It’s #Mickeys90thCelebration and to celebrate the first ID of him and the wand after the Epic Mickey ID’s on 2010 and the first one based on Paul Rudish’s Mickey Mouse Shorts! animated by 2veinte
On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered in Universal’s Colony Theater. Important for a number of reasons, Steamboat Willie was the first Disney animated cartoon to have fully synchronized pictures and sound. It was also the first premiered cartoon to feature the iconic Mickey Mouse. The popularity of this short-film would become the foundation of the legacy of Disney movies and the Walt Disney franchise that has become famous throughout the world.
Mickey’s turning 90 tomorrow, so what better way to celebrate…than to give his older brother some attention cause clearly no one else will
Oswald is one of my favorite cartoon characters, so I wanna take this moment to focus the spotlight on him for a bit.
Oswald is one year older than Mickey, making his debut in 1927 (he is not, however, Disney’s oldest reoccurring character, that title goes to Pete, surprisingly, who predates both Oswald and Mickey)
Oswald has made a handful of cameos since he appeared in the Epic Mickey Games. He pops up for a second in “Get a Horse!” and is the butt of a rather mean gag in the Mickey Mouse Short “Canned”
If you’re familiar with Epic Mickey, you know Oswald’s girl is Ortensia. However, this was not originally her name. Her name was Sadie, but the game developers wanted to give her an “O” name to match Oswald (like Mickey and Minnie, and Donald and Daisy) and it’s stuck ever since
Speaking of Oswald’s girlfriend, Ortensia was not his first. In the older Oswald shorts, he’s infatuated with a female rabbit named Fanny (I like to think Oswald had his 420 children with her, but when he hooked up with Ortensia, she adopted all of them)
Oh, Oswald has 420 Bunny children.
Charles Muntz, the antagonist of the Pixar film Up, isnamed after Charles Mintz, the person responsible for taking Oswald and several of Walt’s animators away after a contract dispute in 1928
Out of the 27 Oswald cartoons made by Disney and Iwerks, 13 are available in the Walt Disney Treasures collection, 2 are available in Walt Disney Signature Blu-rays as bonus features, 5 are found but are not currently available to the public, and 6 are still lost.
After Oswald went to Universal, he got several voice actors, including Mickey Rooney, June Foray, and Mel Blanc. Currently, he’s voiced by veteran voice actor Frank Welker (known for voicing Fred from Scooby Doo among others)
In order for Disney to get the rights to Oswald from Universal, the company traded a sportscaster from ABC
In the Disney Parks, Oswald has a service station on Buena Vista Street in California Adventure
And that’s all I got. I love this bunny, and I wish he got more credit for laying the groundwork for Mickey. Without him, I don’t think Mickey would be as popular as he is today.
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