Perhaps after its searchers wished upon a star, original pictures for such classic Walt Disney cartoons as Fantasia, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Bambi have been found stored in a warehouse in Japan's Chiba University.

The university, located near Tokyo, said Monday that the 250 items include cels and background pictures used to make the cartoons, as well as sketches for the films. Also found was an original picture for the 1932 Silly Symphony Flowers And Trees -- the world's first three-color TechniColor cartoon.

The pictures had been donated by the Walt Disney Company to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, then exhibited at department stores around the country from 1960 -- the year that Sleeping Beauty was released in Japan -- to 1961.

Chiba University said that it took over the pictures in 1963 from the museum, which apparently donated them for educational and research purposes to the late Hidesaburo Genta, a professor in the university's engineering department, who was then studying animation.

However, their whereabouts became unknown until the treasure trove was recently spotted in a warehouse of the university's engineering department.

The animation cells were found once more when the school planned to digitize the images. It contacted Disney about copyright issues.

"We were keeping them as very important items. We considered it so important that not many people knew about this," said Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a professor at the university's Department of Information and Image Science.

The university said that it is thinking of exhibiting the pictures.

"We are truly surprised that a collection of this size has been found," Tokyo-based Walt Disney Company (Japan) Ltd. spokeswoman Erika Nakajima said, adding that the Mouse House was startled at the quality of the pictures as well.

"It's a precious discovery. Nowhere else in the world have such pictures been found in such a large quantity."