TV's Saturday Morning Cartoon Legacy: Casper and Mighty Mouse

As we look back on some of the wonderful cartoon creations from the smaller, independent animation studios of the 1950s and 1960s, today, a look back (second time for Casper) at Harvey Comics' Casper and Terrytoons' Mighty Mouse.

For Casper and Harvey Comics/Paramount, the sky was the limit to the impact (both artistically and commercially) the character and his friends could provide for their advertising base. Not only was Mattel a key sponsor, but Casper also found its own cereal sponsor in General Mills. It seemed like no cartoon character was without some form of Saturday morning show or commercial endorsement during this golden age of children's programming.

Over at Paramount movie rival 20th Century Fox, the team there as busy with their own plans to provide Saturday morning fare for baby-boomers. Terrytoons Studio had partnered with 20th Century Fox in the early 1940s to produce short feature films for movie theater audiences. Like so many other performers and animation cartoons of that era, once television came calling, each studio was ready to help migrate their film properties and cartoon characters over to television.

Mighty Mouse was a Terrytoons favorite with audiences in the 1930s and 1940s. With updated character animation, Terrytoons rebranded itself 'New' Terrytoons, and in 1955, CBS partnered with 20th Century and Terrytoons to produce The Mighty Mouse Show. The show ran on Saturday mornings from 1955 to 1967, right at the heart of the golden age of cartoon programming on television. Its success helped pave the way for additional Terrytoon cartoon series to make their way onto television screens in the years and decades that followed.

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Coming up later this week... Walter Lantz and his landmark animation creation Woody Woodpecker.

Enjoy !