Turn off your Blue-Ray players, DVD players, DVR, and movies-on-demand. Sign out of your iTunes account, Netflix and Hulu Plus. Today’s throwback Thursday focuses on the magic that preceded all of these modern movie-viewing methods and technologies: the magic of Disney.

As kids, our lives sometimes seemed to revolve completely around when the next wonderful Disney masterpiece would be released. And of course the only way to watch our favorite movies like “The Lion King” or “Toy Story” was to pull out our chunky VHS tapes, cram them in the VCR and spend at least five minutes rewinding the entire movie.  Where was the ‘scene selection’ option when we needed it?

One of the biggest Disney classics of our generation was “The Lion King.” It tugged on our heart strings and ultimately taught us that hyenas are evil and so is anyone whose name is as creepy as Scar. Possibly the best thing about the movie, aside from the totally awesome soundtrack, was the famous dynamic duo of Timon and Pumba. The two of them had us convinced that if a meerkat and a warthog could have been our childhood best friends, our lives would have been prefect. And of course the love story of Simba and Nala was the perfect animal fairytale, considering they did end up as king and queen of the jungle. The only questionable character was the creepy monkey who carried around sticks and yelled unintelligible poems at Simba. No one ever trusts a baboon named Rafiki anyway.

“Toy Story” was perhaps the biggest movie franchise of our early years. Disney teamed up with Pixar to create a story so successful that Disney-Pixar didn’t decide to complete the trilogy until over 10 years later. Props to Disney for capitalizing on the fact that every child believes their toys secretly come to life when no one is looking. From the start, “Toy Story” was destined for greatness. Buzz and Woody were legendary on-screen frenemies before we even knew what a frenemy was. We loved Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, Slinky and Rex and we always hated the freaky neighbor kid. Only Disney could make the life of a toy seem exciting and glamorous.

Today we still watch these movies on TV every chance we get and plan in advance to buy any movie the second it is released from the Disney Vault. Disney was a staple in our lives as children and we will always believe in the magic and brilliance of Walt Disney.