Turkey Lurkey in 2000 and five's, Chicken Little movie is actually a nod to the Turkey Lurkey from this short. He's dressed up and styled similarly, except in this version, he's the mayor and he's voiced by Don Knotts, who I think has the best turkey voice. And I say that with respect. I don't mean any disrespect by saying he has the best turkey, just his voice feels like it would be the right voice for a cartoon. Turkey in both Chicken Littles, the turkeys aren't the star, and they're not central to the plot. But in this next short, the turkey is front and center of the story. Let's move on from Disney's hot takes from World War II into some cold turkey. Cold turkey was a Pluto short from 1951. In fact, it was the last ever Pluto short. Now, Pluto was in some other shorts after that, but this is the last one where he was the star. His face would, like, pop out in the star. It was all about him, the short. Cold turkey stars, pluto and Milton. You know Milton, Mickey's, Cat. Remember Milton? No. Me neither. Milton was only in a few shorts between 1950 and 51. I recognized him, but I got to tell you, I didn't know his name was Milton before watching this short and doing some research for this episode. He started out as a stray and then became Mickey's house pet, and then he quit. Cold turkey. Get it? In cold turkey, Milton and Pluto are watching wrestling on TV, and then a commercial for whole turkeys comes on. I don't think I've ever seen a commercial for whole turkeys. Maybe I've seen one for a whole poultry company like Tyson or Purdue or something like that. Maybe I've seen a commercial for a grocery store that's having a sale on turkey, but never just a commercial for whole turkeys. But that's what they see a commercial for turkeys. And I don't know. Did they really do that in the 1950s? Anyway, Pluto and Milton try to get the turkey out of the TV, unsuccessfully, of course. It's on TV. Well, the announcer says that there should be a turkey in every refrigerator, which then gives them the idea that they should check the kitchen. In the kitchen. They get into some back and forth competition for the turkey that they do find in Mickey's fridge, and there are a ton of gags. Pluto gets frozen in the ice box and has to thaw himself out using only his tail. Milton cooks the turkey in the living room on a heat vent, and eventually they overcook the turkey on the hot tubes of the TV, which makes me really scared about the technology of TVs in the 1950s. If you could even get the idea of cooking a turkey on that, yikes. The turkey gets burnt to a crisp, and the short ends with them playing along. Wrestling along with the TV. Wrestling announcers commentary. Cold turkey isn't specifically a Thanksgiving short, but in the US. These days, we don't tend to keep whole turkeys on hand unless it is Thanksgiving. So looking at it in a current day lens, the short feels like it takes place in the days leading up to Thanksgiving or a big holiday feast. Turkey catchers, though the 1999 short turkey catchers, on the other hand, is definitely a Thanksgiving short. No doubt about it. In Turkey Catchers, Mickey, Donald, and goofy are working in a downtown office as turkey catchers. They get a call, and they head out to go on a turkey catching gig. This is a total nod to the 1937 short Lonesome Ghosts, where Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are ghost hunters. This could probably even be seen as a sequel. Like, Mickey, Donald and Goofy tried their hand at being ghost hunters in October. That didn't work out so well, so they switched to being turkey hunters in November. So they go out on their turkey hunting mission, and when they arrive in a picturesque cartoon fall scene, they find their client, who happens to be a pilgrim who doesn't believe in their turkey catching abilities and challenges them to prove him wrong by indeed catching a turkey. Throughout the short, the turkey mostly outsmarts the turkey catchers. Well, they try different methods and different contraptions, taking turns and creating gag after gag. I love that this short used the Ajax brand for some of the various turkey contraption gags. Pluto actually joins Mickey, Donald, and Goofy when he comes out of a box labeled Ajax Turkey Finder. So Ajax is a company that's like a fictitious company that's used in the Lonesome Ghost short, too. So there's another tie to that original short. But the reason I love the Ajax fictional company is that it points to some early competition with Looney Tunes over at Warner Brothers. Looney Tunes, originally called the Merry Melodies, was a little poke at Disney's silly symphonies. Ajax products in Disney shorts are kind of a clap. Back on Looney Tunes. Acme company Turkey Catchers was originally aired as a short on the ABC Saturday Morning cartoon mickey Mouse Works. After a couple of seasons, Mickey Mouse Works was replaced with the more popular House of Mouse. I still love that Brian setzer opening song. I love the house of Mouse. Turkey Catchers was actually recycled and re aired again as part of the House of Mouse a few years later during a special Thanksgiving episode called House of Turkey. Perfect for this episode that we're on right now. You can definitely take a watch of that whole episode for some Thanksgiving fun. That's enough of those Thanksgiving cartoon shorts. Let's bring this Disney turkey hunt into the real world. Let's find some real life Disney turkey, maybe some turkeys in American history. Let's get back to Walt's favorite president, good old Honest Abe. At the top of the show, I talked about Lincoln's starting Thanksgiving as we know it in 1863. On the fourth Thursday of November. That same year an American folktale was born. It was reported that one of the Lincoln's kids did not want to eat the turkey that the family had bought for their Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, he wanted to keep it as a pet. So the story goes that Lincoln granted the turkey clemency, and this sowed the seed of an idea that today has become a tradition pardoning a turkey over the years as a Thanksgiving publicity stunt. Many presidents have pardoned a turkey in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. At first, it was kind of sporadic. Since 1920, the National Turkey Federation has been supplying the White House with a free promotional turkey. Some presidents just straight up ate the bird, and others couldn't bring themselves to do it. Still others took a page out of Lincoln's book and pardoned the turkey that was sent to them. Kennedy pardoned the turkey. First ladies Pat Nixon and Rosalind Carter pardoned turkeys during their husband's terms. And Ronald Reagan pardoned a couple of them too. But it was George H. W. Bush who started the tradition of pardoning a turkey every year, and it's continued every year since then. With the pardoning tradition in full swing, the National Turkey Federation started sending the White House two turkeys with the intention that the President could pardon one and eat the other. But the presidents just started pardoning both turkeys in 2005, at the big press conference where George W. Bush had just pardoned two turkeys, marshmallow and Yam, the reporters asked the birds, you've just been pardoned by the President of the United States of America. What are you going to do next? And the turkeys shouted in unison, we're going to Disneyland. Well, not exactly. They didn't actually shout that, but they are turkeys, so they couldn't really talk. But they did get to go to Disneyland. From 2005 until 2010, during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, disney took the pardoned turkeys and let them live under the care of the Disney Parks. Although some of the turkeys were sent to the Walt Disney World resort in Florida, most of the pardoned turkeys, including Marshmallow and Yam, ended up at Disneyland's Big Thunder Ranch, where they could be viewed by the guests. So why did Disney stop taking all the pardoned turkeys? My guess is they bit off a little more than they could chew. After accepting two turkeys a year for five years, that's already ten turkeys. If turkeys in captivity are properly cared for, their life expectancy can be like ten years. So if Disney continued taking on more and more turkeys each year, they could find themselves in some big turkey trouble with having too many turkeys to deal with. Or maybe the turkeys were actually just getting scared. Because in a horrific irony for the turkeys just down the way for where these retired pardoned turkeys were spending their days at Big Thunder Ranch, there were some not so lucky birds at a stand that was serving, you guessed it turkey legs. How can we talk about Disney and turkey without talking about turkey legs? They're iconic, they're polarizing, but they're definitely a mainstay at the Disney parks. But before we can get to those turkey legs to tell the story of how they came to be, we have to talk about fish, which was probably actually served at that original Plymouth Thanksgiving. But anyways, back in florida before it was Disney Springs, even before it was downtown Disney Florida version. The shopping destination was called Lake Buena Vista shopping village, and it's right on lake Buena Vista. So you shop there. It practically wrote itself. It's all there. There was a seafood restaurant called Captain Jack's, and it was right there on the waters of Lake Buena Vista. And it was there like, a long time. I'm talking a long time. It was there from 1975, and it didn't close until 2013. But that's not as important as one of the employees who worked there. Dave Jarrett had big plans to be a doctor, but he was actually destined for something very different disney history. In 1977, he moved to Orlando after college and got a job shucking oysters at Captain Jack's. Jared slowly worked his way up through the Disney kitchens. And after twelve years working in Disney restaurants, in 1989, he took a break and visited a renaissance fair and noticed that everyone there was eating these great big juicy turkey legs. The turkey leg. It looks like someone from the medieval times would eat it. Well, not the restaurant medieval times, but like the times. The medieval times. Well, yes, I guess they might eat them at the restaurant, too, because trying to be like the renaissance fair in the medieval times. But anyways, the turkey leg had actually been a staple at renaissance fairs since the fairs had gained popularity in the 1960s. But truthfully, during the medieval times or the renaissance, people didn't necessarily eat turkey legs like this. It's just one of those things that we assume they would kind of like the first Thanksgiving. But in truth, most people in the medieval period ate a vegetarian diet. Fruit, vegetables, breads, grains. There's a whole study. Scientists tested over 2000 skeletons from this period, and, well, let's get back to the turkey legs. All right. When Dave Jarrett saw these larger than life turkey legs at the renaissance fair, he immediately saw an opportunity for Walt Disney World. He knew that this was a food that would go big in the parks. Jarrett brought the idea to the higher ups at Disney, and they thought it was ridiculous, and they laughed him out of a meeting. But they eventually pretty quickly came around to it in 1989. Later that year, they launched the Disney turkey leg in frontier land, just across from the country bear jamboree. The first time they prepared the turkey leg, they had to smoke the turkey legs for over 24 hours straight. Those were some pretty big turkey legs, and they had to prepare a lot of them. Eventually, Disney perfected the process, and the turkey leg became a Disney staple. And it can now be found at many other theme parks, disney and otherwise as well. But what goes into a Disney turkey leg? First off, for those big turkey legs, you need some big turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner. The bird you put in your oven was probably a female turkey. The female turkeys are the common choice for consumer whole turkeys at your grocery store. And that's because the male turkeys tend to be too big. You'd probably need some sort of industrial oven to cook a male turkey. But giant male turkeys are perfect for giant turkey legs. Next, if we once again compare that turkey leg to a traditional Thanksgiving turkey, we'd see that the legs are the dark meat. When your Thanksgiving turkey's legs are cooked, they come out a more brownish color, a more distinct juicier flavor. And some people really love the dark meat. They're super fans. But Disney's turkey legs don't look like dark meat. They're pink. But this is actually by design, because before the turkey legs are smoked, they are injected with a salty sugary curing solution more similar to ham. That's why they pretty much look pink like ham. And some people even think that the turkey legs taste like ham. They're basically hammed turkeys, if that makes sense. Is that even a word? Hammed? I'm going to go with it. They're ham smoked turkeys. In addition to the traditional smoked turkey legs, disney has also offered some buffalo and barbecue versions over the years. Some people absolutely love these piping hot turkey legs on a hot Florida day. Others think they're totally gross. They are probably the most polarizing Disney treat and definitely the biggest Disney turkey on this list. But wait, there's still some more turkeys that I wanted to talk about. Maybe they're not as big as the turkey leg, maybe they're not as big as some of those shorts, but these turkeys deserve a little extra, too, just like we like a little extra turkey. So I'm calling these my turkey leftovers. Yeah, leftover. Who doesn't love leftovers? All right, I got four turkey leftovers for you. Number one, the Liberty Tree Tavern in Liberty Square. The Liberty Tree is known for its all you care to enjoy bill of Fair Feast, which serves turkey and stuffing and some other Thanksgiving staples. Some even describe the menu as Thanksgiving every day. But I gotta say, turkey isn't exactly the star here. They also serve pot roast and roasted pork along right alongside with the turkey in equal portions. And even though it's got that Thanksgiving flair, I thought it was more of a leftover. Here for our list. Number two on our turkey leftovers is saddle sore. Swanson. He is a turkey animatronic that was featured in the bicentennial attraction America Sings over at Disneyland. And along with many of the other audio animatronics from America Sings, saddlesource Swanson did move into Splash Mountain, where he fit right in with his look, with his hat and his guitar. He kind of fit in with those musical scenes. Maybe we'll see him show up somewhere again. Maybe in Tiana's bayou adventure. We'll have to wait and see. Number three on my turkey leftovers is Birdzilla. You know, Birdzilla, you probably don't remember birdzilla. That's okay, because Birdzilla is a very small character in the movie Homeward Bound. In Homeward Bound, Birdzilla shows up as a turkey that chance shadow and Sassy encounter on their incredible journey. Homeward Bound is a fun, nostalgic 90s movie for a 90s Disney fan like myself. Also, it's a story about the difficulties of trying to get home, kind of like an animal version of my favorite Thanksgiving movie, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Speaking of John Candy, let's get to turkey leftover number four. Who's Red Feather from Pocahontas? You probably don't remember Red Feather from Pocahontas, and that's because he never made it into the movie. Redfeather was supposed to be a talking turkey animal sidekick character voiced by John Candy. However, John Candy passed away while the movie was in production, and then the directors decided to make the animal sidekicks non speaking, and we ended up with Miko and Flit. So there you have it. I'm stuffed. That was enough turkey for me. Disney and Turkey from on screen to real life. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Synergy Loves Company. I truly appreciate you taking your time to listen to me talk about Disney in these podcast episodes. Let me know if you do love those turkey legs or if you're someone who passes on that in the park. I got to tell you, I'm not the biggest fan. I mean, usually if we're in Florida in the summer, that's like the last thing I want to think about is a piping hot turkey. You know, maybe it does something for you. Let me know. I want to hear, because even though I don't eat them that often myself, I do appreciate their place in the Disney parks. Tell me about how you feel about them on social media. You could say hi to me. Let me know what you think about turkey legs, what you think about the show, what you like, what you don't like. I want to hear what you think. You can find me on Instagram and Threads at Synergylovescompany. And I'm still kind of on Twitter. And I'm on Blue Sky at Eric H. Synergy. If you feel like you're getting value from Synergy Loves Company and you want to give back to the show to help me keep it going, you can do that on Ko Fi. If you look in the show description or if you go to Synergylovescompany.com, you'll find a link to my Ko Fi page where you can give back to the show and keep it going because every little bit helps. Another way you can support the show and help me out is by sharing the show, because that's what helps us grow. Share Synergy Loves Company with a friend who loves Disney just as much as you do. Tell them to visit Synergylovescompany.com because sharing the show is another great way that you can support the show, and your support means the world to me. Thanks for exploring Disney's connections with me. And until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything. Happy Thanksgiving.