Australia, Austria, U.S. stamps feature Disney-Pixar characters

[Editor's note: This is the second part of Bill Silvester's entertaining three-part look at stamps that feature the delightful characters from the Disney-Pixar movies. Part I: Uganda issued first stamps depicting Disney-Pixar characters; Part III: Lightning McQueen, WALL-E, others shine on Disney-Pixar stamps]

By Bill Silvester

Australia issued a souvenir stamp sheet (Scott 2225) in 2004 containing 10 stamps showing the Southern Cross constellation, with characters from Finding Nemo in labels attached to the stamps and in the border area of the sheet, which is in the new A4 format with a special printed effect. This sheet was the first in a series of Disney/Pixar sheets by Australia Post.

Pixar released its sixth film in 2004, an action-adventure film called The Incredibles, about undercover superheroes, using its first outside director, Brad Bird.

John Lasseter sat in the director’s chair for the 2006 Cars, a film about race cars and life on Route 66. In that same year, the Walt Disney Company purchased Pixar.

Only one stamp has been issued with a scene from Cars: a United States stamp (Scott 4553) from the 2011 set titled “Send a Hello,” using characters from Disney-Pixar films. The set includes stamps, 4553-57, and postal cards, UX628-UX632.

The Cars stamps are in the first column of the pictured Send a Hello pane.

One of Australia’s souvenir stamp sheet series, in 2006, used a Cars/cars theme, depicting Cars characters in the labels and selvage borders of the sheet that includes stamps depicting classic cars. One of the sheets is illustrated above.

In 2006, Austria made available a special booklet for Cars with three sheets of customer-personalized stamps featuring characters from the film on the stamps and in the borders.

(All of the Austria booklets featuring Pixar subjects had limited print runs and are available only through Austria Post, https://post.at, and will probably not be listed in most stamp catalogs.)

Belgium has issued one of its “Duostamp” booklets featuring Cars as well: five regular postage stamps with decorative Pixar labels.

The Academy Award-winning Ratatouille, the story of a rat who wants to be a chef, was released in 2007.

Austria produced a booklet (cover illustrated here) of two panes with three stamps each and illustrations of the characters from Ratatouille, and the United States issued a single stamp (Scott 4554) showing two Ratatouille characters in their 2011 “Send a Hello” set of Disney-Pixar film subjects.