A rather unsettling picture shared on Facebook includes a caption which suggests it shows a child with what appears to be Minnie and Mickey Mouse at Disney World in the 1940s.
However, the picture wasn’t taken at the theme park in the 1940s—Walt Disney’s first park, Disneyland in California, didn’t open until 1955. This was followed by Disney World in Florida, which opened in the early 1970s.
But as fact checking service Snopes have previously written, the post shared online is a genuine vintage picture of people in Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes, most likely taken in the 1930s.
There are two key reasons why the figures look so different from the iconic characters we know today—the first being simply that their design has changed over the decades since their creation in the 1920s.
Secondly, for a short period of time after the characters were released, costumes were predominantly produced by small companies which were not affiliated with Disney itself, which meant they all had a slightly different look.
There are plenty of examples available online of other interpretations of the characters.