The first televisions were invented in the 1920s, but it wouldn’t be until after World War II that the devices became nearly household possessions. Before that, most homes got their entertainment and information via the radio, which played a lot more than music back then. And there was also the cinema. When folks went to the theater back then, they got more than a movie. There were also newsreels, animated and live-action shorts, and matinee serials.
As TV became more common, a lot of this material from theaters was recycled for home broadcast. A lot of children’s entertainment was programmed on Saturday mornings, as had been the case with radio. This makes sense, as kids were home from school at that time.
Initially, Saturday morning kids’ TV material was almost entirely composed of theatrical material. The first original cartoon made specifically for TV was Crusader Rabbit which premiered in 1950, after a test marketing in 1948. This was a limited animation series and was syndicated, rather than owned, and aired exclusively on one of the three networks of the time– ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Then in 1955, 20th Century Fox’s subsidiary Terrytoons was sold to CBS which repacked its Mighty Mouse theatrical shorts as Mighty Mouse Playhouse. That became a smash, running continuously until 1967. In that sense, this was the first hit Saturday morning cartoon series.
The character Mighty Mouse was a parody of Superman, who was a phenomenon at that time as he was the first true superhero and had debuted just a few years before in 1938. Mighty Mouse’s creator is credited as being Paul Terry, the founder of Terrytoons. The character was originally named Super Mouse and even wore a costume that was rendered in the same colors as Superman– blue bodysuit, red cape, trunks, and boots, and a yellow belt.
The first Super Mouse cartoon, “Mouse of Tomorrow,” arrived in theaters in 1942. In 1944, Paul Terry learned that Standard Comics planned to release a comic book featuring a separate character named Super Mouse, so he decided to change his character to Mighty Mouse, which is frankly a better name anyway.
That same year, Mighty Mouse adopted a different uniform that did not directly reference Superman. His new suit was red with yellow and blue accessories. But later that year, in the 15th short, Mighty Mouse was shown in his most famous outfit, a yellow bodysuit, with red accessories. He has essentially worn that same uniform in the many decades since.
I have previously read that the changes to Mighty Mouse’s appearance and name were because of threatened legal action from DC Comics who owned Superman, but it appears that that is just an urban legend.
Eighty Super Mouse/Mighty Mouse theatrical shorts were produced until 1961. Mighty Mouse Playhouse was composed entirely of these shorts with no animation created specifically for TV broadcast. However, in the final season, a new original segment was added, The Mighty Heroes.
Roy Halee Sr. provided the lead hero’s voice in the shorts, although Tom Morrison lent his voice for framing sequences on Playhouse.
Beginning in 1945, Terrytoons produced a series of 14 musical shorts that parodied popular operettas. These shorts introduced Mighty Mouse’s arch-enemy Oil Can Harry, a sinister cat, and his love interest, Pearl Pureheart.
As a theatrical shorts series, Mighty Mouse wasn’t that popular. It was the transition to TV that really made the character iconic, at least partially due to his “Here I come to save the daaaaaaay!” theme song, immortalized by the eccentric comedian Andy Kaufman, whose life was depicted in the Jim Carrey-starring hit film Man in the Moon.
As stated, Mighty Mouse Playhouse ended in 1967. The characters were revived in 1979 on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, featuring two other Terrytoons characters, a pair of wisecracking magpies. Alan Oppenheimer (a.k.a. Skeletor) voiced Mighty Mouse and Oil Can Harry, with Diane Pershing as Pearl Pureheart, and Frank Welker as Heckle and Jeckle. This series was created by Filmation and aired on CBS.
This was an hour-long show with two shorts each devoted to Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, plus a space opera, “The Great Space Race” which featured Mighty Mouse but was broken up into installments in reference to old matinee serials. In addition, the show also introduced a new Filmation-created short, Quackula, about a vampire duck, BUT not to be confused with the later animated show, Count Duckula. Frank Welker also voiced Quackula. “The Great Space Race” was edited together into a movie and released in theaters.
Mighty Mouse was revived in animation one last time in 1987, on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures crafted by the acclaimed animator Ralph Bakshi. This series featured a guest appearance by Mighty Mouse’s old co-stars The Mighty Heroes as well as a parody of Batman named Bat-Bat. Heckle and Jeckle popped up for another guest appearance, as did other old-school Terrytoons characters.
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures leaned into its Superman inspiration and, for the first time, introduced a secret identity for the character, Mike Mouse. Patrick Pinney provided his voice. The series also gave the hero a sidekick, Scrappy Mouse, voiced by actress Dana Hill. Maggie Roswell provided the voice for Pearl Pureheart.
However, this series was cut short after a scene aired in which it appeared that Mighty Mouse snorted coke. Technically, he was snorting crushed, powdered flowers, but parents saw it and thought it was coke… I mean, it was the 80s. They’d know.
The episode was edited for future airings, but the show still didn’t last longer than one season. However, it was popular enough to inspire a Marvel Comic book series and is still considered a high point for ’80s animation.
Mighty Mouse is a pop culture icon, despite not appearing in animation for three decades. There have been rumblings of bringing him back in a movie, but so far, that hasn’t materialized.
But you can’t keep a good mouse down. It’s only a matter of time before Mighty Mouse soars back to save the daaaaaaaaay!
