These days kids barely know who Donald Duck or Mickey are. I wonder how much of that is because Disney intentionally invests in other IP that isn't under this threat.
There's a newly-created Mickey Mouse series on Disney Channel; from what little I've seen of it, Mickey's look is much more of a throwback to the Steamboat Willie age.
Also, when I saw Frozen at the theater a couple of weeks ago, there was an old-style Mickey cartoon before the picture (albeit one that broke the fourth wall in ways I don't believe the old cartoons did).
Maybe I'm being nostalgic but Mickey used to be a big movie star and now he's relegated to mostly direct-to-dvd. He was still immensely popular through the 1980s with rereleases of Fantasia in theaters, Mickey's Christmas Carol, etc. Now it seems unimaginable that he'd star in a big budget Disney film. It seems reasonable to me that they are preferring IP that was created post-1976 for a reason.
About 20 years ago I was in Orlando (not to see Disney World, though we did). When the done-up characters came through the room where we were having breakfast, you could see the eyes get big as quarters on some little kids at a table over from us. I have to think this was recognition, since otherwise it should have scared them terribly.
> These days kids barely know who Donald Duck or Mickey are.
Ignoring the fact this is likely false, this has nothing to do with copyright. It's a matter of trademark law, and Disney would in no way lose the trademark over any of its characters if certain specific films featuring them were released into the public domain.
