DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp opened on this day 35 years ago. Disney launched a brand new animation studio in France specifically for this film’s release, with the intention being they would produce more feature films based off their TV cartoons. A Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie was supposedly in development, but sadly Treasure of the Lost Lamp didn’t add many coins to Scrooge’s money bin. Ultimately, the studio would only work on two more projects (A Goofy Movie and the Oscar-nominated Mickey Mouse short Runaway Brain). As an aside, the eventual live-action Chip ‘n Dale movie that was released on Disney+ in 2022 was directed by Akiva Schaffer, who also helmed the new Naked Gun that’s currently in theaters. Neat.

With a gross of $18 million, was the DuckTales flick a flop or just a disappointment? That’s sort of a mystery, and since I don’t want to rewrite history, I really can’t say for sure. Some sources claim the budget was only $2 million, which sounds too small, but I more commonly read it cost $20 million, which sounds way too high for that era for a big screen take on a TV toon. My guess is that number combines the film’s budget with the opening of the new studio (ultimately, the production became too much for a single animation house, so Disney ended up spreading it throughout their entire TV division). But that’s all guesswork. In any case, the movie no doubt proved popular once home video sales came into play.

Now, given how massively successful DuckTales was when it first premiered in 1987, you might’ve expected for Treasure of the Lost Lamp to receive a bigger marketing push than it did. It did have a TV special promoting its release, but there wasn’t much fanfare beyond that. Not even Siskel and Ebert bothered to review it. Perhaps everyone had resigned themselves to kids having moved on to greener cartoon passengers, and by “greener” I mean “literally green, since I’m talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Still, there was some stuff out there, like a promotion with Hi-C which included a contest where you could win an unspecified prize.

More obscurely–and the bane of my existence when preparing for this header–was a collection of special cups to celebrate the movie’s release. Unfortunately, even though I knew I remembered seeing a commercial for these things, I couldn’t recall what product was behind them. I tried Smucker’s! I tried brands other than Smucker’s! I tried simply searching “DuckTales movie cups.” Nothing, nothing, NOTHING! I was about to give up, until I finally found it. And the answer was…Ziploc? What? Yes, apparently, in what I’m assuming must’ve been a mail-in offer, you could receive DuckTales tumblers from fucking Ziplock. Anyway, you’d better enjoy this ad in which a bunch of kids are blown away by images of Disney characters magically appearing on their tumblers which only Ziploc was able to make possible. You have no idea how many hours I spent on this (I’m exaggerating, of course, except that I’m not).

Have a ducking good night, y’all!