Among the Disney-licensed games of the late 1930s, Walt Disney’s Own Game: Ferdinand the Bull stands out as a direct tie-in to one of the studio’s most celebrated short films. Issued by Parker Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts in 1938 under a Walt Disney Enterprises copyright, the game was part of the publisher’s “Walt Disney’s Own Game” series and brought the placid bull and his shady cork tree from the screen to the family table.
The Game
The Ferdinand title belonged to Parker Brothers’ “Walt Disney’s Own Game” line, a run of licensed boxed games the firm produced through the 1930s drawing on Disney shorts and Silly Symphonies. Its artwork echoed the look of the 1938 cartoon, including the cork tree that anchors the story and character design in the soft, rounded style associated with Disney animator Fred Moore, whose work helped define the studio’s figures in this period. As a Parker Brothers product of 1938, it sat squarely within the wave of Disney merchandise that followed the studio’s breakthrough into features and award-winning shorts.
The Short Film
Ferdinand the Bull was a stand-alone animated short produced by Walt Disney Productions and released on November 25, 1938. It was adapted from The Story of Ferdinand, the 1936 children’s book written by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. The story follows Ferdinand, a young bull who, unlike his head-butting peers, would rather sit quietly beneath a cork tree and smell the flowers. Mistaken for ferocious after an accidental sting sends him bucking, he is carried off to the bullring in Madrid, where he simply sits and smells the flowers in the spectators’ hats rather than fight. The short won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) for 1938, prevailing over a field that included several other Disney entries. Its gentle, anti-aggression message gave the film a resonance well beyond the usual cartoon fare of the day.
Parker Brothers and Disney’s Late-1930s Line
Parker Brothers’ Disney games of the 1930s reached back to the early Silly Symphonies, with titles such as the 1933 Pied Piper of Hamelin game and the Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs game of 1934 establishing the “Own Game” branding before Ferdinand arrived. The same era saw companion party titles like Donald Duck’s Party Game for Young Folks, while other licensees such as American Toy Works carried the studio’s characters into their own lines, as with Walt Disney’s Game Parade. By 1938 Disney was at a creative high point, having released its first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the prior year and earning honors for shorts like Ferdinand. That output, channeled to manufacturers through the studio’s licensing operation, is the same machinery explored in the histories of golden-age Disney animation from 1937 to 1950 and of Kay Kamen, the licensing agent who turned Disney characters into a merchandising empire. The Ferdinand game is a small but telling artifact of that moment, when an Oscar-winning short could find a second life on a board across America’s living rooms.
