Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures |
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Mighty Mouse in Ralph Bakshi's adaptation
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| 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 – October 22, 1988 |
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is an exciting animated TV show that brought back the classic cartoon hero, Mighty Mouse. This show was made by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures and Terrytoons. It first aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from 1987 to 1989. Later, it was briefly shown again on Fox Kids in 1992.
Many people think Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was a very good cartoon for its time. Animation expert Jerry Beck said it helped lead to even better cartoons in the 1990s. It was also one of the first Saturday morning cartoons on CBS to be broadcast in stereo sound.
Contents
About the Show's Format
The show was a half-hour long, with each episode having two separate 11-minute cartoon stories. It was different from older Mighty Mouse cartoons in many ways.
- Mighty Mouse had a secret identity: Mike Mouse.
- He had a young helper named Scrappy Mouse, who knew his secret.
- Other heroes like Bat-Bat and Tick the Bug Wonder, and the League of Super-Rodents, also appeared.
- New bad guys were introduced, such as Petey Pate, Big Murray, Madame Marsupial, and the Cow (who was actually a bull and Madame Marsupial's boyfriend).
- The old villain, Oil Can Harry, showed up a few times.
- Pearl Pureheart, a character often in trouble in old cartoons, was not always a "damsel in distress" and sometimes didn't appear at all.
- Mighty Mouse's singing was mostly removed, except for his famous line, "Here I come to save the day!"
Unlike many other cartoons of its time, this show didn't always follow the same pattern. Episodes could be superhero adventures, or they could make fun of other TV shows like The Honeymooners and the 1960s Batman. They also parodied movies like Fantastic Voyage and Japanese monster films. Even other cartoons like Alvin and the Chipmunks were made fun of!
The series also brought back other old Terrytoons characters. It showed that time had passed for them. For example, Oil Can Harry still chased Pearl Pureheart. Characters like Gandy Goose and Sourpuss from the 1940s, and Deputy Dawg from the 1960s, were brought back, sometimes frozen in ice! Even the Mighty Heroes, created by Ralph Bakshi in the 1960s, appeared as older versions of themselves. Heckle and Jeckle also made an appearance.
Meet the Voice Cast
Here are the talented people who gave voices to the characters:
- Patrick Pinney – Mighty Mouse (Mike Mouse) / Gandy Goose / Petey Pate
- Maggie Roswell – Pearl Pureheart / Other Voices
- Dana Hill – Scrappy Mouse
- Charlie Adler – Bat-Bat (Bruce Vein) / Other Voices
- Joe Alaskey – Sourpuss / Other Voices
- Michael Pataki – The Cow / Other Voices
- Beau Weaver – Fractured Narrator / Other Voices
Behind the Scenes Crew
Many creative people worked on this show. Here are some of them:
- Producer/Supervising Director: Ralph Bakshi
- Executive Producer: John Hyde
- 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
Episode Guide
The show had two seasons with a total of 19 episodes, each with two short stories.
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
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| First aired | Last aired | |||
| 1 | 13 | September 19, 1987 | December 12, 1987 | |
| 2 | 6 | September 17, 1988 | October 22, 1988 | |
Season 1 (1987)
| No. overall |
No. in season |
Title | Original air date | |
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| 1 | 1 | "Night on Bald Pate" / "Mouse from Another House" | September 19, 1987 | |
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| 2 | 2 | "Me-Yowww!" / "Witch Tricks" | September 26, 1987 | |
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| 3 | 3 | "Night of the Bat-Bat" / "Scrap-Happy" | October 3, 1987 | |
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| 4 | 4 | "Catastrophe Cat" / "Scrappy's Field Day" | October 10, 1987 | |
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| 5 | 5 | "The Bagmouse" / "The First Deadly Cheese" | October 17, 1987 | |
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| 6 | 6 | "This Island Mouseville" / "Mighty's Musical Classics" | October 24, 1987 | |
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| 7 | 7 | "The Littlest Tramp" / "Puffy Goes Berserk" | October 31, 1987 | |
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| 8 | 8 | "The League of Super-Rodents" / "Scrappy's Playhouse" | November 7, 1987 | |
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| 9 | 9 | "All You Need Is Glove" / "It's Scrappy's Birthday" | November 14, 1987 | |
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| 10 | 10 | "Aqua-Guppy" / "Animation Concerto" | November 21, 1987 | |
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| 11 | 11 | "The Ice Goose Cometh" / "Pirates with Dirty Faces" | November 28, 1987 | |
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| 12 | 12 | "Mighty's Benefit Plan" / "See You in the Funny Papers" | December 5, 1987 | |
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| 13 | 13 | "Heroes and Zeroes" / "Stress for Success" | December 12, 1987 | |
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Season 2 (1988)
| No. overall |
No. in season |
Title | Original air date | |
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| 14 | 1 | "Day of the Mice" / "Still Oily After All These Years" | September 17, 1988 | |
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| 15 | 2 | "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy" / "Anatomy of a Milquetoast" | September 24, 1988 | |
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| 16 | 3 | "Bat with a Golden Tongue" / "Mundane Voyage" | October 1, 1988 | |
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| 17 | 4 | "Snow White & the Motor City Dwarfs" / "Don't Touch That Dial!" | October 8, 1988 | |
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| 18 | 5 | "Mouse and Supermouse" / "The Bride of Mighty Mouse" | October 15, 1988 | |
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| 19 | 6 | "A Star Is Milked" / "Mighty's Tone Poem" | October 22, 1988 | |
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Where Else Can You See Mighty Mouse?
This show was also broadcast in other countries:
Australia
- Nine Network (1987-1988)
- Fox Kids Australia (1995–2003)
United Kingdom
Hong Kong
- The Children’s Channel (1991-1998)
You can also find the complete series on DVD. It was released on January 5, 2010, by CBS Home Entertainment. The DVD set includes all the episodes, plus a documentary called “Breaking the Mold: The Re-Making of Mighty Mouse.” It also has three original Mighty Mouse cartoons from the old Terrytoons studio.
What Made the Show Special?
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was seen as a very new and different cartoon for its time. Along with the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), it helped start a wave of animated shows that were much more creative and funny than cartoons from the past 20 years. Many people say it led to the "creator-driven" animation boom of the 1990s.
The show was a starting point for many cartoonists and animators who later became very famous. Some of them include:
- John Kricfalusi (who created Nickelodeon's The Ren and Stimpy Show)
- Bruce W. Timm (who produced Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series)
- Jim Reardon (a writer for Tiny Toon Adventures and WALL-E, and a director for The Simpsons)
- Tom Minton (a writer and producer for many Warner Bros. cartoons like Tiny Toons and Animaniacs)
- Lynne Naylor (a character designer for Batman: The Animated Series and storyboard artist for The Powerpuff Girls)
- Rich Moore (an animation director for Futurama and director of Disney movies like Wreck-It Ralph and Zootopia)
- Andrew Stanton (director of Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo and WALL-E)
The Loud House creator Chris Savino said that the show's classic cartoon style, which was different from other TV animation at the time, inspired him to become an animator.
John Kricfalusi oversaw the first season. Kent Butterworth took over for the second season after Kricfalusi left to work on another show.
Mighty Mouse in Comics
From 1990 to 1991, Marvel Comics published a Mighty Mouse comic book series. It had 10 issues and continued the story after the TV show ended.
In the comics, Scrappy leaves Mighty and Pearl to spend all his time at the Four Fingers Video Arcade. When the arcade closes, Scrappy disappears. It turns out that Mighty Mouse's enemy, the Glove, was behind the arcade. Mighty saves Scrappy, but Scrappy is still obsessed with video games. Scrappy then goes to rehab and gets back to normal a few issues later. In the last issue, Scrappy even takes Pearl Pureheart's place in the comic!
