Sometimes you just get lucky and find collaborating merchandise. Years ago, I came across a set of trading cards that featured Disney characters in ethnic costumes visiting various countries from around the world. It was a part of Mickey’s World Tour of 1001 Hellos!

Sometime later I stumbled across a cotton banner that represented six of the countries from the trading card set. It featured this logo in the center:

It clearly lists the date of issue as 1992, which coincides with the release date for the trading cards. For whatever reason, the banner only features six of the many countries covered on the cards. Disney chose to repeat the six countries twice for a total of twelve images surrounding the logo. Why didn’t they use twelve different countries? I guess we’ll never know!

But let’s have a closer look at the six countries that were featured:

The greeting in Arabic would likely represent the country of Egypt as it has the largest Arabic speaking population in the world.

The two countries above represented with badges, but the four countries below represented with medals:

Just to be different, the Mexican greeting seems to be featured on a lanyard, much like an Olympic medal would be.

Around the edge of the banner, we have Mickey’s name in the six languages of the countries represented, but again, repeated on all four sides:

The banner is made of 50% polyester and 50% cotton and is made in the U.S.A. as you can see in the image below:

As you will see below, the trademark is ‘The Walt Disney Company’ and the manufacturer is listed as J.A. Woronowicz of South River, NJ.

A descendant of the founders of the J. A. Woronowicz company had this to say about its brief history: “The company was founded in the 1950’s. It lasted until the mid-late 1990’s. The founding brothers decided to dissolve the company, sell their client list, and destroy the machines. My father started a rival manufacturing business called American Fashion Concept. That lasted for about 3 or 4 years. All manufacturing began to be outsourced to China. American factories could no longer compete.” Sounds like a typical ending for many unfortunate American industries! It looks like this banner would have been one of the last things the company produced.

You can find many other examples of these wonderful cloth collectibles on the Internet. Many have a Disney theme.