Tarter Source

Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character that sent Walt Disney on his way, will become public domain in 2024. So does Minnie.

That means there’ll likely be a run of projects using the celebrated duo. It might set off something of a renaissance. After all, while Mickey’s likeness is known to us all, the mouse has been exceptionally quiet in recent years.

One might say that Mickey retired long ago. The Disney folks routinely trot him for occasional appearances but can you name a big project he’s headed in 30 years?  

I remember Get a Horse, the cartoon that preceded the Frozen release in 2013. I read something about it ahead of time—that it was an atypical cartoon so I went to see it without regard for the animated feature that followed, some nonsense about an ice princess.

The six-minute cartoon (available online) is unique and it stars Mickey. What starts off in black and white a la Steamboat Willie morphs into a colorful give-and-take with Pegleg Pete (who takes a horrible beating in this one). Mickey literally bursts through the screen at one point, landing on the theater stage before re-entering the action with Horace Horsecollar (one of the lesser-known Disney characters).

Frozen, of course, turned out to be Disney’s biggest animation hit ever and Mickey’s cartoon moment was soon forgotten.

Mickey had his day but that came a long time ago.

The Mickey Mouse Club, another example of Disney’s ingenious use of television, returned Mickey to the spotlight in the 1950s but wasn’t it Annette and the rest of the Mouseketeers we were all so wild about? That was also the decade when Donald Duck stole the mouse’s thunder by starring in a series of Carl Barks comic books that remain popular to this day.

So when was Mickey at the top? It might have been 1934, the year Cole Porter wrote “You’re the Top,” citing Mickey along with the Louvre museum, camembert, and Fred Astaire.

By the mid-30s, Mickey had more than 40 cartoons to his name. But he wasn’t just playing in every theater. He was in all the stores. You know about the Mickey Mouse watch (in two years, they sold 2.5 million in the 30s) but there were Mickey Mouse note pads, dolls, wind-up cars, and dozens of other items.

Last gasp? It might have been Fantasia, made in 1940, the Disney film with Mickey as the sorcerer’s apprentice. But whatever comes as a result of public domain, Cole said it best: “You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss. You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet. You’re Mickey Mouse.”