Oswald is one year older than Mickey, making his debut in 1927 (he is not, however, Disney’s oldest reoccurring character, that title goes to Pete, surprisingly, who predates both Oswald and Mickey)
Oswald has made a handful of cameos since he appeared in the Epic Mickey Games. He pops up for a second in “Get a Horse!” and is the butt of a rather mean gag in the Mickey Mouse Short “Canned”
If you’re familiar with Epic Mickey, you know Oswald’s girl is Ortensia. However, this was not originally her name. Her name was Sadie, but the game developers wanted to give her an “O” name to match Oswald (like Mickey and Minnie, and Donald and Daisy) and it’s stuck ever since
Speaking of Oswald’s girlfriend, Ortensia was not his first. In the older Oswald shorts, he’s infatuated with a female rabbit named Fanny (I like to think Oswald had his 420 children with her, but when he hooked up with Ortensia, she adopted all of them)
Oh, Oswald has 420 Bunny children.
Charles Muntz, the antagonist of the Pixar film Up, isnamed after Charles Mintz, the person responsible for taking Oswald and several of Walt’s animators away after a contract dispute in 1928
Out of the 27 Oswald cartoons made by Disney and Iwerks, 13 are available in the Walt Disney Treasures collection, 2 are available in Walt Disney Signature Blu-rays as bonus features, 5 are found but are not currently available to the public, and 6 are still lost.
After Oswald went to Universal, he got several voice actors, including Mickey Rooney, June Foray, and Mel Blanc. Currently, he’s voiced by veteran voice actor Frank Welker (known for voicing Fred from Scooby Doo among others)
In order for Disney to get the rights to Oswald from Universal, the company traded a sportscaster from ABC
In the Disney Parks, Oswald has a service station on Buena Vista Street in California Adventure
And that’s all I got. I love this bunny, and I wish he got more credit for laying the groundwork for Mickey. Without him, I don’t think Mickey would be as popular as he is today.
A Once-Lost Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Cartoon Has Reportedly Been Found in Japan
An anime historian had the 16mm film for nearly 70 years before realizing it was one of seven of Walt Disney’s earliest works that had thought to be lost.
A lost 1928 Walt Disney cartoon featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the character that would lead to the creation of Mickey Mouse, has been found in Japan.
The 16mm copy of Neck ‘n’ Neck was in the hands of an anime historian Yasushi Watanabe, who had bought it when he was in high school nearly 70 years ago, but had not realized its significance.
Watanabe, now 84, bought the film at a toy wholesaler near his home in Osaka, but only recently read Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons by David Bossert, a longtime animator at Disney who published the book last year.
The film was tagged Mickey Manga Spide (Mickey cartoon speedy) and cost Watanabe ￥500, $4.40 at current exchange rates.
“As I’ve been a Disney fan for many years, I’m happy that I was able to play a role,” Watanabe told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which contacted Bossert and the Walt Disney Archives to confirm it was one of seven of the 26 Oswald series thought to be permanently lost.
The original Neck ‘n’ Neck was five minutes in length, but was cut to two minutes for the 16mm version sold for home projection use.
Watanabe’s copy is currently being kept at Kobe Planet Film Archive, one of the largest private film collections in Japan, with more 16,000 titles in its library.
