Trivia / Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures

• Acting for Two: The late Dana Hill voices both Scrappy and the Tooth Fairy (in a rare dual-role for her) in the episode “Witch Tricks”.
• Acclaimed Flop: While the show was and still is acclaimed as a satirical classic (and is considered the granddaddy of most modern children's cartoons, particularly the ones on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network that get away with a lot of adult humor and are more creator-driven than producer-driven), it was never a popular show ratings wise and got cancelled after just two seasons, though the show developed a popular Cult Classic status that eventually got it a DVD release.
• Creative Differences: The reason John Kricfalusi didn't return for the second season was because he and Ralph Bakshi were at odds over who had more creative influence on the show. Kricfalusi insisted that his direction and push for stronger character animation was what made the show popular, while Bakshi argued that the only reason Kricfalusi was allowed to get away with what he did was because Bakshi was constantly fending off CBS's S&P^note (Standards and Practices; the people who often step in and outline what is and isn't appropriate to show on television) for him to let him work undisturbed. In the end, both Bakshi and Kricfalusi ended up being right: not only was Mighty Mouse swiftly canceled after six episodes once Kricfalusi left, but Kricfalusi spent the rest of his solo career on the losing end of a lot of battles from network higher-ups (with both the original Ren & Stimpy and Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" being the most notorious cases) simply because he never learned how to cooperate with them.
• Creator Backlash:
  • The DVD Commentary for "Mouse From Another House" describes the episode's execution as flawed. It was supposed to be a satire of pathos cartoons and origin stories, but the story was misinterpreted as a straight pathos tale instead of a humorous take on one, and was misdirected as such, robbing it of much of its intended comedy.
  • John Kricfalusi claims on his blog the impact of the show was a mixed blessing and that it had numerous flaws from the get-go (much like his own Ren and Stimpy).
  I also drew much more emotive and exaggerated characters than anyone else at the time did, and many of my artists again misinterpreted this as meaning no-rules. So for every Bruce Timm Ken Boyer, Eddie Fitzgerald, Lynne Naylor and me there were 5 other cartoonists who looked at our stuff and decided anything-goes, as long as it's weird. I had unleashed a monster that I've rued to this day.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • The orphan boy Scrappy was voiced by the late Dana Hill.
  • The witch Scrappy encounters in "Witch Tricks" was voiced by Charlie Adler.
• Executive Meddling: Subverted, then played straight.
  • For much of the show's run, CBS left the team alone to do whatever they wanted so long as they were conscious of time and money. Once the infamous "crushed flower" episode^note "The Littlest Tramp" involved a gag in which Mighty Mouse sniffed a flower that had been crushed into a fine powder, making it look like he was snorting cocaine. happened, however, they got much nosier about content.
  • "Bat With A Golden Tongue" was presumed to be a make-good for the "crushed flower" scene in that it entailed Mighty Mouse's efforts to break Bat-Bat of his joke-telling addiction. Bat-Bat's final line to the viewers was "Just say no to canned laughter," a spoof on then-First Lady Nancy Reagan's more serious "Just Say No To Drugs" message. McDonald's threatened to pull its advertising if the line was not removed and his line was replaced with a stock scream at the last minute.
  • Bakshi himself came down on his staff when he noticed that they were frequently leaving out the title character (satirizing how in his original cartoons he'd only show up at the end to save the day), eventually telling them to ease up on joke plots and include him more often.
• He Also Did: After the show's cancellation, Bakshi and the rest of the crew would produce a well-regarded adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book, as well as two shorts for What A Cartoon! Show.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: An official rerelease of this show is very unlikely (going forward from the 2010 DVD release) due to ownership rights issues. According to Jeffrey Pidgeon (an artist who worked on the show), "the rights [to this show] are owned by five different people who don't exactly like each other."
• What Could Have Been:
  • The sudden appearance of a cartoon Merv Griffin was cut out at the last moment from "Night Of The Bat-Bat." It would be used in the unedited edition of the scene in the series finale, "Mighty's Tone Poem."
  • In the mid-90's, John Kricfalusi attempted to pitch a revival of the series to Paramount, but the proposal was rejected.
  • Bakshi had plans for a spin-off series featuring the version of Deputy Dawg, seen in the series. The show would've had Deputy as the sheriff of New York city with Muskie and Vincent Van Gopher as his deputies fighting crimes in the big city, similar to McCloud. The show would've also had cartoons featuring The Mighty Heroes as they're presented in Mighty Mouse, as old accountants as the "middle cartoon", effectively making this a Three Shorts show.

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