When Yasushi Watanabe bought a cartoon film decades ago as a high school student in Osaka, he had no idea he was purchasing animation history. But the modest reel he bought for just 500 yen ($4.40 in today’s money) has been revealed as a rare lost cartoon produced
When Yasushi Watanabe bought a cartoon film decades ago as a high school student in Osaka, he had no idea he was purchasing animation history.
But the modest reel he bought for just 500 yen ($4.40 in today’s money) has been revealed as a rare lost cartoon produced by Walt Disney featuring a character that led to the creation of Mickey Mouse.
The discovery was reported by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily, which Watanabe contacted after reading a book about the history of « Oswald the Lucky Rabbit », the character Disney created in the 1920s.
While Disney created the character, complete with oversized ears and a button nose, he lost the rights to another company, prompting him to develop a new cartoon figure: Mickey Mouse.
The book said seven of the 26 short films featuring Oswald that Walt Disney produced were missing, and Watanabe remembered his childhood reel.
It was labelled in Japanese « Mickey Manga Spide » — Mickey Cartoon Speedy in English — and featured a dog policeman on a motorbike chasing Oswald and his girlfriend in a car.
