Talk:Junior Woodchucks

Has the Guidebook ever been published in English?

I am noticing that the Donald Duck universe appears to have take a life of its own in the Continent, with several publications never made available in the US. I have found Wikipedia entries for the Guidebook both in Italian and Portuguese, but none in English. yamaplos 21:38, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

FYI, there once was a collectible "JWC Guidebook" in the German Disney licensee weekly Micky Maus throughout the early to mid-90s that consisted of little more than slightly larger trading cards (think Magic the Gathering or somesuch) on natural science (and history?) items, with 4 cards or so included as a gimmick in each issue. These cards had holes punched into them on one side each, and the series ended with a foldable wraparound cardboard cover which read "Junior Woodchuck Guidebook" and that the cards could be filed into due to their holes. I think the whole set consisted of c. 50-100 Guidebook "pages".

The cardboard cover really was the most durable part of it all and I'd wager that at least 98% of full sets wasted away within a year or two. If that's the same thing as done by Mondadori/Disney Italy, I wouldn't be too sure if anything as cheap as that would really warrant its own Wikipedia entry.

But just to be sure: I'm only talking about RL Disney publications fashioned after the JWC Guidebook. The fictional original itself sure does deserve to be included in Wikipedia.

Oh, and since you're mentioning European Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse stories that never appeared in the US, the amount should be somewhere between 3 to 4 digits of stories that you guys never even got to see, especially those from Italy. Italy started doing her own Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse stories in circa 250-page pocket monthlies already way back under Mussolini (they started out back then by running re-prints of Taliaferro and Gottfredson strips before doing their own material), and the last time those monthlies with hundreds of pages each resumed publication continuously without breaks up until today was back in the early 50s. Ever since then, they've done new stories for every single monthly issue, see Topolino and Donald Duck pocket books.

Disney just keeps claiming they'd never sell in the US. And ever since the 80s when tiny dedicated publishers like Gladstone and Gemstone tried to prove them wrong, Disney first tried to squash them with heavy licensing fees, much higher than in Europe. But around 1990 and 2010, not even that worked to get those small publishers out of business, so what Disney did *THEN* both times was just unilaterally revoke their license, and in 1990 they dumbed down the whole designs, layouts, and concept, and themelves tried to force a print run to the nth power onto the entirely unprepared US market compared to what the small publishers had done. The losses from that asinine strategy were so great back in the early 90s that it was called the "Disney implosion".--37.82.147.190 (talk) 17:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Junior Woodchucks be merged into Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The content is in-universe fancruft and is also non-notable. TurtleMelody (talk) 04:41, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I am firmly against any merger!!! Keep the separate article for the Junior Woodchucks. Das Baz, aka Erudil 17:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Mergers and sub-articles are not about whether anything is "fancruft" or not (which is a valid argument only on whether anything should be included in Wikipedia at all). They're simply a matter of convenience: Once the parent article gets too large, sub-items should be moved to their own articles. It's why we have an article for each single episode of The Simpsons, for example. As you can see, all notable information on the JWC makes up an article in its own right that, if merged with its parent article Huey, Dewey, and Louie, would make the latter long and difficult to read and navigate.

And as for the Guidebook, within the fictional Duckburg universe it holds its own significance and notability comparable to other fictional items such as the Holy Grail or King Arthur's sword Excalibur, and those have both their own articles even though they're just items from a much larger narrative each. I hope you realize that the JWC Guidebook is continuously and patently presented in hundreds of fiction stories for more than half a century by now (especially those by Barks, Rosa, and many, many Italian Disney artists including, but not limited to, Scarpa, Carpi, Cavazzano, Scala...) as far broader in its depth, scope, coverage, and level of detail than even Wikipedia could ever be. So I'd say if we have entries for every single Simpsons episode there is, it darn well deserves its own entry along with the often-portrayed youth organization giving our web-footed heroes access to it.

I'm not saying this article is complete or terribly well-organized as is, but you should see that moving stuff to sub-articles or merge it back to its parent article is not a matter of whether it's "fancruft". It's simply a matter of space, readability, and navigability. --37.82.147.190 (talk) 17:37, 16 October 2013 (UTC)