[Please note, I am not adding photos related to this post, which might have impinged on Disney Copyright. As for the City of the Future, it may be best left up to your imagination.]
My husband and I were doing a Sporcle the other day on cartoon characters whose names started with the letter “W” and one of them bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Daisy, as in Donald Duck’s “girlfriend.” Who was this mystery duck? By the time the quiz time ran out, we still had no clue. Turns out her name is Webbigail “Webby” Vanderquack, which I thought was such a silly name, I just had to find out what her character was all about. This led me to a tangled web of all sorts of obscure (to me at least) Disney characters with equally silly names, and even sillier backstories. Webbigail, for instance, is apparently the granddaughter of Betina Beakley, who became Scrooge McDuck’s housekeeper at some point…but enough of this nonsense.
This research led me to another character, who first made his appearance in the Disney pantheon in 1952, called Gyro Gearloose. Among other feats, eccentric genius Gyro (is it pronounced like the Greek sandwich or the scientific instrument – I would guess the latter) at one point achieved the following (which I quote from Wikipedia, though it sounds like it might have been translated from Japanese):
“…He actually persuaded Duckburg citizens to rebuild it into a climate controlled City of the Future! Unfortunately for Gyro, his ideas worked too well-Donald Duck only worked 1 hour a day and spent 23 hours sleeping which left him more grouchy than normal, while Uncle Scrooge McDuck robot made him so much money that it actually filled up his money bin to the point where McDuck could not even burrow into his money! The final straw came when Gyro Robot helper makes a robot to replace Gyro as an inventor! Realizing Duckburg isn’t ready for the future, Gyro turns Duckburg back to its old self.”
Which leads me to the conclusion of this post, namely, are we ready for the City of the Future yet? When I did a web search for “City of the Future” I found the City of the Future‘s official web site, which is right now in “maintenance mode.” The following error message appears on the home page: “Sorry for the inconvenience. Our website is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Thank you for your understanding.”
Ah, what a tangled web(by) has led us here! Clearly, the City of the Future is not ready for us. Though Webby Vanderquack, as well as all the other Disney characters popular and obscure, will always be there to cheer us up in our darkest hours. As long as we don’t infringe on their copyrights.