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Chapter Two

The Empire was born from a boy, a girl, and a dog.

This was post-Second World War, the start of the baby boom generation, and there was a market for all three, though the truth is that it was the dog who made things happen, it was Pooch who was the real hit, and Gordo and Betsy were really only along for the ride, at least at the start. But Willis Wilson, twenty-six years old and recently returned from the Western front, had just enough genius in him to market the dog with the brother-sister pair, and since you couldn’t get the one without the others, he succeeded in marketing all three at once. And market them he did, slipping between newly made Madison Avenue satin sheets with an eagerness that, to abuse the metaphor, would have made a whore blush.

The second part of Wilson’s genius was an understanding of the incipient collector’s nature of a child’s mind. Kids collect things; they always have. From interesting pebbles to pressed flowers to bits of string to baseball cards to comics to model horses to books about dinosaurs or trains or heavy earth-moving construction machines, collecting is, perhaps, one of the means by which children come to terms with their world, one of the means by which they learn.

And, certainly, one of the means by which they play.

With Gordo, Betsy, and Pooch, Wilson made damn certain that there was always something else to collect. The trio were recast over and over again, thrown into new environments with new accessories, new costumes, and new narratives to support them. All but the most basic sets were marketed in limited runs, available for only a limited time. Beginning with the Cowboys and Indians Set in 1948 (with Gordo the Cowboy, Betsy the Squaw, and Pooch the Texas Ranger Dog), followed closely by the Space Explorer Set (Gordo the Space Explorer, Betsy the Space Homemaker, and Pooch the Space Dog) the same year, and then by the All Grown Up Set (Gordo the Executive, Betsy the Homemaker, and Pooch the House Dog), Wilson Toys succeeded in making, marketing, and, most important, selling toys that children wanted.

With a vengeance.

Gordo and Betsy’s roster of friends grew. More accessories, more toys, more play sets, and, from there, books, radio, and, inevitably, television, and the metamorphosis of Wilson Toys into Wilson Entertainment. Lovable Pooch debuted on NBC in 1958, much in the mold of other children’s television programs of the time. Gordo and Betsy presented fun and games and displayed their commitment to self-promotion before a live studio audience, with each show culminating in the debut of an all-new Pooch cartoon. The show was staggering in its mediocrity, but it exploded the popularity of the characters. A second offering followed in 1961, the hour-long variety show Gordo and Betsy’s Showcase, which introduced and furthered the adventures of Wilson Entertainment’s ever-growing cast of characters.

By the time Gordo and Betsy’s Showcase went off the air in 1977, it had served as the gateway drug to Wilson Entertainment for three successive generations.

In 1955, Wilson purchased the rights to Clip Flashman, a second-tier pulp-comics character who had enjoyed brief popularity in the late thirties and early forties as a Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon knockoff. Flashman, like his more successful counterparts, traveled interstellar space with his best girl, Penny, at his side, and between repeated battles to save the universe managed to seduce just about every alien queen he came across (and there were a lot of alien queens out there who needed seducing). Promoting “American values” even as he defended the Star System Alliance, the character was seen-even at the time-as laughably simplistic and painfully derivative.

Wilson saw the same in Clip Flashman, but he saw far greater potential, and set about revising the character in a manner that, much as he had with Gordo, Betsy, and Pooch, would enable Wilson Entertainment to exploit the franchise to its fullest. No longer was there Clip Flashman, Defender of the Star System Alliance. Now there was a comprehensive-and painfully complicated-Flashman mythology, which included a timeline that “discovered” other heroes of the same name and that recast Clip as a future iteration of a continuing and unbroken legacy of heroism. Clip was joined by Skip Flashman, Cowboy Extraordinaire; Royal Flashman, Backwoodsman and Revolutionary War Hero; Lion Flashman, Two-Fisted Adventurer; Justice Flashman, Secret Agent; Valiant Flashman, Knight of the Round Table; and, ultimately, the Flashman, Superhero.

The combination of complex mythology and endless collectibility made the Flashman franchise an enormous and immediate success among preteen and teenage boys. It certainly didn’t hurt that in every incarnation, Flashman had at least one sexy, mysterious femme fatale to tangle with time and again. By 1960, the year before Wilson’s passing, the Flashman franchise had expanded to novels and comic books, and the first of what would be many feature films was in development.

Upon his death, Wilson’s estate was inherited by his wife, Grace, and their two daughters. Like her husband, Grace had long since identified Disney as Wilson Entertainment’s main competitor, and while she lacked her husband’s creative spark, she more than made up for it with an almost savage business acumen. Despite the success of Pooch and his ilk, despite the continuing loyalty of the Flashman fan base, Wilson Entertainment had yet to break out of the American market, something that Grace understood as crucial to the company’s future. She wanted what she saw in Anaheim; she wanted a piece of the Disney pie, and to obtain that, she needed Disney’s universal appeal.

The problem was that Gordo and Betsy were unmistakably American, and, worse, rapidly becoming dated. Of all the Wilson Entertainment characters, including the Flashman franchise, Pooch was the only one to have made any substantial gains in the international market, primarily through animation. It didn’t take a market research team for Grace Wilson to see why: Pooch didn’t walk, didn’t talk, didn’t wear clothes. For all his lovable hijinks and overly affectionate lunacy, Pooch was, through and through, just a dog. And there are few animals as universally accepted and loved as a dog, as a quick peek over at Uncle Walt’s camp only served to emphasize.

It took six years of development, until 1967, before Grace Wilson introduced the Flower Sisters to the world in a debut as carefully orchestrated as any Wilson Entertainment had done before or has done since. Unveiled in Wilson Entertainment’s first full-length animated film, the Flower Sisters were targeted at the audience the Flashman franchise had left behind, namely, girls. Moreover, there wasn’t a human to be found anywhere in their domain. The Flower Sisters existed in the Wild World, where anthropomorphized animals walked and talked and wore wonderful clothes. A world where Lilac, a meerkat, and Lily, a gazelle, and Lavender, a lioness, could be the best of friends, and all share the same shy devotion to the noble Prince Stripe, Tiger of the Realm.

The movie became an instant classic. The dolls became instant bestsellers. And Grace Wilson got what she wanted.

The Flower Sisters were big in Japan.

Ground was broken for the Wilson Entertainment Park and Resort-commonly called WilsonVille-in April of 1978, near Irvine, California, with construction completed in January of 1980. Previews and VIP tours ran throughout the late spring, ending with the park’s grand opening on June 4. Like everything else Wilson Entertainment had done up to that point, it was an expertly executed affair, the culmination of nearly a decade’s marketing and sales work. The park had been rated by the Orange County fire marshal for a maximum capacity of one hundred thousand people, and all passes for the grand opening had been sold two years in advance of the day.

WilsonVille advertising took aim at Disney and the Magic Kingdom directly, painting the park in Anaheim as “tired” and “old.” WilsonVille, the advertising promised, was the newest, and the best, and had something for everyone. Guests could raid ancient pyramids with Lion Flashman in a desperate race to stop Agent Rose from escaping with the Mystic Eye of Ke-Sa. Parents and children were invited to float along the Timeless River with Lilac, Lily, and Lavender acting as their personal guides while they searched for the missing Prince Stripe. Children of all ages could experience screams and thrills as they rode the fastest, tallest wooden roller coaster in the world-Pooch Pursuit-based, marginally, on the Oscar-winning short cartoon of the same name.

And that was just what was featured in the brochure.

On average, WilsonVille sees more than thirty thousand visitors a day, more than twice that number during the peak summer season and on holidays-Christmas, New Year’s, and the Fourth of July all being exceptionally busy. A minimum of three thousand “Friends” staff the park, but the number can rise to just shy of six thousand during the aforementioned peak periods. “Friends” is the WilsonVille catch-all word to describe park staff, from the mostly unseen custodial crew to the performers working in costume on stage and at large in the park to the catering personnel and clerks. If you’re wearing a WilsonVille name tag, you’re everyone’s friend, whether you like it or not.

The park went nonsmoking in 1998, and alcohol is not permitted or served anywhere within its confines, save for the members-only club, the Speakeasy. The unmarked door to the club is concealed amid the apparent stonework walls adjacent to Agent Rose’s Safe House, beside a jewelry shop, and requires a password for entry. Membership is available solely to season-pass holders for an additional fee, and to select VIPs in the company of senior Wilson Entertainment officials.

WilsonVille is open from 8:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. seven days a week, 365 days a year, although on Fridays and Saturdays there is a “Secret Sunrise,” when individuals who have purchased the privilege can enter the park as early as 7:00 a.m.

Since its opening, the park has ceased operations on only one occasion, September 11, 2001. Rides were brought to a halt and all attractions were closed. Park guests were then escorted by Friends from the premises via preestablished evacuation routes. Outside the park, they were refunded their entry fees and given free day passes by way of apology. The WilsonVille gates were then barred, and a security sweep of the entire 156-acre park, as well as its surrounding support buildings and parking structures, was performed.

Nothing was found.

The park resumed normal operations the following morning.

Almost.