Idea Man Holds the Keys to the Kingdom : Disneyland: The new theme park president has a rare combination of business acumen and artistic inventiveness.

The longer Paul Pressler stared at the rendering for a stuffed toy of Simba, lion cub hero of Disney film “The Lion King,” the more he realized that something wasn’t quite right.

It was the eyes--they lacked the empathetic spark Pressler wanted. So he had them changed.

And when the Disney executive began fiddling with the look of a new Disney Store, he went again for the heartstrings, designing showrooms to re-create great moments from “Snow White,” “Fantasia” and the studio’s other animated classics.

“Our characters are so emotional. They exude emotion to our guests,” said Pressler, the Disney Stores chief who was promoted last week to become president of Disneyland. “Our really unique selling proposition,” he said, is about “selling emotion.”

That understanding has built Pressler’s reputation within Walt Disney Co. as a walking idea machine with an intuitive sense of what is special about the company’s characters and stories.

Now, the 38-year-old Pressler is being asked to take on one of the company’s toughest challenges. As Disneyland enters its 40th year, the park has been searching for a high-profile manager to reinvigorate Walt Disney’s creation and cope with lower attendance, friction over cost-cutting and deterioration of the surrounding urban neighborhood.

In addition, after tantalizing the local community with images of a $3-billion theme park and hotel expansion, Disney is now scrambling to downsize its dreams.

“It’s a huge job,” said former Anaheim Councilwoman Miriam Kaywood, but Pressler “has apparently proved himself.”

Pressler starts as an unknown inside the close-knit world of Disneyland. His task is made all the more difficult by what are sure to be inevitable comparisons to the enormously popular Jack Lindquist, who started at Disneyland the year it opened and remains a fixture in Orange County political, sports and charity circles.

The former toy industry executive will not only lead Orange County’s largest employer, which at its summer peak employs about 12,000 people, he must also wrestle with the political pressures of deciding the fate of Disney’s resort proposal, which would add a new theme park and potentially thousands of new hotel rooms.

So who is the new king of the Magic Kingdom? The portrait that emerges from interviews with friends and colleagues is of a self-effacing, energetic Disney devotee known for a rare combination of business acumen and artistic inventiveness.

Pressler is a “talented, creative business executive . . . (who) nurtures great ideas and knows how to see them through,” Disney Chairman Michael Eisner said in appointing him to his new position. Pressler is capable in the roles that Eisner holds dearest: diplomat, number-cruncher and carnival barker.

“I think I have a unique talent for drawing the best out of people and inspiring them to bigger and better things,” Pressler said. “Somehow I just see things, and I get sparked by new ideas and take off on new tangents. I never accept anything for the way it works.”

Pressler also has the endorsement of predecessor Lindquist, who praises him as “an entrepreneur, an outstanding marketing guy. He’ll make everybody forget me.”

Known for his easygoing manner, Pressler is happier at home with his wife and children and a stack of videotaped movies on a Friday night than working the social circuit, said friend and colleague Steve Burke, now chief operating officer of Euro Disney in France.

“If you had to rank his priorities, No. 1 would be his family, and No. 2 would be his business,” Burke said. Nowhere on that list, he said, is reaching for the next job.

Pressler is “a guy who really keeps his ego in check,” said veteran toy company executive Bruce Stein, now working on interactive entertainment possibilities with Hollywood mogul Peter Guber.

A Long Island native, Pressler attended the State University of New York at Oneonta, a small campus outside of Albany, as an economics major. “He was a fairly bright student,” said one of his professors, Robert Carson, noting that Pressler graduated in the top 10% of his 1978 class. “An affable, friendly guy.”

His first job out of college was working as an urban planner in New York City. After six months, Pressler said, he was ready to try something else. Choosing among the jobs offered by a search firm, he went to work for Remco Toys, a small toy maker in New York.

Pressler loved his new job. “It was a terribly creative business,” he recalls.

His big break in the toy industry came in 1982 when he interviewed for a position at Kenner-Parker Toys, then a subsidiary of General Mills.

“He was just incredible,” said his boss, Carole MacGillvray Rappeport, who now operates a toy consulting company in Santa Barbara. “He not only had some toy experience, he was just so personable. He is one of these people you meet for the first time and you say, ‘This guy is a total winner.’ ”

He was hired on the spot.

At Kenner-Parker, where he was vice president of marketing, Pressler was known for exploiting the licensing possibilities of the Care Bears, a hit teddy bear collection produced in conjunction with a line of greeting cards. He also became executive producer of the “The Care Bears Movie.”

Eventually, Pressler’s unit was dissolved when the company decided that its efforts duplicated those of the major divisions: Kenner toys and Parker Bros. Pressler received several interesting offers, including ones from Mattel Inc. and Walt Disney Co.

Rappeport said she urged Pressler to take the Disney job, suspecting that “a whole new world would open up” for her star manager.

He did so, joining Disney in 1987 to oversee product licensing. “He had a rare combination of creative sense and business skills,” said former supervisor Steve McBeth, head of the group creating computer games for Disney.

“He can pick up a (stuffed toy) and say how to make it better,” McBeth said. “He picked up a Mickey plush and, by moving its hands across its face, he could make it cuter.”

But Pressler really distinguished himself by crafting a deal between Disney and former suitor Mattel. He was the force behind an agreement linking the toy and entertainment giants to design and market a preschool line that could compete against such strong brands as Fisher Price and Playskool.

“I recognized we had a tremendous asset in our characters,” he said.

The joint effort was a big success, and today Mattel sponsors the It’s a Small World attraction at the Anaheim theme park, which stocks the line of preschool toys at a gift shop at the ride’s exit.

That successful deal caught the eye of Barton K. (Bo) Boyd, president of the consumer products division, who tapped Pressler to run the Disney Store chain, which today has 335 locations in eight countries.

“He is full of ideas,” Boyd said. It was Pressler, he said, who realized how the company’s famed Imagineers could be brought together with merchandising and construction employees to redesign the prototype Disney Store at the Del Amo shopping mall in Torrance.

Pressler explains that he “wanted to make it more entertaining by utilizing more storytelling and segment the merchandise by age. We took the Disneyland concept of ‘separate lands’ and applied it creatively” to break the store into separate sections for adults, children, collectors and gift buyers, with each section centered on a different Disney movie.

Unveiled a couple of months ago, Pressler said, the redesign has already proved to be a winner and will be adopted in other units of the chain.

Pressler insisted that Disney-themed merchandise portray characters in memorable moments. At Pressler’s urging, a clock maker put one of its timepieces inside the belly of a miniature crocodile, a scene from the Disney classic “Peter Pan.” (The clock lights up when the croc’s nose is touched.)

Pressler lives in upscale Pacific Palisades with his homemaker wife Mindy, 8-year-old son, Sean, and 4-year-old daughter, Jordan. And he has become friends with television personality Bob Saget, who lives nearby.

“We have very good neighbor karma,” said Saget, whose 5-year-old daughter is Jordan Pressler’s best pal.

They have become such good friends that the thought of Pressler having to move away to be closer to his new job is traumatic, Saget said. The Presslers are considering a move to Orange County but haven’t made a decision yet. “There is going to be such drama around here,” Saget said, if it happens.

The two families celebrate holidays together and share each other’s triumphs and setbacks.

Saget, star of ABC’s “Full House,” said that when his sister died five months ago of a rare disease his friend came to his aid. Besides offering consolation, Pressler arranged for Disney to support a charity fund-raiser after the death, and he personally bought several expensive items at a silent auction to raise funds for research on the disease.

Pressler also finds time for other charity work, including being a board member of the Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles. Being in the toy industry, he said, “I always felt passionately . . . that I wanted to give something back to kids.”

Saget said Pressler cares for others but remains devoted to his job.

“He is a full company man,” Saget said. “Whatever haircut you have to have, he has it.”

Despite never having visited Disneyland until he joined its parent company eight years ago, Pressler thinks “complementary skills” will see him through a transition into the presidency of the theme park.

“I manage by walking around,” he said, and will be “pumping up people with great ideas.” He is passionate about courtesy and helpfulness to customers--qualities he drilled into the 6,000 workers of the Disney stores.

He acknowledges that he doesn’t know much about the mechanics of theme park operations but says he can lean on the rest of his management team until he learns himself. “If I had to do it alone, it would be very scary,” he said.

He won’t be alone, and he already has plenty of supporters.

“No question they need a strong marketing man down there,” said Boyd, himself a Disney theme park veteran. “They have got an incredible talent for that position.”

As for winning over Disneyland’s managers and employees, Boyd said, “he will fit in in about 30 seconds.”