Mousedom's greatest hero against the cat menace, particularly the dastardly Oilcan Harry.
A story writer for Terrytoon cartoon studio, I. Klein, proposed a story to studio chief Paul Terry about a fly with superpowers. Terry rejected the idea, but took the premise, changed the character into a mouse, and presented it as his own original idea. Originally called Super Mouse, the character gained his powers after hiding in a Supermarket, bathing in Super Soap, eating Super Soup, chewing on Super Celery, and munching his way through a chunk of Super Cheese. The cartoon was wildly successful, but the studio changed the hero's name to Mighty Mouse after a comic book company claimed they owned the "Super Mouse" name. The cartoons began airing on CBS in 1955. The "Mighty Mouse Playhouse" was the first regularly scheduled Saturday morning all-cartoon show, running for ten years. The cartoons usually centered around Mighty Mouse coming to the rescue of the lovely Pearl Pureheart. Mighty Mouse was prone to singing his dialogue, especially the popular "Here I come to save the day!"; tenor Roy Halee was the hero's singing voice.
In 1987, cartoonist Ralph Bakshi created "The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse", which featured less singing, a more introspective Mighty Mouse, a sidekick named Scrappy, loony villains like The Cow, a bunch of inside jokes, and one cartoon that featured the Mouse of Tomorrow smelling flowers--which got the cartoon taken off the air when moralist Reverend Donald E. Wildmon claimed the character was snorting cocaine. |
