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.