Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was a revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon, made by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures (a joint venture of animator Ralph Bakshi and producer John W. Hyde), it aired on CBS from 1987 to 1988 and was briefly rerun on Fox Kids in November of 1992. It gave Mighty Mouse a true identity (Mike Mouse, a worker at Pearl Pureheart's factory), a sidekick in the form of the orphan Scrappy Mouse, friends in the forms of Bruce Vein the Bat-Bat (a parody of Bruce Wayne/Batman), Bat-Bat's sidekick Bugmite/Tick the Bug Wonder, and the League of Super-Rodents, and new bad guys including Petey Pate, the Glove and the Cow.

The show was a huge springboard for many cartoonists and animators who would later become extremely famous, including John Kricfalusi (creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show), Bruce W. Timm (producer of The Animated Series), Jim Reardon (writer for Tiny Toon Adventures and director of many Simpsons episodes), Tom Minton (writer and producer for many Warner Bros. television cartoons, including Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Baby Looney Tunes and Duck Dodgers), Lynne Naylor (co-founder of Spümcø, character designer for The Animated Series and storyboard artist for The Powerpuff Girls and Cow and Chicken among other work), Rich Moore (animation director for The Simpsons and Futurama) and others.

The show faced controversy, as the jokes were aimed more at adults than at children. A viewer notified media watchdog Reverend Donald Wildmon that, in the episode "The Littlest Tramp", it looks like Mighty Mouse reaches into a pocket and snorts cocaine from his hand. Wildmon was disbelieving at first, but after investigating the episode and learning of producer Ralph Bakshi's background (e.g., directing the adult cartoon Fritz The Cat), alerted the media that this may have been intentional. Given the numerous other instances of risque humor and adult jokes in this series, a drug reference wouldn't be out of the question. Bakshi denies it to this day, maintaining that Mighty Mouse was merely smelling some crushed flowers and that the jet leading from his hand to his nose was merely a cartoon "smell line" moving super-fast from the mighty inhale. The episode was immediately pulled from the rotation so that no one would see it.

The sequence of events in the actual episode is such: 1.) The episode's villain crushes Polly Pineblossom's titular "Littlest Tramp" flower when she tries to sell it to him; 2.) Polly sells Mighty Mouse the remains, which crumble into dust in his hand, and which he then stuffs in his pocket; 3.) Later in the episode, after rescuing a group of ants, he ends up at the ants' lodge meeting. After one of the ants tells that he became a lodge brother because he wanted to help the less fortunate, Mighty Mouse, thinking of Polly, pulls the crushed flower out of his pocket, saying "I know someone else like that," and then smelling the flower's remains as the scene crossfades into the next. The way in which Mighty Mouse snorts the dust up his nose looks very much like a cocaine gag, and series senior director John Kricfalusi has been known to have inserted adult gags into other episodes, as well as into his later The Ren and Stimpy Show, so a cocaine reference would not be too strange for Kricfalusi. In addition, the gag stands alone as somewhat of a non-sequitur; it has no actual bearing on the rest of the episode.

The show had a political subtext based on 1930s style class politics. Mighty Mouse and all the other mice were factory workers while the cats were all managers and capitalists.

The show only lasted 2 seasons, but it inspired a 10-issue Mighty Mouse comic book series published by Marvel Comics in 1990 and 1991. No plans have materialized to release the show on DVD.

Episode list

Season 1 (1987-1988)

Season 2 (1988-1989)

Cast

• Patrick Pinney – "Mighty Mouse/Mike Mouse"
• Maggie Roswell – Pearl Pureheart/additional voices
• Dana Hill – Orphan Scrappy
• Charles Adler – Bat-Bat (Bruce Vein)/additional voices
• Joe Alaskey – Sourpuss/additional voices
• Michael Pataki – The Cow/additional voices
• Beau Weaver – Fractured Narrator/additional voices
• Rodger Bumpass – additional voices
• Candy Candido – additional voices
• Joe Colligan – additional voices
• Jeannie Elias – additional voices
• Bill Farmer – additional voices
• Ellen Gerstell – additional voices
• Tami Holbrook – additional voices
• Mona Marshall – additional voices
• Janet May – additional voices
• Terry McGovern – additional voices
• Lisa Raggio – additional voices
• Clive Revill – additional voices
• Neil Ross – additional voices
• Pamela Rowan – additional voices
• Jim Ward – additional voices
• Wendell Washer – additional voices
• Alan Oppenheimer – additional voices (uncredited)

External links

• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures Episode Guideat the Big Cartoon DataBase

• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures at TV.com

Animated television series | 1980s TV shows in the United States | CBS network shows | Films directed by Ralph Bakshi | John Kricfalusi | Terrytoons | CBS Paramount Television shows