Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, every mention

The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired Jun 23, 2026 · 30 mentions

• ▶ 31:41 David Rosenthal And they come up, not with Mickey Mouse, but with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
• ▶ 31:48 David Rosenthal And Oswald is a big hit.
• ▶ 33:02 David Rosenthal So, on the back of the Oswald success, the Disney Brothers cartoon studio grows pretty quickly from this ragtag group from Kansas City to, like, a real...
• ▶ 33:18 David Rosenthal They hire about 25 employees and start churning out Oswald cartoons.
• ▶ 33:55 David Rosenthal Because he's like, Hey, you know, we need to start building a brand and like people need to know who is making these Oswald's and it should be the Walt Disney Studio.
• ▶ 35:50 David Rosenthal And because the Walt Disney studio doesn't actually own the IP of Oswald, the lucky rabbit,
• ▶ 36:23 David Rosenthal As a couple to New York, where one of the items on the agenda is for Walt to go meet with Mintz and ask for a raise in the amount that the studio is getting paid per Oswald Short.
• ▶ 36:52 David Rosenthal I'm willing to let you and your little studio stay involved here and keep making the Oswalds, but we're gonna have to pay you less, not more.
• ▶ 37:06 Ben Gilbert Which my understanding is that basically wiped out the margin, and they were saying, we'll pay you cost to make these Oswald cartoons.
• ▶ 38:07 David Rosenthal And he also doesn't have any control or rights to the actual Oswald IP.
• ▶ 38:56 David Rosenthal So as I think, you know, Disney eventually does get the rights to Oswald back.
• ▶ 39:08 David Rosenthal Disney eventually does get the rights to Oswald back in 2006.
• ▶ 39:19 David Rosenthal Do you know how Bob got Oswald back for Disney?
• ▶ 39:29 Ben Gilbert And who owned Oswald at this point?
• ▶ 39:37 Ben Gilbert So, there's an ABC asset that Bob effectively trades in exchange for Oswald, and I think that ABC ESPN Monday Night Football asset is Al Michaels.
• ▶ 39:51 David Rosenthal Al Michaels, the Monday Night Football commentator, like a sports team trade, to NBC in exchange for the IP rights to Oswald the Rabbit.
• ▶ 40:02 Ben Gilbert And Oswald is repatriated, and NBC gets Al Michaels, and all is right in the world.
• ▶ 40:26 David Rosenthal He makes Walt and Walt Disney Studios finish out the current Oswald contract, which still had a few cartoons left to animate on it, and pay all of the animators who had all betrayed him, and were all about to defect,
• ▶ 41:20 David Rosenthal A character that wouldn't just reverse all the woes of the Oswalds and turn around the company's fortune, but would maybe become one of, if not the most recognized figure in all of human history.
• ▶ 43:27 Ben Gilbert Okay, so David, how does this Oswald catastrophe lead to Mickey Mouse?
• ▶ 44:23 David Rosenthal So he and Roy and Ub and the couple other animators who stayed loyal to them hole up and they start brainstorming ideas for some kind of new idea or new character that they can create to replace Oswald and turn around the studio's fortunes.
• ▶ 44:37 Ben Gilbert And also when you see Mickey and you see Oswald, it's not hard to imagine where Mickey Mouse came from.
• ▶ 44:49 David Rosenthal I mean, it's really just the same brief that created Oswald.
• ▶ 44:52 David Rosenthal It was like, hey, take Felix and do something like Felix, except this time it's take Oswald and do something like Oswald.
• ▶ 45:42 David Rosenthal The summer of 19 28, we finished out the Oswald contract, and Walt and Ub and the small little Mary crew have gotten two Mickey shorts ready for production, Plain Crazy and the Gallop and Gaucho, and Walt takes them around to distributors,…
• ▶ 46:13 David Rosenthal It's like Oswald.
• ▶ 48:18 David Rosenthal I mean, the only reason that the Oswalds worked, even though they were a ripoff of Felix, was because they came built in with the universal distribution.
• ▶ 1:01:21 Ben Gilbert Interesting to know, Oswald actually was on a candy bar back in the day, but when Walt, who at the time thought he owned Oswald, had the opportunity to monetize it, he was like,
• ▶ 1:01:35 Ben Gilbert It's just really good for me if Oswald is on the candy bar.
• ▶ 4:12:52 Ben Gilbert They own everything they've ever made, and that ties to Walt's Oswald experience.