I can never find the full intro, so this not completely accurate. Still it’s kind of important for our open.
The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse & Heckle & Jeckle was Filmation’s attempt at bringing back the two Terrytoons theatrical shorts. it’s also not to be confused with Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which also aired on CBS but in 1987. Heckle & Jeckle, the out of work magpies, were reimagined as bumbling detectives. A third segment featured Filmation original story Quackula, the tale of a vampire duck–long before Danger Mouse met Duckula–who for some reason spent every night trying to scare the bear who lives in the house Quackula’s egg coffin was kept in. Don’t worry, it wasn’t very memorable. The show aired on CBS in 1979.
Mighty Mouse was the star attraction here. Originally intended to be called Supermouse, I guess they heard about the Captain Marvel debacle and decided to change it to Mighty Mouse. There is one cartoon that left that has relics of that concept, with Mighty Mouse still wearing blue and signing his autograph as “Supermouse” despite being called Mighty Mouse. Terrytoons would revamp the concept a few times, the version Filmation was inspired by for their Mighty Mouse shorts were based on The Perils Of Pauline. It would feature future co-star Pearl Pureheart, a girl mouse and MM’s love interest, being threated by Oil Can Harry, your typical serial villain. Filmation would make a series of shorts with these three, giving Harry a mindless sidekick named Swifty, in unrelated stories where they almost seemed to be acting since the shorts took place sometimes in alternate time periods.
Filmation was also inspired by the serial format itself, as seen with their Flash Gordon series. The only recurring storyline was the serialized Mighty Mouse And The Great Space Chase. The story found space queen Pearl as the head of a galactic federation being menaced by Ming-type villain Harry The Heartless and Swifty. Each segment would end on a cliffhanger and if memory serves there would be two installments per episode. Filmation would collect these segments for a direct-to-video movie, something that has been done with other classic serials like Zombies Of The Stratosphere. Someone uploaded the VHS tape, which explains the static at one point, to YouTube so I get to introduce you to a big part of my childhood. Enjoy. I know I will.
Blame my childhood but that music when Mighty Mouse goes into action will always be Mighty Mouse’s action music in my head. Also, I can’t believe it wasn’t until some time in my adulthood that I finally got that joke about the necklace.
This show would be the last appearance of Oil Can Harry outside of one episode of the aforementioned Bakshi series and the Marvel comic that continued the Bakshi series. Pearl would be a regular in both, and sadly that would also be the last appearance of Mighty Mouse himself besides a comic by Dynamite in 2017 I now need to look up.. A movie was planned that foolishly would have put Mighty Mouse in our world but unfortunately the mouse of might hasn’t appeared since. With how crazy rights issues are who knows who even has the rights. Maybe someday the air will ring with the cry “Here I come to save the day” and a new generation of kids can see Mighty Mouse in action…though I’m not convinced today’s writers wouldn’t screw that up somehow.
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