Oswald the Rabbit turned 85 years old this week. What? You don’t know who Oswald is? That’s okay. He is one of Walt Disney’s original characters and if it wasn’t for him Mickey Mouse would have never existed.
Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927 and did a lot of cartoons staring this crazy rabbit with the big ears. He went back east to renegotiate his contract with the distributors of his cartoons and found out that he didn’t own Oswald, they did. Walt left Manhattan without his star, but by the time he got to California he had created a new star, a mouse named Mickey. And the rest is history.
But good things never really disappear. The Disney Company got the rights to Oswald back in 2006. He made his new debut in the Epic Mickey video game and now he is appearing at the Disney parks on shirts, hats and Vinylmation. Who knows how far this rabbit can go? Walt said that it started with a mouse, but if it hadn’t been for the loss of a certain rabbit there might never have been a mouse.
Goofy Quote: “It is good to have a failure while you’re young because it teaches you so much. For one thing it makes you aware that such a thing can happen to anybody, and once you’ve lived through the worst, you’re never quite as vulnerable afterward.” – Walt Disney.