Granted, the characters went through various phases on the screen, and the earliest Mickey Mouse looks a lot more mousey than the present one. But from the very beginning, when Disney began merchandising, the Mickey that wasn't on the screen looked pretty much like a Dantesque rat rather than a Disneyesque hero. Something about the translation from screen to three dimensions, I guess. Donald Duck, in his earliest screen incarnations, was a lot more weaselly than he became over time, but still, the merchandise was always even more weaselly. Weasel seems to be the coin of the realm in real-life character design.
Disney costumed characters go back to the 30s, long before the parks were invented. Disneyland opened in 1955, and by then, the screen characters were all the round, classic, big-eyed folks we immediately think of. But walking around the park, it was weasels, weasels, weasels. Nowadays, the latest characters are on the verge of adding yet another dimension, with articulated faces and full speaking voices, which if you ask me starts edging close to the uncanny valley, which is a whole different kind of weaselly.
io9 has a great gallery of some of these old costumes at Vintage Disneyland character costumes were the fabric of nightmares, with some links to other pages of similarly bizarre images. The whole Nightmare on Main Street aspect will definitely haunt you for a while, and make you think twice about your next trip to the
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