Mickey Mouse Buy Wesley's Bread

Image of Mickey Mouse with red and black text on white background.

Created as part of a series of advertisements that licensed the Mickey Mouse character to encourage the sale of bread and other consumer goods, products featuring Mickey Mouse became common place in America during the mid to late 1930's. The manufacturer, and the man responsible for this artifact’s creation, was Herman ‘Kay” Kamen. Starting in July 1932, Kamen became a licensing agent of the Walt Disney Company. Under Kamen, the company began to license its characters to thousands of consumer products. Toys, napkins, wallpaper, comics, and hairbrushes were a variety of products that would be created with Mickey’s likeness. In 1934, General Foods would pay one million dollars to have Mickey Mouse cut-outs on their cereal boxes. By 1935, the number of Disney licensed products sold amounted to over $35,000,000 in sales, quickly outpacing the revenue from films. Kamen’s and Disney’s mass licensing of characters for consumer goods would be so successful that it would begin a marketing trend, as other advertisers followed suit.