Mighty Mouse

History

The character was conceived originally by Paul Terry. Created as a parody of Superman, he first appeared in 1942 in a theatrical animated short titled The Mouse of Tomorrow. Originally named Super Mouse, after seven films in 1942-43, he was renamed Mighty Mouse for The Wreck of the Hesperus (1944), after Paul Terry learned that another character named "Super Mouse" was to be published by Marvel Comics.

Beginning in 1945, some Mighty Mouse episodes had operatic dialogue, and he was drawn slightly differently. Both changes attempted to take advantage of the growing popularity of singer and actor Mario Lanza, beginning with Mighty Mouse and The Pirates. Others included Gypsy Life and The Crackpot King. Mighty Mouse's adventures later focused on Pearl Pureheart and Oilcan Harry; the dialogue in these episodes were always sung by the characters.

Mighty Mouse was first drawn wearing a blue costume with red trunks and cape, similar to Superman. Later, this outfit was changed to a yellow costume with red trunks and cape; in various theatrical shorts, those colors were reversed. Roy Halee, Sr. was the first actor to provide the voice of Mighty Mouse, a role later filled by voice actors Tom Morrison and Allen Swift. In The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle, Alan Oppenheimer provided the voice, and during the run of Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures, Mighty Mouse was voiced by Patrick Pinney.

Mighty Mouse's superpowers included flight, super strength, and invulnerability. In some films he used X-ray vision and psychokinesis. He was also able to turn back time in The Johnstown Flood and Krakatoa. Other cartoons showed him leaving a red contrail during flight that he manipulated like a band of solid, flexible matter.

Mighty Mouse featured two recurring female leads. In the cartoon shorts, she was a mouse named Pearl Pureheart. In the comics in the 1950s and 1960s, the female lead was named Mitzi. His recurring arch-enemy is a villain cat named Oil Can Harry, who originated as a human in earlier Terrytoons as the enemy of Fanny Zilch.

The early formula of each story consisted of a crisis needing extraordinary help to resolve. At the decisive moment, Mighty Mouse came to the rescue. In the early films Mighty Mouse would not appear until nearly three quarters through the cartoon. Beginning with A Fight to the Finish (1947), the story line usually begins with Mighty Mouse and Pearl Pureheart already in a desperate situation as though in the next chapter of a serial.

Mighty Mouse cartoons spoofed the cliffhanger serials of silent films as well as the classic operettas of stage still popular at the time.

The characters often sing mock opera arias (e.g., Pearl: "Oil Can Harry, you're a villain!"; Oil Can Harry: "I know it, but it's a lot of fun..."). Mighty Mouse sings tenor, Pearl soprano, Oil Can Harry bass-baritone. Mighty Mouse is also famous for singing "Here I come to save the day!" when flying into action.

In several Mighty Mouse cartoons, whenever he achieves the most impossible physical tasks, the narrator exclaims, first softly, "what a mouse!!!", then loudly, "WHAT A MOUSE!!!".

The early Mighty Mouse cartoons often portray Mighty Mouse as a ruthless fighter. One of his most frequent tactics is to fly under an enemy's chin and let loose a volley of blows, subduing the opponent through sheer physical punishment.

While his typical opponents are nondescript cats, Mighty Mouse occasionally battles specific villains, though most appear in only one or two films. Several of the earliest "Super Mouse" films (having been made during World War II), feature the cats as thinly veiled caricatures of the Nazis, hunting down mice and marching them into concentration camp-like traps to what would otherwise be their doom. The Bat-cats, alien cats with bat wings and wheels for feet, appeared in two cartoons; in two others between 1949 and 1950 he faces a huge, dim-witted, but super-strong cat named Julius "Pinhead" Schlabotka (voiced by Dayton Allen) whose strength rivals Mighty Mouse's. In rare moments, he confronts non-feline adversaries such as human bad guy Bad Bill Bunion and his horse, or the Automatic Mouse Trap, a brontosaur-shaped robotic monster. In The Green Line (1944), the cats and the mice live on either side of a green dividing line down the middle of their town's main street. They agree to keep the peace as long as no one crosses it. An evil entity, a Satan cat, starts the cats and mice fighting. At the end, Mighty Mouse is cheered by mice and cats alike.

At least one episode, Wolf! Wolf!, has fallen into the public domain and is available at the Internet Archive.

Gypsy Life (1945) was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Short Subject (Cartoon).

Mighty Mouse Playhouse

Mighty Mouse had little theatrical impact, but became Terrytoons' most popular character and a cultural icon on television.

CBS purchased the Terrytoons studio from Paul Terry in 1955. The Mighty Mouse Playhouse aired Saturday mornings December 10, 1955 until Sep. 2, 1967, using the existing film library. Only three new cartoons were produced after the sale. The final season included a new feature: The Mighty Heroes.

The show's theme song was credited on some early vinyls to "The Terrytooners, Mitch Miller and Orchestra". However, writer Mark Evanier credits a group called The Sandpipers (not the 1960s easy listening group of the same name).

The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Filmation made television cartoons starring Mighty Mouse and fellow Terrytoon characters Heckle and Jeckle (both voiced by Frank Welker) in a show called The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle. The show introduced two new characters: a vampire duck named Quacula (not to be confused with Count Duckula), and Oil Can Harry's bumbling, large, but swift-running, henchman Swifty. The show premiered in 1979 and lasted two seasons. It spawned a limited theatrical release matinee movie, Mighty Mouse in the Great Space Chase, released December 10, 1982. In the Filmation series and movie, Mighty Mouse and Oil Can Harry were voiced by veteran voice artist Alan Oppenheimer, Pearl Pureheart by Diane Pershing.

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures

In 1987 and 1988, animation producer Ralph Bakshi (who began his career at Terrytoons in the late 1950s and worked on the last Mighty Mouse shorts filmed by that company) created a new series of Mighty Mouse cartoons entitled Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures for the CBS Saturday morning children's lineup. In this series, Mighty Mouse has a real identity, Mike Mouse (both identities voiced by Patrick Pinney), and a sidekick, Scrappy Mouse (voiced by actress Dana Hill), the little orphan. Though a children's cartoon, its heavy satirical tone, risque humor, and adult jokes made the Bakshi Mighty Mouse series a collector's item for collectors of older television series.

The best-remembered episode of this series featured a crossover with Mighty Mouse and another Baskshi creation, the Mighty Heroes. In this 1988 episode, the Mighty Heroes were middle-aged men (except for Diaper Man, who was in his twenties) and were all lawyers.

Later years

Marvel Comics produced a 10-issue comic book series (set in the New Adventures continuity) in 1990 and 1991. Nothing new has been produced using the Mighty Mouse character except for an arcade game by Atari and a 2001 "The power of cheese" television commercial. That commercial shows Mighty Mouse dining calmly on cheese in a restaurant, utterly unconcerned with a scene of chaos and terror visibly unfolding in the street outside. The commercial was hastily withdrawn in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The character appeared in the 1999 pilot Curbside.

The rights to Mighty Mouse are now divided as a result of the 2006 corporate split of Viacom (the former owner of the Terrytoons franchise) into two separate companies. CBS Operations (a unit of the current CBS Corporation) owns the ancillary rights and trademarks to the character, while Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS Home Entertainment holds home video rights. The first official release of Mighty Mouse material has been announced and what is now CBS Television Distribution has television syndication rights (the shorts are currently out of circulation).

Feature film adaptation

As early as 2004, Paramount Pictures, Omation Animation Studios and Nickelodeon Movies announced their intention to bring Mighty Mouse back to the motion picture screen with a CGI Mighty Mouse feature film that was tentatively scheduled to be released some time in 2013. However, this has yet to happen as the film has already ended.

Criticism

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was the subject of media controversy when one scene was interpreted as a depiction of cocaine use. In the episode "The Littlest Tramp" a poor mouse girl attempts to sell flowers, and is repeatedly harassed by a rich man who crushes her flowers. She runs out of flowers and makes new ones from sundry items she finds, such as tomato slices, but the man crushes these too. Mighty Mouse attempts to purchase the flowers with his chunk of cheese, and to avenge the girl, but she gives Mighty Mouse the crushed flowers and insists that others need help more than she does. After successfully saving several different characters, he is reminded of the girl, and attempts to smell the flowers she gave him (now a pink powder), inhaling them in the process. He then finds the man that has been harassing the girl, and spanks him. The girl is sympathetic to the man, and he is so moved that the two are married.

A family in Kentucky saw the episode and reportedly interpreted the scene as Mighty Mouse snorting cocaine. The family called the American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi. The group demanded Bakshi be removed from production of the series. Bakshi and CBS denied the allegations, Bakshi stating the whole incident "smacks of McCarthyism. I'm not going to get into who sniffs what. This is lunacy." To defuse the controversy, Bakshi agreed to cut the 3.5 seconds from the episode. Rev. Donald Wildmon claimed that the editing was a "de facto admission" of cocaine use, though Bakshi maintained that the episode was "totally innocent".

It's because of Fritz that they're going after Mighty Mouse. I grew up in Brownsville in Brooklyn and attended High School for Industrial Arts. I remember teachers who quit. Because of McCarthyism they weren't able to teach what they wanted. This is the same thing. Mighty Mouse was happy after smelling the flowers because it helped him remember the little girl who sold it to him fondly. But even if you're right, their accusations become part of the air we breathe. That's why I cut the scene. I can't have children wondering if Mighty Mouse is using cocaine.

Cultural influences

In the book Astro Boy Essays, author Frederik L. Schodt quotes Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka as saying that Mighty Mouse was the influence that inspired him to name his well-known character Mighty Atom (also known as Astro Boy). He also chose to imitate Mighty Mouse's signature flying pose with one arm stretched ahead with a clenched fist.

Mighty Mouse was featured on famed guitarist Tom Scholz's Les Paul guitar.

The song Astro Man by Jimi Hendrix, a part of the Black Gold (Jimi Hendrix recordings) session, includes a version of the 'Here I come to save the day!' fanfare.

Apple trademark dispute

On August 2, 2005, Apple released the company's first multi-control USB computer mouse. The product was designed by Mitsumi Electric and premiered under the name Apple Mighty Mouse. Apple continued to use the name when the product was redesigned as a Bluetooth device in 2006. Prior to its release, CBS licensed the right to use the Mighty Mouse name to Apple. In 2008, Man and Machine, Inc., a company that produces medical grade, chemical-resistant, mice and keyboards, sued both Apple and CBS for trademark infringement. Man and Machine claimed that it had used the name since 2004 and that CBS did not have the right to license the name for computer peripherals. In 2009, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of Man and Machine and Apple changed the name of its product to the "Apple Mouse".

Terrytoons theatrical shorts

The first seven films starred the character named Super Mouse. In these early films, the character's costume is much closer in design to that of Superman (blue tunic and tights with red trunks and cape).

The next 73 films changed the character's name to Mighty Mouse.

Comics

Mighty Mouse's first comic book appearance was in Terry-Toons Comics #38 (November 1945), published by Timely Comics. Mighty Mouse was featured in:

Mighty Mouse was also featured in two main titles by several different publishers: Mighty Mouse and The Adventures of Mighty Mouse.

Mighty Mouse

The Adventures of Mighty Mouse (renaming of Paul Terry's Comics, where Mighty Mouse appeared)

Mighty Mouse, Marvel Comics, #1-10 (1990), based on the Ralph Bakshi version (Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures)

Other appearances

DVD releases

Video games