The Walt Disney Studios have officially released 44 full-length animated features to date. From Snow White to Home on the Range, these films have delighted generations of fans around the world.

But what of the movies that we've never seen? What of the ideas that got so far and then no further? What of the films that were too long, too complicated, too controversial or simply deemed not good enough to be completed?

In short, what of Disney's abandoned cartoon classics?

There have of course been many short cartoon ideas that came to nothing after going through various stages of production. These came both before and after Snow White, Walt's first foray into feature length animation and the world's first long cartoon. But there have been quite a few full-length movies that have been dropped along the way.

Chanticleer was based partly on a story in The Canterbury Tales and partly on a 1910 French play. This tale of a foolish but heroic rooster who believes the sun rises at his command was first considered as a Disney movie in the mid-1930's. Disney animation legend Marc Davis claimed that the character designs were among the finest work he ever produced, and it's hard to disagree. The problem was with the story, and in particular its leading man. No-one really believed that a rooster could carry the personality of a lead character in the same way that a mammal could. This didn't stop the idea from being regularly resurrected though. Even fifty years after it was originally suggested Chanticleer was still being brought up in Disney animation brainstorming meetings.

However, this came to an end when ex-Disney animator Don Bluth's studio came out with their own version of the story in 1992. He turned the cockerel into an Elvis imitator and named his forgettable movie Rock-A-Doodle.

A companion piece to Chanticleer was Reynard. The collection of stories featuring Reynard the fox dates back to European folk tales of at least the eleventh century. The problem with this idea was once again one of characterisation. Reynard has always been depicted as a thief, a swindler, a confidence trickster. There were serious doubts that an audience could ever be coerced into loving such an intrinsically unlovable character.

By the end of the Second World War these two ideas were being considered for combination to make one movie with two overlapping storylines. The amount of work spent on Reynard and Chanticleer shows that these concepts were investigated and developed more than any other abandoned Disney movie, certainly during Walt's time. It's quite possible that at least one of them would have been finished, but unfortunately, world events intervened.

During the war years the company concentrated on short films to help with the war effort - training films, propaganda, and the like. There was one full-length wartime feature planned, but this too had its roots in the terrible worldwide situation of the day. Gremlins was based on a tale by a young flight lieutenant in the RAF named Road Dahl. His story, Gremlin Lore, told of a colony of bad luck imps whose quiet lives in the clouds above England had suddenly disrupted by the Royal Air Force's planes. They began to take their revenge by sabotaging the planes and generally bringing 'bad luck' to the RAF. There was even talk of producing this as a live action movie, with only the gremlins themselves animated, but in the end it was decided that there was no way to make the little creatures sympathetic in the eyes of the Allied forces.

Even though Walt is frequently quoted as saying that he hated sequels and thought they were simply repetition of a single idea, he was a good businessman. Which explains why, for example, he followed up the hugely successful short comedy Three Little Pigs with three further money-spinners starring the pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. So it comes as little surprise to learn that the hits Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos were to be followed by a third South American influenced movie. Once again, this would have shown the further misadventures of Donald Duck and José Carioca.

Dogs have featured prominently in many Disney classics, and it was hoped that this tradition would continue with The Hound of Florence, a canine spy tale that was suggested for the studio in 1941. Although this tale of a human who became a dog and then solved crimes was dropped, it would later form the basis of the live action movies The Shaggy Dog and The Shaggy D.A.

At the same time as working on The Hound of Florence, Disney was considering making an animated feature about another doggy sleuth, Inspector Bones. The dog in the title was to be an animal version of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. This theme would of course be revived many years later with the release of Basil of Baker Street, The Great Mouse Detective.

A further undeveloped concept featured not a dog but an ape, as Disney had acquired the rights to Paul Gallico's book Scruffy. This wartime tale told of Scruffy, one of the famous apes that live on the Rock of Gibraltar. In the Disney version, there would be a villainous Nazi spy to be outwitted, and a beautiful she-ape to be wooed. Disney also owned the rights to the first books in the series of adventures starring Babar the little elephant. A feature length cartoon featuring his exploits was also planned but, like Scruffy, Babar has yet to appear in a Disney movie.

An animated version of Longfellow's famous poem Hiawatha was planned as far back as 1948. Beautiful characters were designed, like Kabibonokka, the spirit of the North Wind. Although the story was never fully developed, much of the style of the movie was resurrected when Disney animators used it as a style blueprint during the production of Pocahontas.

In the 1950's, the studio began work on a movie based on the folk tale Hansel and Gretel. Both full length and short versions of this cautionary tale of curiosity and greed were planned, one featuring Mickey and Minnie playing the roles of the endangered children in traditional Austrian garb. This version even went as far as having Disney songwriting team Richard and Robert Sherman produce a few numbers to feature in the movie. To prove that Disney retains and reuses all its ideas, the company did eventually release two versions of the Hansel and Gretel story. One was broadcast as a short section of 1999's Mouse Works TV series, and the other was a rarely seen 1982 short by a young animator and director named Tim Burton.

The Four Musicians of Bremen was in preparation around 1969. Walt had already explored this Brothers Grimm tale in a 1922 Laugh-O-Gram 7 minute silent movie, but after his death the company thought of remaking it in long form with a then-contemporary setting. The musicians were to be played by unloved animals who try to educate the town in the virtues of Beatle-esque rock music. Unlike some of the other ideas here, this one looks pretty weak; it's one of many examples of how the company was unsure of itself in the period following its founder's passing.

But these were far from being the only full-length animated movies that the Disney Studio began work on and then abandoned. There are more to come in my next column, including some much more recent cancellations.