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Mannie Davis & John Foster (1947)

The fox convinces the duck that the sky is falling, and the duck tells the hen, and both of them tell the pig, and the three of them tell the King and, the next thing anyone knows is that the whole kingdom is twatting and twittering over the upcoming catastrophe, with the exception of the one who started the rumor. But Mighty Mouse flies in, with a song on his lips, and sets matters straight.

The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead (click here for the Terrytoon theatrical shorts).

Originally created as a parody of Superman, he first appeared in 1942 in a theatrical animated short titled The Mouse of Tomorrow. The original name of the character was Super Mouse, but after 7 cartoons produced in 1942-1943, it was changed in the 1944 cartoon ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus‘ to Mighty Mouse when Paul Terry learned that another character with the same name was being published in comic books. Super Mouse appeared briefly in the Marvel Comics interpretation of the character and was nicknamed Terry the First, as he was the first version of the character.

Mighty Mouse originally had a blue costume with red trunks and a red cape, like Superman, but over time this outfit changed to a yellow costume with red trunks and a red cape, his most popular colors. As with other imitations of Superman, Mighty Mouse’s super powers include flight, super strength, and invulnerability. He has demonstrated the use of X-ray vision in at least one episode, while during several cartoons he used a form of telekinesis that allowed him to command inanimate objects and turn back time. Other cartoons have him leaving a red contrail during flight which he can manipulate at will like a band of solid flexible matter.

The initial formula of each story consisted of an extended setup of a crisis which needs extraordinary help to resolve, after which Mighty Mouse appears to save the day.

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Mannie Davis (1950)

Heckle and Jeckle the Talking Magpies in King Tut’s Tomb finds our beloved hecklers in Egypt, inside King Tut’s tomb, where they encounter all sorts of mysterious marvels.

Heckle and Jeckle are postwar animated cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, originally produced at his own Terrytoons animation studio and released through 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical anthropomorphic yellow-billed magpies.

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Connie Rasinski (1940)

Not to be confused with William Shakespeare’s play of the same name.

Little Cute Chickie Duck loves little lucky Dinky Duck but they have a quarrel, which leads their parents to have a quarrel, which leads to a big-duck brawl…careful, there…which leads to much ado about nothing as Chickie and Dinky have made up and gone floating together.

This is the second Dinky Duck Terrytoons cartoon. It’s also the only cartoon that showed Dinky not as an orphan but actually having biological duck parents until later cartoons.

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Mannie Davis (1944)

While sleeping with Sourpuss, Gandy dreams about Sourpuss’s girlfriend, so Sourpuss keeps waking him and beating him up. Later, Sourpuss figures out how he can get into the dreams, too.

Terrytoons was an animation studio in New Rochelle, New York, that produced animated cartoons for theatrical release from 1929 to 1972. Terrytoons was founded by Paul Terry, Frank Moser, and Joseph Coffman, and operated out of the “K” Building in downtown New Rochelle.

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Connie Rasinski (1945)

The superist hero of them all, Mighty Mouse, easily brushes aside molten lava and stems the tide of an island volcano, set off by the torrid dancing of Krakatoa Katy, the hottest dancer of them all. Then he carries all of the island natives to the safety of higher ground, where Katy leads them all in a jive-chanting jitterbug dance in tribute to their hero.

Mighty Mouse in Krakatoa is a 1945 Terrytoons animated short. It is the 25th cartoon short of the Mighty Mouse theatrical series. Story written by John Foster.

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Terrytoons (1944)

The Cat Came Back is a 1944 Terrytoons cartoon directed by Connie Rasinski.

The Cat Came Back is a comic song written by Harry S. Miller in 1893. It has since entered the folk tradition and been recorded under variations of the title—”But the Cat Came Back”, “And the Cat Came Back”, etc. It is also a popular children’s song.