How Goob from "Meet the Robinsons" became a watch

One of my favorite animated characters is Goob from Walt Disney Animation Studios' “Meet the Robinsons”.  I think it’s one of Disney’s most underrated films, and there’s really no synopsis that does the movie justice, but if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you do.  Goob, whose actual name is Michael Yagoobian, is one of the little boys in the movie.  He plays a bigger part than that in the film, but that would be giving you spoilers if you haven't seen the film.  In any case, I thought Goob was such a cute little kid, and he just got some really unlucky breaks in life, and I felt bad for him.  I wanted to introduce him to Boo from Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc.” (she’s also one of my favorite animated characters), and they could have adventures together, and she could teach him how to have fun, and I think she would be a good influence on him.  I looked for some merchandise with him on it, but because of how the story develops, the little boy is not in much of the film, and they couldn’t really market him without giving some of the story away.  There were certainly no figurines or plush of him, and as I recall, the only thing I found was a roll of stickers for the movie, and it happened to have the occasional sticker with him, so I bought that.

OK, so, that’s one part of the backstory.

I don’t remember exactly when it was (The movie was released in 2007, so it had to be sometime after that.),but for my birthday one year, the husband came to me and said that he had a gift planned for me, but he didn’t have it yet, and he wasn’t sure that he would actually be able to get it, and if he did, he had no idea when it might be available, and did I want to know what it was or just wait to see if it happened.  Ummm, ok.  I decided I would just wait without knowing what it was I might be waiting for.

Some months later, he was excited to tell me that the gift he wanted had indeed arrived, and he gave me a watch with Goob on it.

Now, here’s the second part of the backstory.

There’s a watch store on Main Street at Disneyland, and as you can imagine, they have all kinds of nice things in there.  I don’t know if they still have them now, but they used to have original artwork watches for sale, some of which were designs that you could choose from a book and some of which might be released for special occasions, like an anniversary of an attraction or for Disneyland's birthday.  If you purchased any of these original artwork watches, you also got the artwork drawing with it.  I know they don’t have this now, but back then, you could also get a custom watch with a design that wasn’t in the book, but there was a whole process of getting the design approved before they could make the watch.  That’s what the husband did to get this watch made, but there was a glitch.  “Meet the Robinsons” was a computer-animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios.  The husband was told by a cast member at the watch shop that they had a contact to ask for approval for Walt Disney Animation movies that were hand-drawn, and they had a contact to ask for approval for Pixar Studios, who only made computer-animated movies, but because Walt Disney Animation Studios had not made many computer-animated films, this was the first time someone had requested a watch with a design from one of those films, so they had not yet created an approval process for that.  The husband was told that once they figured out who needed to approve the design request, and if the request was approved or not, they would call him back to let him know, but they had no way of knowing how long that would take.

So he waited.  I don’t know how long it took, but he said that eventually, he got a call back saying his request had been approved.  He had given them a screenshot he’d taken of the design he wanted.  My two favorite bits with Goob are both when he’s in his baseball uniform.  At one point, he has a juice box, and he’s trying to drink out of it, but I think the straw moves around.  In a later scene, after Goob has a black eye, he has a steak over that eye, and I absolutely love his line:  “Mr. Steak, you’re my only friend.”  The husband had given them the design with Goob and the juice box.  Once his request was approved, they had one of the artists do a drawing of the picture, which they then sent to the husband for approval.  Once a drawing was approved, then they proceeded to make the watch.

Here's the awesome Goob watch.  The detail is amazing, with the logo on the hat, and the dinosaur on his shirt, and his sleepy eyes with dark shadows under them because the poor boy is so exhausted, and the juice box and the little straw in his mouth.

They finally called the husband to let him know that the watch was ready, so he went by to pick it up.  As it happened, the artist who did the drawing for the watch, Dave Smith (but not the Walt Disney Archives' Dave Smith), was there at the watch shop that night, so the husband stopped by to tell him he was picking up the watch.  The husband said that Dave was happy to meet him and said that he really enjoyed drawing Goob and that many people stopped to admire his work and recognized Goob.  The artists did their work on the watch drawings out in the open, so you could see them if you were standing in the shop or just walking outside by the window.

All of the original artwork watches also came with a Mickey head buckle.  So cute.

Seriously, how cute is that little Mickey-head buckle?

So that’s the story of how I got this cute watch.  There was almost no Goob merchandise available, so the husband had to have one created for me!