It’s no secret that my love for mid-century (and by that I mean the years between 1901-1999, because I like to define “middle” like the ratio of corned beef to bread on a good deli sandwich) car brochure illustrations is deep and vast, like an ocean or my own ignorance about so very many subjects. Today I want to show you a 1960 Ford brochure because it has illustrations that sort of suggest a late-’50s/early ’60s Disney movie that never actually existed.
Also, it’s kind of an odd brochure because it’s a Belgian-printed one and I think was intended for the European market, as it references “world-wide” Ford companies and keeps talking about driving in the “world,” not just America or anything that specific.


Anyway, it’s that top image up there, for the Falcon, that really made me think Disney movie. The people are rendered just a bit differently than what you usually see in these kinds of brochures, with a more bold black outline and a bit more, um, action in the people than I feel like what we usually see in these brochures.
Specifically, this kid:
Is that kid giving himself a puppet show while leaning out the window of a moving car? He sure as hell is! Is that a Great Dane sitting behind him, watching over his shoulder? You know it is. If we apply some animated-movie logic here, I think we can safely assume that those puppets are, in fact, entirely sentient and speaking and thinking independently.
I’m not sure of what the one in the hat is, making the kid laugh there – we’ll call her Dame Persimmon – and the crow laying prone there with the blue hat, that’s Mr.Cheetlenuts. Only the kid and the dog can hear them, the rest of the kid’s family thinks he’s just a kook, except grandma back there, who could hear magic puppets talk when she was little but lost the ability when she got struck by lightning at her quinceanera.
Little brother or sister in the goggles up front is nicknamed Wheelie or something like that and is very into mechanical things and cars, as evidenced here:
See, there’s Wheelie with a little car, enjoying being close to that short-stroke inline-six under the hood, feeling the warmth and vibrations. No idea what the hell dad is looking for in his wallet there – it’s Disney, so it can’t be a condom or an amphetamine, so let’s say he’s looking for his Mason card.
Mom seems to generally have it together, and Grandma maybe is telling the kid with the magic puppets important stories that hint at the origin of the magic.
Also, the Great Dane seems to have turned into a little girl. Is that something common to that breed?
Let’s see if the other cars and illustrations here suggest anything else about this movie that never was; this Starliner is interesting. Starliner wasn’t just a Raymond Loewy-designed Studebaker, it was also the name given to the fastback coupé version of the Galaxie from 1960 to 1961.
It’s a really pretty car, I think, especially because of the pillarless-ness of it all. So how do these two fit into the plot? We have Singing Driver Lady and Cap’n Tweed Cap there. Maybe they’re paranormal researchers/archaeologists who found some archaeological evidence that those two puppets are actually vessels for some supernatural beings, ones that were referenced in some ancient cuneiform tablets or some rare copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Let’s say Cap is the cuneiform expert, and the woman is the Egyptologist. And they’re hot on the trail of the kid and the puppets!
Okay, this last image, this is the key, because this has our antagonists. The style here is more typical of brochures of the era, with no outlines and a more painterly style, but it’ll work for this.
Also, note that this Galaxie is a Crown Victoria, when that name was just a sub-model and not a model unto itself. Oh crap, wait, that says Town Victoria! The hell is up with that? Was that named for Tueen Victoria? This is some bullshit.
So, see how they’re driving by an observatory? And that guy in the back seat in the black suit looks pensive and interested? That’s because he’s a fed, as is the driver, and the two women are astronomers who have detected the home planet of the supernatural beings possessing the puppets, and it’s a race to get to them before the archaeologists do!
This thing practically writes itself! The kid and dog are at the center, there’s two groups trying to get to them, the kid wants to protect the puppets, the feds want them for nefarious reasons, the archaeologists just want to know what’s going on, and maybe the Great Dane that turns into a little girl is key to all this, somehow.
Want to do something fun this morning? Let’s see if we can come up with a name for this movie! Something like The Puppets from Outer Space, but you know, much better. The Starhand Adventure? 1 Great Dane, 2 Alien Puppets, and 3 Lives? I don’t know. Help me out.
Title: The Puppets from Planet Whimsy (1960)
Brief:
In this whimsical, heartwarming Disney adventure, 10-year-old Billy Thompson stumbles upon an old trunk in his grandmother’s attic, uncovering two mysterious, talking puppets—Jibber and Poke—who come to life when no adults are watching. With only Billy and his loyal dog, Barkley, able to hear them speak, the trio embarks on a series of playful misadventures.
Unbeknownst to Billy, Jibber and Poke hail from the faraway planet Whimsyon, sent to Earth to study kindness and creativity. But their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed—secret agents from a top government agency have tracked the strange energy signature to Billy’s small town, determined to uncover the truth.
Billy’s grandmother, once a spirited adventurer herself, reveals she used to hear the puppets too—until a lightning strike in her childhood stole that gift. With time running out and the feds closing in, Billy must protect his new friends, unlock the true power of imagination, and perhaps even help Grandma rediscover her long-lost magic.
Packed with laughs, light suspense, and heart, The Puppets from Planet Whimsy is a timeless tale of friendship, family, and the extraordinary world seen through a child’s eyes.
-ChatGPT
Well, that’s all quite marvelous ClutchAbuse! 😀 Also, your outline and Jason’s both sort of remind me flavorwise of an old Dr. Who four-part serial called “The Stones of Blood” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stones_of_Blood for some nonspecific but also remarkably tangible reason. 🙂
Thanks! But I just wrote the prompt. It’s pretty funny how AI was able to spin it into something that sounds real though.
You technowizards and your AI shenanigans! 😉
Well, maybe that particular episode of Dr. Who was included in the petabytes of existing content that AI was trained on.
The Persimmon Cheetlenuts Gang was an early draft of what later became The Apple Dumpling Gang….
What the devil is that rear-most spherical item in the trunk marked with the Mexican flag, a cask of compressed tequila fumes?
That is a hat box:
https://www.calpaktravel.com/cdn/shop/files/TRNK-LARGE-HAT-BOX-TRNK-ALMOND.jpg
The 1960 Galaxie had a totally different design language than the years before and after. It makes me wonder about decisions at Ford.
Also, it was probably exceptionally bold at the time to show a woman driving when there was a perfectly good man to do the job.
In that era, it was quite common for each model year to be completely distinct. I love the ’60 Fords. One of the best designs of the period. The front end is very European and the drooped-over fins are fantastic.
The late 50s Fords were variation on the same overall design language, and the 61-64 Fords were also variation on the same language. But the 60 was totally different. Then 65 was the start of the stacked headlight era with an angular design lanhguage.
This is what Scooby Doo would have been if the writers were on LSD and not just stoned.
Hmm, red sweater over collared shirt, puppets…. young Fred Rogers.
origin story film; I like it
Would be pretty fitting for them to use a Falcon given how frequently FoMoCo products were used in films, especially Disney ones, in the 60s and 70s; after all, Ford was pretty aggressive in getting studios to use their cars in film and TV productions (even as a child I was getting tired of seeing all Fords all the time on TV & in the movies so it was a welcome relief to see The Brady Bunch using Mopar products and to see Gilligan driving a home-made (!!) bamboo pedal-powered car on Gilligan’s Island.)
When Robin Williams started working on the ’97 film Flubber (a remake of the ’61 Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor which featured a Ford Model T) he reportedly requested that the car they used in the film be a ’63 Ford Thunderbird, as it was the same car his recently deceased father (a senior executive in the Lincoln-Mercury division at Ford) had when Robin was growing up.
Obviously this is part of the origin. story for 1969’s seminal horror comedy-drama Scooby-Doo, Where Are You. Other brochures depict Daphne’s mother driving her around in that T-Bird to distract them both from her father’s affairs and the alcohol -fueled collapse of their family, Fred’s widowed dad and his “manservant” taking the boy out in their 1960 Continental Mark V to the boy’s department at Bullock’s Wilshire for his first ascot, and Velma’s two professor parents piloting the only non-domestics in the bunch, a pair of matching Volvo Amazons.
Little Rusty there is playing with Charlie Horse and Wing Ding puppets from the Shari Lewis stable of sock-based pals, most famously Lamb Chop. Shari was huge in early children’s TV programming, although I wouldn’t expect a child of the 70s to be familiar with her and her puppets. She was occasionally on Ed Sullivan and other variety shows, but probably not often past the early 70s.
Wing Ding in the Falcon of Wonderland!
That’s not grandma. That’s the matronly governess, Mrs. Crannyshanks. She and the kids are zany MI-5 spies by night. Wheelie is in charge of gadgets.
Escape to Ford Mountain.
And just like the actual Disney movie the patrons you seek leaving the theatre won’t be pressing their fingers to their temples trying to mimic the characters, they’ll just be trying to calm the raging migraine triggered by the awful movie.
Looks like it says “Galaxie Town Victoria” actually. Who knew?
“enjoying being close to that short-stroke inline-six under the hood, feeling the warmth and vibration”
Vibration? From a short stroke inline six?
Man, this some good Torchin’ here! “Mr. Cheetlenuts” is GOLD.
“Mom seems to generally have it together”
Given the disconcertingly high percentage of Disney films with dead or absent moms, this would be an outlier for Disney…
Dog farts, grannie farts, beer farts from the old man, no wonder the kid his hanging out the window.
Leaded gas and mild CO poisoning hit hard.
This is clearly from Song of the South Tirol and was basically expunged from Disney canon for its outdated depictions of German-speaking Italians.
I don’t blame them, but maybe next time just add a disclaimer that we can call the town Bozen OR Bolzano and nobody has to die.
Detailing of the cars is so sharp it would draw blood, while the people are cartoon characters.
Is the Galaxie a “Crown Victoria” or a “Town Victoria”? Because the caption suggests the latter.
aw crap! I fixed it, thank you.
The Ol’ Town Vic
As this is a Disney movie, and Disney is reknowned for thisting the stories that they adapt… this is The Maltese Falcon. (Something something great dane something falcon something)
I’m pretty sure that Cap’n Tweed in the Starliner is Dick Van Dyke. Makes sense for a Disney movie.
Dean Jones was in a lot of them too.
We all prisoners, Chickie-Baby!
So green sweater Dad must be Dean Jones. I’m gonna guess this was a crossover sequel of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “That Darn Cat!”
Clearly this is the sequel to The Moonspinners. It’s The Moonspinners 2 – Puppets from the Outer Rim.
The puppets are agents of KAOS (Kids And Outer-rim Sentients – the interplanetary organization that manages Alien/Earth interactions by controlling children) who transform the girl into the dog at random times, and hilarity ensues!
I can believe you didn’t notice how the owner synchronized the wheels so that the “Ford” lettering is aligned the same on both front and rear wheels.
Extra cred for stopping the car so that both “Ford”s are perfectly level!
When you work in marketing, a Falcon-eyed exec can’t afford to miss details like that.
If you pull it off correctly, you’ll be the best Ad Man in the whole Galaxie!
Do you think we can get Galaxie Quest to work? The other one is Galaxy..so