Early Variation...

As I've said before, Disney developed the habit of producing variant license plates very early on. Many of these variations have no real rhyme or reason as to why they were made except to put more plates on the market. Disney has no official standpoint on these variants, and since they're listed as general merchandise there is no completely accurate way to track them.

There is, however, at least one variant plate that was produced, whether intentionally or not, with some purpose behind it:





This license plate, which was produced for our nation's bicentennial, was produced with two different backing colors as well as variations in the red on the front of the plate. The red backed plate uses the same color red on the front while the aluminum backed plate is more of a pinkish shade on the front.

Unlike other variants, the differences in these two plates were because they were produced for two different parks. While I haven't been able to find out for sure which is which, I have been able to find that one plate was produced for Walt Disney World and one was for Disneyland in California. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure based on what I've found that the red back was issued in Florida. So far this is the only instance I have been able to find where a color variation can be used to denote the park of issue.

Outside the Parks...

When it comes to collecting Disney license plates, as with any other aspect of Disneyana, sometimes we have to look outside the parks to find our collectibles. When Disney started producing their license plates they didn't restrict themselves to only plates that pertained to their theme parks. Some plates were made to commemorate special events in the history of our nation:



Other plates were made to spotlight some of our favorite classic Disney characters:


Still others were made to remind us of some of our favorite types of characters:


One thing is for sure. No matter what the subject matter Disney does a terrific job of reminding us that the parks and resorts are not the only stars in the Disney galaxy!