Monday, December 18, 2006

Buone Feste, Topolino!

Last Christmas my brother went to Christmas Eve mass at the Vatican, so of course I asked him to pick me up a copy of Topolino magazine while he was there! Topolino is the Italian name given to Mickey Mouse, it means "small mouse". I had read somewhere that Topolino was the oldest continuously published children's magazine in the world. I can't find anything on the internet to back that up, but let's just go with it as a fact...who else could be in the running, Highlights? But anyhow, my brother came through for me and I'm now the proud owner of a 190 page magazine full of Christmas comics that I can't read! Italian is not like Spanish or French where you can kind of make out the language here-and-there...It's almost like those Italians have a different word for everything!

They kind of draw the characters a little differently in Italy, and they even have a few of their own characters that we don't see in the U.S. This issue of Topolino starts with a comic about a kid version of Donald Duck. There's also another character popular over there called P.K. who is actually a Super-Hero who's secret identity is Donald Duck. As you can see from the table of contents here, tucked in among the comics is a nice little article on everyone's favorite ex-Spice Girl Geri Hallwell. It was probably big news for Geri the day the Topolino offices called her and asked for an interview.

For bonus fun today, here's a scan for a cell phone wallpaper service off the back cover of the Topolino magazine. It's nice that all the wallpapers are Mickey and Pooh. If this ad were to run in a U.S. magazine, there would be one Mickey Mouse wallpaper and the rest would be High School Musical and Power Rangers!

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