Mickey Mouse Gas Mask Intends to Soothe Scared Children (c. 1942 – 1944)
By 1942, Walt Disney was a household name – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say Mickey Mouse was the household name. When the United States entered World War II, Walt Disney, a veteran of World War I and with full knowledge of gas weapons, approached the civil defense and chemical warfare staff in Washington DC. He had designed a gas mask to resemble Mickey Mouse as protection against potential gas weapon.
The mask, with mouse ears and molded “snout” meant to calm children and make mask wearing less scary. They made roughly 1,000 of the masks, but gas weaponry was never really a problem in the USA, unlike their English counterparts where every child had a government issued respirator that they carried around with them. Gas attacks weren’t England’s primary problem, either; Germans used explosives, not gas, on enemies, even as they deployed it in their concentration camps.
