Albino Thumper?

I used to think that 'Star Trek' fans were the most fanatical, but I've decided that the pointy-eared masses have nothing on Disney fans. I started to realize this after I bought my iPod. When I went to load my favorite Disney songs from my CD's, I experienced an example of how far Walt's faithful will go. You know that feature of iTunes where it recognizes your CD's and gives you all the track and artist names? Well, for the Disney CD's I got the name of every obscure Disney voice artist that sang on the songs listed in the artist column...thus giving them another notch in their belt after having been mentioned on a Trivial Pursuit card at some time. Then I encountered the massive number of Disney fan podcasts out there. Some of them are quite good (though it runs a bit long some weeks, I recommend "Inside the Magic"), and others are little more than someone posting an audio recording of their latest ride on Space Mountain.

These Disney fans know their stuff and no detail is too minute for them. Even when the recorded voice that tells you to "watch your step" when getting off the monorail EPCOT is changed...they know it. With all this in mind, I was really surprised the other night when my kids and I were working on a Disney puzzle. It was a picture of all the major Disney animated characters up through the early 70's. The date on the box was 1981, it had been passed down through my wife's family. What surprised me was the way some of the characters looked, they just didn't look quite like themselves.

This albino version of Thumper, for example, had me confused for awhile. Honestly I didn't even know which character this was until I noticed he was standing near Bambi.

The Reluctant Dragon is a bit more obscure Disney character. But he's blue in the film, not green.

Here's the one that I think would make the Disney fanatics throw a tantrum that would rival Donald Duck. Just who is this? Stare at it for awhile, relax your eyes like you would for one of those Magic Eye pictures. It'll come to you.

This...I think...is one of Disney's greatest villains, Cruella de Vil!?! I just find it hard to believe that Disney would let this one slip, even 27 years ago. I guess I get pretty fanatical about Disney stuff too.

So are you a Disney fanatic too? This poor character was the inevitable missing piece of the puzzle. Can you name him?