The Little Whirlwind is the latest Mickey Mouse classic immortalised in numismatic gold and silver

The New Zealand Mint’s flagship Disney coin range continues apace with its third 2017 release and seventh overall. The series Mickey Through the Ages features some of the influential shorts and movies that have defined this media giants most iconic character. Previous coins have been The Band Concert, The Brave Little Tailor, Plane Crazy and Fantasia.from 2016, with The Gallopin Gaucho and Mickey’s Delayed Date having debuted earlier this year.

The Little Whirlwind was a short released on February 14, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures, recycling some footage from the earlier production, The Band Concert. It has the distinction of being the first appearance of an updated Mickey Mouse design, one that worked better in perspective and had a larger head, hands and feet. The redesign did not survive past the end of the Second World War. The Riley Thomson directed short tells the story of Mickey’s attempts to help Minnie with her yard work and his battle with a group of anthropomorphic twisters out to cause chaos. Promised a slice of cake that Minnie is baking for cleaning up the yard, he fails miserably in his battles and ends up with the cake thrown in his face

With a series on its seventh go around you’d expect few changes to the tried and tested formula and that is indeed the case. The same 1 oz proof coloured silver, along with uncoloured gold coins of 1 oz, ¼ oz and 0.5g are all present again. All are very nicely packaged, the minigold coming mounted in a small credit-card style package which is colourfully themed to match. All have a serialised certificate of authenticity.

It gets harder to be enthusiastic after so many releases, but we have to say this is another fine coin that we can see classic Disney fans lapping up. They have purity of design that works well, eschewing gimmicks for boldness. The quality of these has always been very high, so if the subject is a favourite, the coin won’t disappoint. Available later today with prices of $85.00 for the silver, and $2,500.00, $620.00, and $75.00 respectively for the golds (all USD).Available to buy from the NZ Mint webstore, or from sponsors Minted-UK and PowerCoin.