Walt Disney Enchanted Tiki Room Gods & Tangaroa Babies

I thought a thread about the history and inspiration of the Walt Disney Enchanted Tiki Room Tiki Gods and Tiki Babies would be cool. I always thought that the designs were original to Disney but it appears that some were "inspired" from real Oceanic Artfacts. As I was flipping through the infamous Arts of The South Seas book (discussed in this forum) I came across a female figure from the Trobriand Islands of New Guinea and immediately recognized the head to be the same as the New Life Tiki Baby from Disneyland. I just thought it was a cool discovery and wanted to share. If anyone knows the inspirations from other Disney Tikis please share.

That's awesome! And yeah, Rolly Crump took a lot of inspiration from actual south seas art when he helped carve the Tiki Room deities.

Here's another carving that inspired one of the Disney tiki babies, a Rurutu god carving. As you can see from the small carved figure on the left chest area it resembles another one of the Disney tiki babies. This carving is also shown in other book discussed in this forum, Oceanic Art by H. Tischner. It's so interesting how genuine pieces of Oceanic Art did inspire the Poly Pop movement from Oceanic Arts of CA to Disney. Lowbrow?, I don't think so :)

Threads about the original carvings that inspired Tiki Pop versions are always appreciated. I had missed that Trobriand one, thanks!

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=33940&forum=5&vpost=483855

There are all the other Enchanted Tiki Gardens ones to find...

…and so on.

And let's find the ones that inspired Marc Davies,

...asides from the well-known Covarrubias/Trader Vic's rendering from Arts of the South Seas :)

Like the famous Tiki drummers!

This thread is great!

On 2015-02-02 06:20, EPCOTExplorer wrote:
That's awesome! And yeah, Rolly Crump took a lot of inspiration from actual south seas art when he helped carve the Tiki Room deities.

True, however the tiki baby figures were not designed or sculpted by Rolly. Rolly took many liberties with his designs and I don't think he based them very heavily on any real-world representations of the various gods the way some of the other imagineers did, they were mostly products of his own style and imagination. I know that his Maui figure was 100% his own idea and design, it was inspired by Japanese bamboo fountains he had read about, it was not created with a specific god in mind. He only came up with the name for it and matched it to a real god later on when Walt asked him what it was supposed to be. All kinds of interesting stories behind these figures and designs.