Print your own MAPO stickers, declare your goods to be of bespoke Disney manufacture

FoxxFur at Passport to Dreams Old and New has created a PDF template for printing out your own MAPO stickers. MAPO (MAry POppins) is the Disney division responsible for fabricating many of the limited and one-off mechanisms and infrastructural gubbins that make up the Disney Parks' underpinnings, and each of their products ships with a MAPO sticker proclaiming its origin. These stickers are highly sought-after souvenirs, especially among cast-members (employees) at the parks. FoxxFur's template can be used to produce your own stickers and add them to things that need a little exotic back-story.

MAPO manufactured basically everything that ended up in Disneyland or Walt Disney World between 1964 and 1990 - they must have printed these things out by a thousands because they're stuck to props, motors, figures, power junction boxes, chain lifts and practically everything else you can think of in the World's Fair attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Horizons, and dozens of others.

As you can imagine, MAPO stickers are prized possessions amongst cast members, who are apt to peel the nearest one off the first available prop. The backstages of Mansion and Pirates are full of tiny rectangles of less-aged areas where MAPO stickers have absconded the premises. Here's mine. It's direct off the actuator frame for Herbert Hoover, which was being thrown away:

The problem is that as time goes by and the gap between the shuttering of MAPO and our own age widens, these stickers are becoming increasingly uncommon and most of the good ones have already been thrown out - attached to props in, say, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride - or gone home with Cast Members with an eye for history. This is problematic in that these stickers represent Disney history - Disney history that's vanishing out the Utilidor exit year by year.

Made in Glendale

• [Pedantic Douchebag]

  Something something anti-Semitism.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Huh?

    • [Pedantic Douchebag]

      1) “Something something (insert a punchline that has to do with the subject of the post)” is shorthand for when you can’t think of a funny enough joke about said subject, so you make a meta joke about making a joke.

      2) “Walt Disney was an anti-Semite” is an ancient meme/joke, dating back to before the internet; probably starting when he hosted Leni Riefenstahl back in the 1930s, or maybe because of his association with the MPAPAI. No one can really find any substantive proof that he was an anti-Semite, in fact, the opposite would seem to be true, to a degree.

• [Sarge Misfit]

  Um, wouldn’t using those be a form of IP infringement?

  • [The Life Of Bryan]

    Nah, that character is part of our collective culture. And since that’s where Disney gets most of their characters, I feel certain that they’d express nothing but warm, fuzzy, happy feelings at the idea of people paying tribute like this.

  • [nickgb]

    Yeah, this is just about the most clear-cut case of trademark infringement I have ever seen.

• [mat catastrophe]

  I thought it was almost impossible to out-niche the old payphone project site. This post has probably done it.

• [pjcamp]

  There’s something deeply weird in the idea of Herbert Hoover having an actuator frame.

  Also, “I want my Mapo!” How many people are old enough to get that joke?

• [Grey Devil]

  I believe it’s rather strange printing counterfeit stickers to slap onto stuff. I’d be more behind the idea if it was ironic or humorous but this just seems odd.

  • [Jamboree Washington]

    Just go along with it. It’s fun. The stickers won’t hurt you.

  • [Marc Mielke]

    My first thought was the evil corporation from the comic “Elephantmen” which would be like sticking “Weyland-Yutani” stickers on everything. But the corp I was thinking of was MAPPO. 

    • [mappo]

       Tell me more about this comic…

• [jerwin]

   It tells you who’s boss and is a marker of almost every attraction of real value at Walt Disney World – it’s the fabulous MAPO sticker.
  MAPO manufactured basically everything that ended up in Disneyland or Walt Disney World between 1964 and 1990 

  So… almost everything built in the last twenty years is worthless?

  • [Marc Mielke]

    Just not made by Mary Poppins anymore. I suspect Disney might have taken over Santa’s workshop and just has elven sweat shop labour do everything these days.

• [BillStewart2012]

  Put one on your tofu?

• [Petr R.]

  Um, wouldn’t using those be a form of IP infringement? 

  • [Andrew Molloy]

    “After some careful cutting, you too can make all of your furniture, and even your pets, a part of Disney history!”

    You plan on selling your pets as authentically made by Disney?

    • [autark]

      150 years from now some kid on Disney owned, corporatized, reality TV version of Antiques Roadshow will refer to an archive of this thread when she debunks the authenticity of great great grand kid Doctorow’s memorabilia collection.

• [Dave Lloyd]

  Love the use of “The Godfather” font!

• [hakuin]

  Truly the age of Mappo.

  • [mappo]

     Thank you.