Mickey Mouse has landed on the “face” of the moon.

The face, that’s, of a wristwatch created to pay homage to The Walt Disney Firm and when its 100-year historical past intersected with the peak of the house race.

Citizen’s new “Mickey Astronaut” timepiece options the enduring cartoon mouse as he takes on the function of an astronaut, establishing tools on the lunar floor. A part of a 14-piece assortment that celebrates Disney100 all through the a long time, the Disney x Citizen Mickey Mouse Astronaut watch marks a interval the place the way forward for house exploration was mirrored in Disney’s “Tomorrowland” tv specials and with park sights like “Mission to the Moon” and Area Mountain.

“As a part of our year-long celebration for Disney’s one hundredth anniversary, Citizen’s newest watch launch commemorates the peak of the Area Age within the 70s-80s, with Disney’s Mickey Mouse depicted as an astronaut on the moon,” stated Eric Horowitz, managing director for Citizen Watch America. “When Disney goes huge, we go huge, so you can say we’re taking pictures for the celebs with this one.”

The Mickey Astronaut watch is obtainable from Citizen’s web site and licensed retailers at an inventory worth of $350.

Associated: The Apollo Program: How NASA despatched astronauts to the moon

On Thursday (June 1), Citizen up to date its companion “Wonders of Time” web site to share a behind-the-scenes take a look at the design of the Mickey Astronaut watch, that includes its artist, Jeff Shelly, who was director of character artwork for Imagineering — Disney Parks, Experiences and Client Merchandise for 28 years.

“Drawing Disney’s Mickey Mouse is at all times enjoyable for me, particularly once I’m drawing him in a role-playing scenario,” stated Shelly. “Consider him as an actor. He is usually a scuba diver, a race automotive driver, a pirate on the excessive seas, a caveman and even an astronaut.”

And never simply any astronaut; for this watch, Shelly drew on his personal pursuits from his childhood.

“I selected the Apollo-style spacesuit for 2 causes. The primary motive is the last decade we selected for the astronaut watch — late sixties, early seventies,” Shelly wrote in an interview by electronic mail with collectSPACE.com. “The second is extra private.”

“I used to be 4 years outdated watching [when] Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] landed on the moon, and ever since I have been an enormous fan of their spacesuits,” he stated. “It is in all probability one of the crucial effectively designed and coolest issues people have created.”

Shelly’s ardour for the NASA garb comes by in his artwork. Mickey’s spacesuit is detailed with purple and blue hose connectors, a conveyable life assist system backpack and blue silicone-bottomed overshoes that left the now-iconic bootprints on the moon (each in actual life and on the watch’s lunar floor dial).

Mickey is even carrying a watch over his gauntlet, identical to the astronauts wore.

“I really like wanting on the outdated photographs of the Apollo astronauts and seeing a watch strapped across the exterior of their cumbersome spacesuits. So easy and it labored,” stated Shelly. “They could lose observe of time on the moon since the solar does not set on the moon and likewise gauge their oxygen time.”

Shelly additionally discovered a technique to tie within the watch’s transferring options into his paintings. As depicted on the watch, Mickey is kneeling down and tinkering with a three-legged machine that at its prime merges into the true hour, minute and second palms. Equally, one other piece of kit topped by an antenna shows the date on its “display screen.”

“I needed him [Mickey] to work together someway with the palms and date window. Then I remembered astronauts on the moon having every kind of kit with them to do experiments. That is when my creativity kicked in and [I] began to make these devices up to slot in his world,” Shelly instructed collectSPACE.