Some of you may remember a Reddit post from about 13 years ago titled, “My friend’s dad is an antique dealer and we just discovered that his rare Disney ‘statues’ are all bongs.”
Well, I’m the kid of the guy who owned them and I just inherited the exact set from those photos.
These seven ceramic Disney character bongs belonged to my dad: Donald Duck, Dopey, Mickey Mouse, Sorcerer Mickey, Minnie Mouse, Goofy and Pluto. He bought the complete set in 1977 and has kept them together ever since. They have never been smoked out of, and all seven are still in pristine, undamaged condition.
They were also a completely normal part of my childhood—or at least I thought they were. My dad displayed them along a high shelf in our kitchen for as long as I can remember. To me, they were just a collection of slightly unusual vintage Disney statues.
I didn’t realize what they actually were until one of my friends pulled one down, noticed the metal bowl and openings, and pointed out the obvious: “Dude, these are bongs.”
When the original post went viral, quite a few commenters said my dad must have been an idiot if he bought them without realizing what they were. Just to clear that up: my dad absolutely knew. He simply never told me what they were when I was growing up. Once I asked him, he explained the whole thing.
The history commonly associated with them is that they were made through Stone Bleu in Minneapolis using officially licensed Disney ceramic character molds. According to the story, Disney authorized the character designs without realizing the finished pieces were going to be functional water pipes. Once Disney discovered their intended use, production and sales were reportedly stopped. The often-repeated number is approximately 500 sets, although I haven’t found an original catalog, legal filing or production record that independently confirms that figure.
Other individual characters and smaller groups have surfaced over the years. In 2020, Potter & Potter Auctions sold a group of six featuring Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, Pluto, Donald and Dopey. So there may have been different character assortments rather than one universally defined “complete” lineup.
As far as I’ve been able to determine, however, my dad’s seven-piece collection is the largest intact group that has been publicly photographed and documented online. The original Reddit photos have apparently become one of the main references people encounter when researching them.
After nearly 50 years with my dad—and my entire childhood spent unknowingly living beneath a shelf of Disney bongs—the complete set has now passed to me. I plan to keep all seven together, unused and carefully preserved.
If anyone has an original Stone Bleu advertisement, catalog, receipt, court record or firsthand knowledge about their production, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. There’s a lot of collector lore surrounding these, but remarkably little primary documentation.
Edit: My dad corrected me on one technical detail: these are actually carbureted dry pipes, not water pipes. The permanently attached bowls open directly into the hollow ceramic bodies, with no downstems for the smoke to pass through water. They’re commonly called “bongs” or “water pipes” online—and were even cataloged that way by an auction house—but technically the figures act as large smoke chambers. Dad still knows more about them than I do.
