It’s official: Disney marked the big 100 October 16, which means 100 celebratory years of your favorite Disney characters from princesses to villains to sidekicks to beloved mascots.

Speaking of mascots, to celebrate Disney’s 100 year anniversary, we’re going to talk about the beloved character that got Disney on the train (or is that “steamboat”?) to fame: good old Mickey Mouse and how the House of Mouse was almost the House of Rabbit?!

That’s right, back in 1927, Walt Disney and his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, decided to end their work on the live action-animation hybrid silent short film series, “Alice Comedies”, Disney’s first creation. In January, Charles Mintz, an American Producer (and head of his wife, Margaret J. Winkler’s, film company, Winkler Pictures) was unhappy with the production cost of “Alice Comedies”, but luckily he got word that Universal Pictures wanted to get into the cartoon business, so he requested Disney and Iwerks create a character to pitch to Universal.

So Disney got to work and decided to make the character a rabbit at the suggestion of Carl Laemmie, Universal’s founder, as the cartoon industries always used too many cat characters (such as Krazy Kat and Felix the Cat).

For the rabbit’s name, the Universal’s publicity department chose a name out of a hat, thus creating “Oswald the Rabbit”.

The first Oswald cartoon was titled “Poor Papa”, but Universal rejected it for the low production quality and the sloppiness and it therefore wasn’t released.

They decided to create a younger and neater version of the character in their next cartoon, “Trolley Troubles” released in theaters September 5, 1927, and this time the cartoon was well-received by Universal leading Universal and Winkler Pictures to produce 27 “Oswald The Lucky Rabbit” cartoons.

Oswald was similar to early depictions of the Mickey Mouse we know today; he was in Disney’s words “peppy, alert, saucy, and venturesome;” however, unlike Mickey, Oswald had the ability to take apart his own limb as tools to solve problems.

Disney hoped to produce a series for Oswald, but unfortunately he found out from his loyal animator Iwerks that Mintz had other plans: Mintz went behind Disney’s back and signed a three-year contract with Universal for the Oswald cartoons and reduced the payment fees for “Oswald” and even went on to secretly hire away almost all of Disney’s animators to work for him, thus terminating Winkler Pictures and Walt Disney Studios contract.

But when one door closes, another one opens. On a train ride home from Manhattan to California, Disney started brainstorming ideas for a new cartoon character for his studio. Eventually that idea came to light in the form of a mouse. Disney chose a mouse because he believed that a mouse would make for a cute and sympathetic character, and that mice hadn’t been overused in cartoons, allowing for the mouse to stand out against competition of the time.

Disney would go on to name the mouse “Mortimer”. His wife, however, disliked the name seeing it as pompous and suggested the name we will all know and love: “Mickey”.

With Iwerks and a few other loyal animators, they created the first two Mickey Mouse shorts in secret since Disney still had to abide to the contract with Universal and Mintz to complete his final Oswald cartoon.

Disney started with a basic sketch to get the concept of Mickey, one of which greatly resembled Oswald, which Iwerks revised to make Mickey easier to animate.

The first Mickey Mouse short was “Plane Crazy,” which was a silent film released as a single test screening in theaters May 15, 1928, which also introduced Mickey’s one and only girlfriend, Minnie Mouse.

The film, however, failed to find a distributor, so therefore wasn’t released to the public theaters that year.

The second Mickey Mouse short was “The Gallopin’ Gaucho” (which introduced Mickey’s biggest rival, Pete the Cat later known as “Peg-Legged Pete) which has also failed to find a distributor.

However, as one of Disney’s mottos states, “Keep moving forward,” he did not give up and he decided to take the next big step by making a new Mickey short a “talkie” as in a film with sound.

Sound had been used in cartoons before, but Disney hit it big with the third Mickey and famous short “Steamboat Willie” (the title parodies the 1928 silent comedy movie “Steamboat Bill. Jr” starting Buster Keaton). The film was released November 18, 1928 with Disney himself performing all of the voices in the film, though there was hardly any dialogue.

This Mickey Mouse short was the first of the three shorts to finally find a distributor in businessman Pat Powers under the name of Celebrity Productions thus declaring this as Mickey and Minnie Mouse’s big film debut.

Overall “Steamboat Willie” received wide acclaim from the public and critics who applauded Disney’s use of synchronized sound and for the film being one of the first cartoons to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack with old classic songs like “Turkey in a Straw,” and “Steamboat Bill,” the famous opening tune which Mickey whistles at the beginning of the short. This opening sequence would later serve as opening logo for Walt Disney Animation Studio films starting in 2007.

The success of “Steamboat Willie” was Disney’s ticket to fame, along with Mickey Mouse, who went on became the most popular and recognizable cartoon character in American history, even being the first cartoon character to have the highest honor of getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978 as he appeared in 123 cartoon shorts of his name, ultimately leading to the franchise of movies and shows and expansion with new characters and friends like Pluto, Donald Duck, and Goofy who would find success with their own films.

Mickey is truly the heart of Disney because without his success and Disney’s persistence and optimism to “keep moving forward” and without that heart of dreams, imagination, hope, and determination, the animation business might never have taken such a big step, which just further symbolizes Disney’s message: “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them!”

However, for Disney’s lost creation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, not all hope was lost for him. In 2006, Disney Studios acquired back the rights to Oswald and all the Disney-made cartoons of him. He made his debut in some merchandise, theme parks, and animated shorts like his first own very “short” short in 95 years, which premiered on Disney Plus in 2022. That rabbit sure is lucky!