Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse in Ralph Bakshi's adaptation
Genre	Action Adventure Comedy
Directed by	Ralph Bakshi (supervising director) John Kricfalusi (senior director, series 1) Kent Butterworth (senior director, series 2)
Starring	Patrick Pinney Maggie Roswell Dana Hill Charlie Adler Michael Pataki
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	19 (38 segments)
Production
Executive producer(s)	John W. Hyde (Season 1) Tom Klein (Season 2)
Producer(s)	Ralph Bakshi
Running time	30 minutes
Production company(s)	Bakshi-Hyde Ventures Terrytoons
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Release
Original network	CBS
Picture format	4:3
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	September 19, 1987 (1987-09-19) – October 22, 1988 (1988-10-22)

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is an American animated television series. It is a revival of the Mighty Mouse cartoon character. Produced by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures (a joint venture of animator Ralph Bakshi and producer John W. Hyde) and Terrytoons, it aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from fall 1987 through the 1988–89 season. It was briefly rerun on Saturday mornings on Fox Kids in November 1992.

The quality of Mighty Mouse as compared with other 1980s animated television series is considered by animation historian Jerry Beck to "foreshadow the higher quality [animation] boom coming in the next decade." It was one of the first Saturday morning cartoons on CBS to be broadcast in stereo.

Format

The series was a commercial half-hour format (22 minutes plus commercials), and each episode consisted of two self-contained 11-minute cartoon segments. It differed from the earlier incarnations of Mighty Mouse in many ways. It gave Mighty Mouse the secret identity of Mike Mouse, a sidekick in the form of the orphan Scrappy Mouse (who knows the hero's secret identity), heroic colleagues such as Bat-Bat and his sidekick Tick the Bug Wonder and the League of Super-Rodents, as well as introduced antagonists like Petey Pate, Big Murray, Madame Marsupial and the Cow (actually a bull, because he is Madame Marsupial's boyfriend and he possesses male traits). The original Mighty Mouse villain Oil Can Harry made a couple of appearances. Pearl Pureheart was not always the damsel in distress and many episodes did not feature her at all. Mighty Mouse's light-operatic singing was eliminated except for his trademark, "Here I come to save the day!", which was sometimes interrupted.

Unlike other American animated TV shows of the time (and even Mighty Mouse's past theatrical shorts) the show's format was loose and episodes did not follow a particular formula. Episodes varied from superhero-type stories to parodies of shows like The Honeymooners ("Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy") and the 1960s Batman series ("Night of the Bat-Bat" and "Bat With a Golden Tongue"), movies like Fantastic Voyage ("Mundane Voyage") and Japanese monster films (the opening of "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy"), comic books ("See You in the Funny Papers"), and even lampooned other cartoons ("Don't Touch That Dial!") and specifically Alvin and the Chipmunks ("Mighty's Benefit Plan").

The series resurrected other Terrytoons characters, but acknowledged the passage of time: perennial menace Oil Can Harry returns to chase Pearl Pureheart once more ("Still Oily After All These Years"), 1940s characters Gandy Goose and Sourpuss and 1960s character Deputy Dawg are revived (Gandy and Dawg frozen in time in blocks of ice) in "The Ice Goose Cometh", "Gaston Le Crayon" has a cameo ("Still Oily After All These Years") and Bakshi's own 1960 creations—the Mighty Heroes—appear, aged, in the episode "Heroes and Zeroes". Fellow Terrytoons characters Heckle and Jeckle also appear in "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy".

Cast

• Patrick Pinney – Mighty Mouse (Mike Mouse) / Gandy Goose / Petey Pate
• Maggie Roswell – Pearl Pureheart / Additional Voices
• Dana Hill – Scrappy Mouse
• Charlie Adler – Bat-Bat (Bruce Vein) / Additional Voices
• Joe Alaskey – Sourpuss / Additional Voices
• Michael Pataki – The Cow / Additional Voices
• Beau Weaver – Fractured Narrator / Additional Voices

Crew

• Producer/Supervising Director/Story Direction: Ralph Bakshi
• Executive Producer: John Hyde
• Executive in charge of production: Tom Klein
• Senior Director: John Kricfalusi (season 1), Kent Butterworth (season 2)
• Directors: John Kricfalusi, John Sparey, Bruce Woodside, Bob Jaques, Kent Butterworth
• Writers (Season 1): Tom Minton, Doug Moench, Nate Kanfer, Jim Reardon, Eddie Fitzgerald, Rich Moore, Andrew Stanton
• Writers (Season 2): Jim Reardon, Tom Minton
• Layout artists: Ken Boyer, Mike Kazaleh, Kathleen Castillo, William Recinos, Jim Gomez, Lynne Naylor, Dave Concepcion, Bruce Timm

Episodes

Season 1 (1987)

Season 2 (1988)

International broadcast

• Australia
  • Nine Network (1987-1988)
  • Fox Kids Australia (1995–2003)
• United Kingdom
  • CBBC
• Hong Kong
  • The Children’s Channel (1991-1998)

Home media

On January 5, 2010, CBS Home Entertainment (distributed by Paramount) released the complete series on three DVDs, with every installment of the Saturday morning cartoon uncut and presented in the original full screen video format. The collection includes the uncut version of "The Littlest Tramp," in which the controversial scene begins at 9:41 in the episode, but features an error in the version of "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy" included on the set, where the penultimate live action shot of layout artist Ed Bell is substituted with an animatic version of the shot. The actual shot as aired appears in the included documentary.

Among the extras are the documentary “Breaking the Mold: The Re-Making of Mighty Mouse” and commentary tracks for several episodes. Also included are three original Terrytoons theatrical Mighty Mouse cartoon shorts, as taken from Paramount's vaults, which are the first-ever official release of Terrytoons material on DVD.

Influence and legacy

The show was considered revolutionary at the time and, along with 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, inspired a wave of animated shows that were much zanier than those that had dominated children's animation in the previous two decades. It is credited by some as the impetus for the ‘creator-driven’ animation revolution of the 1990s.

It was a huge springboard for many cartoonists and animators who would later become famous, among them John Kricfalusi (creator of Nickelodeon's The Ren and Stimpy Show), Bruce W. Timm (producer of Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series), Jim Reardon (writer for Warner Bros. Tiny Toon Adventures and Disney/Pixar's WALL-E and director for Fox's The Simpsons), Tom Minton (writer and producer for many Warner Bros. television cartoons, including Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Baby Looney Tunes and Duck Dodgers), Lynne Naylor (co-founder of Spümcø, character designer for Batman: The Animated Series and storyboard artist for Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls and Cow and Chicken), Rich Moore (animation director for Fox/Comedy Central's Futurama, director for The Simpsons and director of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia and Ralph Breaks the Internet), and Andrew Stanton (director of Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo, WALL-E and Finding Dory) and others. The Loud House creator Chris Savino says the show's classic cartoon style, which contrasted with the dominant style of TV animation at the time, spurred him to become an animator.

Kricfalusi supervised the production for the first season and directed eight of its 26 segments. Kent Butterworth supervised the second season, after John Kricfalusi's departure to work on the similarly short-lived 1988 animated series The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil. The show was licensed as a comic book series published by Marvel Comics in 1990 and 1991, which ran for 10 issues.

Comic book spin-off

From 1990 to 1991, a Mighty Mouse comic book series was published by Marvel Comics. It lasted for 10 issues and took place after the Bakshi television series. Shortly after the events of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Scrappy abandons Mighty and Pearl to spend all his time at the Four Fingers Video Arcade. When the Four Fingers Video Arcade closes down, Scrappy vanishes.

It is revealed that Mighty Mouse's enemy, the Glove, was behind the Four Fingers Video Arcade. Mighty saves Scrappy in the end, but Scrappy is still "zapped" into playing video games. Scrappy is then sent to rehab and is back to normal a few issues later. In the 10th and final issue of the comic, Scrappy substitutes for Pearl Pureheart when she gives up her role in the comic.