Where's Walt? Last week, Buena Vista Home Entertainment announced a five-month delay for the latest four releases in the studio's highly popular Walt Disney Treasures collection, which has caused a small furor across the Internet about the true reasoning behind the postponement.
The Treasures collection, a series of limited edition tins that contain extensive collections of classic Disney animated shorts, television specials and vintage archival material, are usually released every December to commemorate Walt's birthday. The four titles - The Chronological Donald Volume 1, Mickey Mouse in Living Color 2, Walt Disney on the Front Lines and Tomorrowland - were originally scheduled for a December 2nd street date, and have now been pushed back to May 18th. But it is Walt Disney on the Front Lines that is causing all the controversy among enthusiasts, with many fans speculating that Disney has intentionally delayed the release to make alterations to the set in lieu of potentially controversial content.
To quell the mounting backlash, Disney has publicly denied the accusations of self-censorship, instead citing a simple problem of supply and demand. "We had the fortunate problem of having much higher demand than we had anticipated," says Disney executive Lori McPherson. "We thought orders would be a little bit higher because we knew there was going to be a lot of demand for the Disney on the Front Lines volume, but orders came in about fifty percent higher than even our most aggressive projection."
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