One of the questions we get asked most often is, "Who are my favorite Disney characters?" For many animators and directors, that question is like asking them to pick their favorite children. But for me, we can say without hesitation that one of our absolute favorites has always been Tinker Bell.

Jennifer Lee and I must confess it was love at first flight, seeing Tinker Bell in the Walt Disney classic Peter Pan when I was just a young boy and when she was a little girl. Not only could she fly, but she had magic pixie dust that could make anyone fly. Who didn't want to fly? She was incredibly appealing, especially to an adolescent boy. She had a mischievous side to her that was human, fun, and something we could all relate to. We loved that Tinker Bell had so many facets to her personality, and she was able to beautifully communicate all of them without even saying a word. And despite her sometimes impetuous behavior, you always sensed that she had a big heart. She has a very important sibling in the very rare magical place called Pixie Hollow. She has a name based on the periwinkle flower. Her name was Periwinkle and she shared many similar traits with Elsa from Frozen, directed by Jennifer.

As our interest and fascination with animation grew, including the foundation of the characteristic similarly sisterhood between Tink and Anna and Peri and Elsa, I learned to appreciate the incredible design and draftsmanship that Marc Davis, the father of Tinker Bell and one of the greatest animators to ever work at Disney, put in to bringing her to life. And make no mistake about it; Tinker Bell is full of life. These talented individuals contributed their efforts to many Disney projects over the years. One very special effort was Disney's classic Peter Pan, which they all worked on together. Marc Davis was one of Walt's creative team, the "nine old men" faced many exciting challenges in bringing this story to the screen. Not only did they need to find new ways to bring the characters to life, they added elements of the tale that had not been possible in the stage versions of the story.

The first "nine old men" were Supreme Court justices—all more than 90 years old—who were trying to block President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" in the mid-1930s. When Walt Disney selected his first-string supervising animators, he was doing a wry nod to the headlines when he dubbed these then-young artists his "Nine Old Men," who were honored as Disney Legends thirty years ago along with the non-member, Ub Iwerks. As husbands and fathers, some of Disney's talented animators had offspring (known as sons and daughters, including brothers and sisters), except for Marc Davis and Eric Larson, who was the trainer of new generation of Disney animators, including Chris Buck, Ron Clements, John Musker (who had previously finished working on Moana), and some of the new Disney Legends: Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, and Mark Henn. They looked like uncles to some of his talented fathers. Les Clark, Milt Kahl, and Ollie Johnston had two while Wolfgang Reitherman, Ward Kimball, and John Lounsbery had three and Frank Thomas had four. I get to know and become friends with some of their children, including Thomas' son Theodore, filmmaker of 1995 documentary Frank & Ollie, and Reitherman's son Bruce who voiced Mowgli in The Jungle Book while his older brothers Dick and Bob voiced King Arthur in The Sword in the Stone. Kimball's son John was the animation director of many television series including 1989's Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.

Both Peter Pan and Tinker Bell's Pixie Hollow glory days were very, very special to Walt himself. As a young boy, Walt had portrayed Peter in a school play; he had been enchanted with the story every since. Walt long dreamed of putting this story on the silver screen. His dream became a reality in 1953 when Peter Pan was first released, which was followed by the Disney Fairies' Tinker Bell film franchise over 50 years later.

The beloved tale, based on Sir James M. Barrie's play, is the story of Peter and of the Darling children, Wendy, John and Michael, who embark on an exciting journey to Never Land. Their fantastic adventure involves an engaging assortment of characters, including a jealous fairy named Tinker Bell, a villainous pirate, Captain Hook, the crocodile, and a myriad of mermaids, Lost Boys and Indians. This dynamic team helped to sprinkle a little pixie dust into the lives of millions.

The term "Disney's Nine Old Men" had been familiar to me; we knew the names of this elite group of animators from books and magazine articles. What I wasn't aware of was the fact that five of them, including Woolie Reitherman, Milt Kahl, and Eric Larson, had already passed away and didn't survive to get handprints in the Disney Legends Award ceremony in 1989 and see the origins of the Disney Renaissance era and DisneyToon Studios when I started working for the company in the early 1990s. However, I was lucky to get to know and become friends with John Lasseter (former CEO of Disney and Pixar Animation), Bradley Raymond, Peggy Holmes, the team behind The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, and four of the nine, including Marc Davis, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston. Animation supervisor Mike Greenholt—who has worked on all of the films in the Tinker Bell series—was lucky to be able to join Disney at a time as a clean-up in-betweener working on Tarzan (directed by Frozen's Chris Buck) and Treasure Planet (directed by Moana's Ron Clements and John Musker) when four of many master animators, including Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball (who were John Lasseter's two fellow railroaders), were still alive through the 1990s and the 2000s decades and, as it turned out, very approachable.

More than 40 years after Walt Disney's death in the same year Mike was born, all of the members of the Nine Old Men were deceased, starting from John Lounsbery in 1976 to Ollie Johnston (a huge soul for the most certified franchises ever — Tinker Bell and Frozen) in 2008 — 32 years later; the same year we decided to create the Disney Fairies films, where she would speak for the first time, we carefully analyzed the magic that makes Tink tick. She (voiced by Mae Whitman, who previously voiced Shanti in the 2003 sequel to The Jungle Book, in which she was also animated by Ollie in the ending of the classic film) displays the full range of human emotions from jealousy, envy, and anger, to joy and love, which inspires Joy from 2015's Inside Out. Today, her magic is just as potent as ever, and she's still very much the same character we fell in love with long ago.

I hope you enjoy this beautiful musical jewelry box and song book, which presents some incredible visual development sketches, production art, photographs and galleries of Disney animation for the very first time, also understanding why growing up was or wasn't important to consider it as a good sendoff to the Tinker Bell franchise and DisneyToons Studios after its closures in 2015 and 2018, five decades after Walt Disney's death. From earliest Walt Disney origins in his marvelous era to Tinker Bell's magical world of Pixie Hollow, there's quite an adventure ahead. If it's hard to remember the those nine Supreme Court justices, think of some wonderful thoughts, turn on the Christmas music box, and get ready to sing along as the work of the nine Disney Legends continues to enchant the world...

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