Disney Co to make Mickey Mouse 'hipper'

The Walt Disney Co is planning an aggressive marketing campaign to give Mickey Mouse a hipper image and make him more appealing to a new generation of teenagers.

Centred around Mickey’s 75th birthday next year, the campaign will feature a line of clothing adorned with his image, a series of Mickey Mouse US postage stamps and two new direct-to-video films starring the mouse.

Already he has been stretched across a t-shirt worn by Sarah Jessica Parker during a racy scene on the Sex And The City TV series and shoppers at Los Angeles’s trendy Fred Segal boutique are buying up silk trousers, belt buckles and purses bearing his image.

“Mickey has always been cool,” Dennis Green of Disney consumer products, tells the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s just the way he has been represented hasn’t always been cool.”