4 Ways Disney Managed To Aggressively Raise A Generation Of Furries

4 Fur(s) Trap: Make Fluffy Female Characters Smart, Sexy, And Tritagonists

The Chip' n Dale: Rescue Rangers TV show started airing in 1989. Since then, the timeline shows an uptick in strong, independent, somewhat saucy female furry characters starring in '90s kids' shows because apparently nothing said "Different!" like a woman who knew what she wanted back then. A year after Gadget subconsciously started corrupting us all (in a good way), we got Rebecca Cunningham, the maternal single mother slash business-oriented woman and Baloo's boss who, interestingly enough, also made up the third member of the main team in TaleSpin:

The obvious use of the same tritagonist recipe we saw in Rescue Rangers aside, Rebecca Cunningham was one classy lady, people. Oh, oh wait …

There it is. Nothing like making kids fall in love with a strong and sassy character before stripping away some of their clothes and making their tiny skirts play "Oh, stop it!" with a naughty breeze. Now, if for some reason you're thinking that this is all just us and our filthy minds you have come to know and love over the years, then you, friend, have clearly never searched the internet for Hot Rebecca Cunningham content. Becky with the Bear Hair is right up there with Gadget in the top favorite lists of Lusty Cartoon Busties for both furries and also pretty much everyone who had a pulse during the '90s. 

And don't forget the girl-next-door love interest tritagonist and hot cheeks Roxanne from Disney's 1995 The Goofy Movie who, when she's not carrying around a bunch of books, so you know she's probably smart …

… imagines herself frolicking on some grass like this:

3 Fur(s) Trap: Skimpy Clothing And Bare Bottoms For The Win, Folks!

Before Gadget abandoned her tight little overalls to wear that revealing red dress that one time, Miss Kitty Mouse from1986's The Great Mouse Detective proved that gosh, tiny mouse ladies are so cute when they're strutting it:

Yes, that little mouse just stripped in front of a room full of men mice while singing cabaret and kicking up those silky shaven legs. These animators knew exactly what they were doing because you have to be dead inside to be unaffected by any of this. Also, her butt is bare yet fluffy at the same time.

The bare bottom cartoon trend is an old one. Characters like Bugs and all those Ducks did it first (on TV) with the whole No Pants rule, but let's be honest: Those bottomless toons were neither charming nor sexy. Their creators clearly weren't out to mess with the minds of the young just yet (except maybe for whoever came up with the very questionable Pepé Le Pew). 

Or maybe they simply didn't know how or why it worked yet. Enter Disney's 1973 animation Robin Hood, demonstrating exactly that.

The fine-looking fox fella — who's a big favorite among furries — was created and drawn by legendary animator Don Bluth. Seven years later, Bluth would create another furry fandom favorite character, Justin, for the iconic 1982 animation The Secret of NIMH.

Don Bluth clearly knew what's up, and we should all blame/thank him for exposing us to so many furry tails and plushy butts because ever since that animated version of Robin Hood, fluff butts kept rolling in. And you bet Disney was at the forefront of the Fluff Butt craze. 

It wasn't just fluffy butts, either. No, it was also fluffy everything else. Remember Queen Georgette from the 1988 Oliver and Company?

It’s as if Disney wanted to make extra sure you get that this dog was, simply put, all things sex:

There was also Rita with the '80s hair in Oliver and Company, because this movie might be the horniest dog movie ever?

2 Fur(s) Trap: Learn What Worked In The Past And Make Whatever That Was Less Obvious But Also Way More Obvious

Jump forward from those hot late '80s pooches to 1994, where we have Nala from Disney's The Lion King making wild "come hither" eyes at Simba in a way that made us all immediately realize these two lovebugs didn't even have an extra patch of fur or maybe just a scrap of clothes to accidentally lose in a river or something.

Honestly, the older we get, the more that scene just screams, "Whaaaaa?" It's essentially Elton John serenading two horny young lions with lyrics about feeling some love in the dark for the entertainment of billions of kids. Yes, the Simba gang and some of the characters we're talking about here aren't full anthropomorphic animals. They could, however, be considered furry-adjacent purely because they were responsible for making many a furry (and again, just everyone else) also want to wrestle like big meow-meows when the sun goes down.

After all, it simply cannot be a coincidence that Disney's The Lion King was a rip-off of the '60s anime series Kimba the White Lion — a show widely believed to have been one of the fictional origins of furry fandom. 

The point is that someone, somewhere, knew how and why this was all working, and the trend just kept gaining momentum. And Disney all but paved the way for everyone else to do it just as good. While Gadget was no doubt the sexiest mouse cartoon of the early '90s, Warner Bros. won the title of hottest mink property by giving us all that Animaniacs character, Minerva Mink.

Honestly, we won't be surprised if someone from Warner Bros. saw Gadget in that red dress, shoved a picture of it in an animator's hand, and said, "That, but like, classy." And then decided to just say it's a mink to avoid copyright infringement. For real, Minerva even has the same, slightly different hue of blue eye shadow as Gadget.

Skip all the way to 2016, and we have definitive proof that Disney marketed Zootopia straight to the furries. Although this scene was proof enough that Disney isn't hiding their intentions much anymore (or at least, not well):

Disney played the long game with the innate lusts of human folk, and it's paying off. Just look at the most popular fursonas in the furry community: Wolves, foxes, dogs, and large felines. A significant chunk of furries have also unequivocally said that Disney was a massive influence in sparking their interests. We, of course, have always known. Now, someone please tell those Disney execs to do a scintillating, queer Gargoyles-type movie next. Everyone, start dusting off your gargoyle wings. It's time.

1 Fur(s) Trap: You Can’t Go Wrong With Sexy Fox

Just look at Nick Wilde from Zootopia — the sly fella is constantly sporting his naughty eyes:

We literally call hot people' foxy,' for fox' sake. Disney has obviously known this for quite some time — it's clearly why they made Robin Hood a fox and not, say, a wildebeest. Sure, foxes are sly, so they work for a certain type of character, but they're also hot. Foxes are hot, hot people are 'foxy,' and lady foxes are called vixens for fox sake.

The Fox and the Hound literally gave us "Vixey." There was no fighting it.

You can bet your furry bottom we're not done seeing these suggestive fox types just yet, either. While Turning Red's cute, fluffy, super sassy furball character is supposedly a giant red panda — its name, Red Panda, totally gives it away — there are a lot of fox vibes happening here, too. Besides, a red panda basically looks like a fox once banged a raccoon.

Yep, that big floof slaps. Get ready to see a lot more Red Panda cosplay, too. Especially since it's an easy enough costume because most furries seem to look less like your Robin Hoods and Nick Wildes and more like the Carfax fox for some reason.

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Thumbnail: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Buena Vista Television