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Mickey demonstates his wicked sprint

• DOB: 11/28/1928
• Year: '50
• Racing Class: A+
• Racing Since: 1946
• Results:

Mickey was created by Ub Iwerks as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier star created by the Disney studio. Oswald had also been created by Ub Iwerks with limited input from Walt Disney for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios. In fact, Mickey closely resembled Oswald in his early appearances. However, Disney received an unpleasant surprise when he asked Mintz for a larger budget for his popular Oswald series. In reply, Mintz announced he had hired the bulk of Disney's staff but that Disney could keep doing the Oswald series as long as he agreed to a budget cut and went on the payroll. Mintz owned Oswald and thought he had Disney over a barrel. Angrily, Disney refused the deal and returned to California to produce the final Oswald cartoons he contractually owed Mintz. Disney was dismayed at the betrayal by his staff but determined to restart from scratch. The new Disney Studio initially consisted of Iwerks and a loyal apprentice artist, Les Clark. One lesson Disney learned from the experience was to thereafter always make sure that he owned all rights to the characters produced by his company.

In order for Walt and his older brother and business partner Roy to keep their company active, new characters had to be created to star in their subsequent animated shorts. One day, during a train ride, Walt desperately wanted to come up with a money-making character to replace the one he lost, Oswald. He had visions of a mouse in the back of his head (he had previously made silent cartoon shorts with animated mice). He wanted to name his new creation Mortimer Mouse, but his wife Lillian Marie Bounds thought the name was too pretentious, so he changed it to Mickey Mouse. The name Mortimer would later be used for a character in a Mickey cartoon.

It has been suggested that Walt Disney was influenced by an actual mouse that he almost tamed by feeding it crumbs on his desk at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio. [1]