The Pink Elephants are hallucinations that Dumbo and Timothy Mouse experience in Disney's 1941 film Dumbo.
Appearances
Dumbo
During the film, the clowns Dumbo has worked with are changing into their casual clothes and celebrating a successful fireman act with champagne. They come up with a plan for their next act, and while they are leaving to tell their boss, one hits the table with the bottle of champagne into Dumbo's water bucket, which is right outside their break tent. Dumbo and Timothy drink the spiked water and become instantly and heavily drunk; at Timothy's request, Dumbo blows some bubbles, which transform into elephants and they start to hallucinate that these elephants are moving. These colorful hallucinations dance around and scare Dumbo and Timothy. Eventually, the effects of the champagne wear off and the elephants fade away.
House of Mouse
The Pink Elephants appear in a few episodes of the series.
In the episode "Mickey and Minnie's Big Vacation," while Donald and Daisy are in charge of the club, they saw the Pink Elephants being created by Mrs. Potts as one of their faulty acts (along with 101 Dragons). They cause a havoc to the guests, such as drinking Clarabelle's milk, knocking Timon into Goofy's dirty dishes, acting as a canoe for Pocahontas, being weights for Hercules (eventually causing him to fall through the floor), throwing Ursula on top of Goofy, stealing Pooh's honey (which makes sense because elephants are essentially the same as Heffalumps) and, of course, frightening Dumbo. Fortunately, Timothy was able to get rid of the technicolor creatures by scaring them away with a wooden sign that had the word "Boo!" written on it.
In "Ask Von Drake", the Pink Elephants were seen during the musical headcount of the character guests.
Video games
Epic Mickey
In the original storyboard, one of the Pink Elephants was planned to be one of the Beetleworx enemies in the game, but that idea was scrapped in the final game.
Epic Mickey 2
Though difficult to find in the game's main hub city, Mean Street, if one were to go to the construction area, a patch of walling can be thinned out to reveal the Pink Elephants, a still picture identical to the one present above.
Disney Parks
A Pink Elephant in Animagique at Walt Disney Studios Park.
Disneyland Resort
Pink Elephants appear in the Disneyland version of Fantasmic!, where they were dancing to their song.
In the 2017 update, they appear at the end of the show's
jungle-themed act, which then transitions into a reworked version of the Pink Elephants segment from the original show.
Walt Disney World
The Pink Elephants are part of Dumbo's spell card for Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.The title of the card is "Dumbo's Pink Elephant Parade".
Disneyland Paris
The Pink Elephants are the first set of characters Donald Duck encounters in the former show, Animagique. When they first appear before him, they perform a shortened version of the original Pink Elephants song. After that, Donald thanks them, and watches them exit.
Trivia
- The Pink Elephants musical number is very controversial due to the inclusion of alcohol and drunkenness. Because of this, several book adaptations of the film often cut out their scene and sometimes replace it with a new scene of Dumbo falling asleep and dreaming about flying.
- The Guardian columnist Henry Barnes wrote that the role of alcohol in unlocking Dumbo's gift was "a terrible, adult message". He praised the sequence but argued that, "Drunken pink elephants have no place in a children's movie.".
- The Pink Elephants are spoofed in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures when Plucky Duck gets Einstein's smarts.
- They are also parodied in the "Art Crawl" episode of Bob's Burgers.
- A Pink Elephant made a cameo on The Simpsons where it crushes a goblin hallucination Barney was experiencing that was caused by a peyote-laced organic drink. Afterwards, Barney thanks it and claims that it's always been there for him.
- Part of the Pink Elephants' parade was heard playing on T.V. in Disney's 2007 film, Enchanted.
- The Pink Elephants' theme music is played in the Donald Duck short 'Tea For Two Hundred' in 1948, when the ants are marching to steal Donald's picnic food.
- Recycled footage of the elephants is used in the Heffalumps and Woozles musical number from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Gallery
Screenshots
Miscellaneous
