What is the appeal of Mickey Mouse?

[Double J]

I read it all. Awesome rant. I'm with Bubbler. Mickey sucks.

This.

Best line:

Bugs Bunny. I love the shirt out of Bugs Bunny. He's a Hall of Fame shirt-talker, using his wits to cut you to pieces, and failing that, he'll literally fork your shirt up, usually via heavy Acme explosives.

Yeah, but did Bugs ever use Acme explosives?

Did the Road Runner loan them out?

I was wondering about that, too.

I can't say for sure that they were Acme explosives, but Bugs was a frequent user of dynamite. And who else ever manufactured anything in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies verse?

 

[Baron Scicluna]

He is the icon, the original for Disney. He started it all and has mostly sat back and let his buddies take it form there in the name of Mickey, but he became the face the company was built around. It's like he's the god father, the man at the top and every other character is his foot soldiers, Mickey sits back while they do the heavy lifting. It's all about branding and he has been the brand since the 30s.

Mortimer Mouse sleeps with the fishes.

And Bubs, great rant. And I think Donald would beat the living shirt out of Daffy if they ever got into a fight.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Mickey was good in the beginning...

I know where you're going with that . . .

But we'll take it in a different direction.

Mickey was what we had, in terms of animated animals, by and large . . . until the Warners'
animators showed how to be REALLY funny.

In terms of pure laughs? Walt Dizzy had nothin'.


Somewhere, Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn laugh, hysterically.

 

[outofplace]

He is the icon, the original for Disney. He started it all and has mostly sat back and let his buddies take it form there in the name of Mickey, but he became the face the company was built around. It's like he's the god father, the man at the top and every other character is his foot soldiers, Mickey sits back while they do the heavy lifting. It's all about branding and he has been the brand since the 30s.

Mortimer Mouse sleeps with the fishes.

And Bubs, great rant. And I think Donald would beat the living shirt out of Daffy if they ever got into a fight.

Oh, no doubt. One look at a pissed-off Donald and Daffy would be running for his life.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I don't know. All I know is that one day, Mickey Mouse came on TV on a commercial an my 2-year-old went wild. He must have learned about him at daycare.

"Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!"

For the next hour, we watched old Mickey cartoon shorts on the Disney Web site and he was slack-jawed the whole time.

 

[outofplace]

I don't know. All I know is that one day, Mickey Mouse came on TV on a commercial an my 2-year-old went wild. He must have learned about him at daycare.

"Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!"

For the next hour, we watched old Mickey cartoon shorts on the Disney Web site and he was slack-jawed the whole time.

That may be the part we're missing. We're just too old to be part of Mickey Mouse's target audience, but Bugs Bunny's humor has always had appeal for children and adults.

 

[Piotr Rasputin]

I don't know. All I know is that one day, Mickey Mouse came on TV on a commercial an my 2-year-old went wild. He must have learned about him at daycare.

"Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!"

For the next hour, we watched old Mickey cartoon shorts on the Disney Web site and he was slack-jawed the whole time.

No, no.

Mickey Mouse is evil. Bart Simpson would totally kick his ass in some mythical cartoon street fight.

People are forced to go to Walt Disney World and spend a lot of money. There is absolutely no joy to be had there. Every single thing there is all based solely on Mickey Mouse, and he just isn't as cool as Ren or Stimpy.

 

[westcoastvol]

This is no defense for Mickey, but if anything, for better or for worse, he was the Neil Armstrong of cartoon character merchandising and licensing and doing something besides a cartoon or a cartoon strip.

Eat a bag of dicks, Mickey Mouse.

 

[FileNotFound]

I lived in Orlando for the better part of a decade, and very rarely ventured south of downtown. As such, I rarely encountered a tourist, unless said tourist was hopelessly lost.

 

[Bubbler]

This is no defense for Mickey, but if anything, for better or for worse, he was the Neil Armstrong of cartoon character merchandising and licensing and doing something besides a cartoon or a cartoon strip.

Eat a bag of dicks, Mickey Mouse.

You're right. It's interesting, though, that Mickey's appeal as far as parks, etc., are concerned came after the Warner cartoons were in circulation. And after the dawn of television.

Credit to Disney for marketing circles around everyone else back in the day, Bugs Bunny, et al, weren't heavily marketed until the 70s at the earliest (I remember going to Great America in Gurnee and getting the shirt scared out of me by the Tasmanian Devil when I was 5 or so), but not on Disney's level until the 90s.

But given how vapid Mickey Mouse is, in reality, people are coming to worship at the altar of commercialism and marketing. The mouse is the just the emperor with his clothes on. It goes to show that an inoffensive mascot can be loved without any reason to love it because there's a great percentage of people that are too stupid to know the difference.

 

[Bubbler]

I really think they ought to work a cow (as in cash cow) into the Disney World character scheme. At $80 plus a person, it's like they're just printing money on a daily basis in Orlando.

And what amazes me is the number of Europeans who make Disney World a vacation destination. That's a lot of Euros streaming into Fla. Maybe we should consider a deficit reduction strategy to build Disney theme parks in every major metropolis up and down both coasts.

They do have cows ... the people who patronize the parks. There's herds of them.

 

[NickMordo]

Is this a Seinfeld bit?

Now what is the DEAL with Mickey Mouse?