Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Art Requests from 2024 finally completed.

At the end of 2024 I asked my friends if they had drawing ideas to get me out of my creative slump. I said they could throw three ideas at me, then I would choose one. After drawing it I would send it to them. I had done that in the past, and after a dry spell thought I should do it again. Sadly it took me about 11 months to get it done. Today we look at the drawings for my friends, and the story that went with one of them.

My friend Andrew asked for a Lunar character, or Fire Emblem character, or Heathcliff. I chose Edelgard even though I’ve never played Fire Emblem. I hope it looks okay.

My friend Tamson works as a park ranger. He asked for a skateboarder, or dragon, or something cool from Mexican folklore. It turns out a lot of creatures from Mexican folklore are monsters that lure children to their death. Such was the case for the Lechoza which looks like an old lady but turns into an owl monster. I hope Tamson doesn’t run into any while patrolling the parks.

My friend Jeremy is also a producer on the indie fighting game Rotten Core. He asked for a creepypasta character , or an obscure SNK character, or Spawn. Touji Sakata is a rare SNK character. Despite looking imposing he’s actually very short, not that I would want to mess with his bone-breaking throws. If you know what game he’s from post it in the comments.

My friend Christy kept it simple and asked for Santa. This was actually the first of the drawing that I had finished last year, but she wouldn’t get it until 2025.

Diana had some really great fantasy ideas. Falcor from Never Ending Story, the Goblin King from Labyrinth, or The Horned King from the Black Cauldron. I was going to draw the Horned King, but I had never drawn Falcor before so I did that instead. Have you seen any of the movies that Diana had requested characters from?

Our good family friend Paul had a bunch of great ideas. Adventure through Inner Space, Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, or The Santa Fe Super Chief. I had actually drawn an Adventure through Inner Space illustration for my friend Ray a long time ago, so that was out. The choices were Disneyland attraction or classic train. Since Paul is a Disney super fan I went with a couple of characters from the attraction.

My old boss, and mentor Angel asked for something so specific I had to draw it in color. “Hello Kitty in a pink sprinkle donut!” I didn’t mail this drawing out when it was done, instead I gave it to her over breakfast when we caught up.

Long time friend Erin also had a bunch of great ideas; any Lucha you really love, or a chocobo from FFVII, or the "clever girl" Dino from Jurassic Park. I was super tempted to draw the velociraptor but instead I went with my favorite tag team from the modern era “Los Ice Creams.” They wrestled for Chikara Pro Wrestling and lasted a few years. My favorite old school tag team was the Road Warriors / Legion of Doom.

The missus asked for the stars of her favorite Disney movie the live action So Dear to my Heart. This movie was a very subtle look at race relations in the USA that was very rarely brought up when instead people would point at Song of the South as proof that the Disney studios were filled with racists. If you get a chance please watch this film.

My good friend Jennifer asked for Stitch or Eeyore. I decided to combine both because I thought they should get along well.

Blaine had the hardest idea to draw. He said “The only thing I’ll throw in here is an illustration of a funny moment in your life.” It took me months but I remembered something funny that happened when I was a kid. Like many of you my family went to church on Sunday. My brothers and I were fairly well behaved at church because we knew that our parents wouldn’t tolerate us acting a fool. Two little kids didn’t get the memo and were way out of control. The entire church service they were crawling all over and under the pews. Which wouldn’t have been so bad but they rolled up their missalette (a church program) and used them as megaphones. Every few minutes one kid would yell “PEE PEE” and his brother would call out “POO POO.” This went on for an hour. We did our best to bite our tongues and not laugh out loud. Even our parents were finding it hard to breathe. To this day whenever we pass by my old neighborhood I just point in the direction of the church and say “Pee Pee Poo Poo” to my family and they bust out laughing.

Family friend Wendy is another Disney Fan. Her ideas were the Cheshire Cat and Caterpillar, or Dobby the house elf, or Pee Wee Herman and his dog Speck. I’ve drawn the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland previously, and I don’t care for JK Rowling's politics. So the choice was obvious. I’ve never drawn Pee Wee before. I did get a chance to interview him many years ago at a Disney event. He was a genuinely kind soul. I miss him.

Last but not least was my old friend Dan. One of the most insightful people when it comes to movie, and comic book storytelling. I miss hanging out in his old comic book shop. He had a very specific request. “Draw me as a fat space marine preferably an ultramarine por favor.” Ask and ye shall receive. I had fun putting this piece together. So that wraps up my drawing request from 2024. Will I open up requests for 2025? Well that remains to be seen. Did you have a favorite drawing? I’d like to hear about it. Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Monday, November 3, 2025

Celebrating a million views on the blog!

Hello friends, I hope that you are all doing well. Work, and life have been busy, however I am trying to make some time to blog, and share my interests with you. Did you know that I celebrated a milestone this summer? I had been sharing my love of games online for decades now. In the mid ‘90s I would post to game message boards. Specifically whenever I saw some cool news in Weekly Famitsu magazine I would post something on the Gouki’s Page of Whatever message boards (ask your grandparents). Remember that through the ‘90s that magazines were still the fastest way to get game news. Since I was able to get to the Japanese bookstores in downtown LA on weekends it meant I was always ahead of the US curve.

I didn’t get online until the late ‘90s and that was only through college. My family didn’t get home internet until the early 2000’s. While at school I would post everywhere I could. On game message boards and this lead to me writing for Planet Tony Hawk.com, and then I started blogging on 1UP in 2005. I tried to write every weekday, and hit 1000 blogs in about four years. Not long after that I got a million views on the site. I am still friends with many of the 1UP community members. We keep track of each other on Facebook, and Instagram some 20 years later! When Capcom launched their own community site Capcom-Unity I took a lot of my old posts from 1UP and added them there as well. Near the end of the 2000’s I learned that 1UP was going to be closing down. I figured that Capcom would also do the same. That’s when I started copying over posts to this site on April 29, 2014.

It has been more than 10 years, and more than 800 blogs on the Street Writer Blog. I am happy to announce that I hit over 1,00,000 views! I know that the really big gaming sites get those numbers every day before noon. I don’t think that I really hit a million unique views as bots are constantly scouring my pages for stuff to steal. I’ll still take the increase in views over the decade as a sign that people are interested in my run-on sentences. Did you have a favorite blog, or series that I wrote? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Friday, October 31, 2025

When Disney made the best ghost stories!

It’s that time of the year where ghouls and ghosts take over our streets. Since I had been on a Disney kick I was thinking fondly about the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. I had talked about the attraction in the past and compared it to the God of War series. Specifically how the attraction, and game had richly themed environments. With that in mind I was wondering about how it was presented in game form.

I discovered an old Disney game that had a dedicated Haunted Mansion stage. Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibōken was a game published by Tomy for the Super Famicom (SFC) in 1994. The game featured Mickey and his friends at Tokyo Disneyland. Mickey was trying to get his friends together to practice for a concert. Each friend just so happened to be located in a different area of the park.

There were bad guy weasels trying to keep Mickey from his duties as he traveled around. Of course Mickey had to be able to fight against bad guys, but in a Disney game you couldn’t really be too violent. So Mickey was given two types of balloons that he could use on his adventure. The water balloon he could bounce off of, as well as throw at his enemies. Then there was a helium balloon that allowed him to float to higher platforms, of breeze over gaps. Parents wouldn’t be able to object to Mickey defending himself with balloons after all.

The big attraction at each land was the basis for each stage. It was neat seeing how things like Big Thunder Mountain, and the Pirates of the Caribbean were turned into platforming levels.

The fourth stage was set in the Haunted Mansion. That attraction was arguably the greatest dark ride ever created. It was layered with so much detail that it developed a cult following. Even I was not immune to its importance in theme park history. In fact I wrote about the Hatbox Ghost 10 years ago on this blog. You can read about the history of the Haunted Mansion on the Disney Family Museum page. The fact that the Japanese game was able to turn iconic scenes featured in the attraction into actual stages was mind blowing. The “stretching room” for example was amazing, it took advantage of the SFC’s fabled “Mode 7.”

The attraction did not have a definitive story, but was rather a collection of spooky vignettes. An official album tried to tie together the various scenes. However many things were added, or removed through its history. Each of these changes were embraced by the fans. Fan theories spread among the community, in the ‘80s these were discussed in fanzines, and would eventually make their way online. Even leftovers from a refurbishment got a legend all to themselves.

The game even featured animated suits of armor. This was a brilliant callback. In the early days of the attraction in the late 1960’s they actually had cast members wearing the armor, and pop out to scare riders. This was eventually turned into a stationary animatronic that rattled.

The busts that followed visitors in the foyer, and the head of Madame Leota in a floating crystal ball also appeared in the game. The developers at Tomy had certainly done their homework. The attraction was filled with 999 Happy Haunts. There was plenty to pull from, and many ghosts that people should expect to see in a game.

The deepest cuts in the game were the ghost portraits. Not every painting by Disney Animator / Imagineer Marc Davis was featured in the original attraction, or the follow ups in Florida or Tokyo. The ghostly fisherman was part of a pirate theme that had originally been pitched for the attraction. The mariner with the harpoon had appeared in both Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibōken, as well as Epic Mickey.

At the end of each stage there was a version of “Pegleg” Pete waiting to challenge Mickey. He wore a costume that was appropriate for the particular attraction. In Stage 4 Pete was waiting in the mansion graveyard. He was a pale blue color, and wore a pale victorian suit as many of the ghosts did in the attraction. He floated around the stage, and shot plasma balls at Mickey. As far as I know this was the first and only time this version of Pete had ever appeared in an officially licensed game.

In honor of this eerie version of Pete, and just in time for Halloween I decided to make an illustration of “Phantom Pete.” What do you think? Should Disney revisit platform gaming? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Retouching a photo, and checking out some Disney robots...

The best part of being an illustrator is being able to add missing details to a picture. I was bummed out that I couldn’t get a clear picture of the full Oswald mural that I mentioned in the previous blog. I also didn’t understand why the part that read “The Home of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” was covered in butcher paper. Hopefully the next time I get out to Culver City I might be able to get an unobstructed view of the painting. To hold me over I recreated a classic illustration of Oswald with a bucket of paint, and paintbrush filling in the part that I didn’t get to see.

Before the month wraps up I’m hyped on some high-end Disney toys that I found out about earlier this year. The manufacturer Morstorm has some pricey figures based on the Disney classics, as well as some of the newer films. They made a couple of figures that were stylized to look like robots. What do you think about the mechanical Donald Duck, or Stitch?

Would you spend $50 or more per each of these six-inch figures, or would you pass? Are there any expensive toys that you like to collect? Tell me in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Monday, October 27, 2025

Oswald finds a new home, at his old home?

In the previous blog I talked about the cancelled Oswald cartoon series for Disney+. This was from back in 2019. Just as the animation fans had lost all hope there was a surprise announcement from Disney. In March of 2025 the company revealed that actor / director / producer Jon Favreau was working on an Oswald series for Disney+. Aside from Mr. Favreau was the only other thing revealed was that three young leads had also been cast.

The details on the show were very tight. Audiences had no idea if the show was set in 1923 when Walt Disney first arrived in Los Angeles. Or if it was set in the present almost 60 years after his death in 1966? Or did it cover multiple points in between? Mr. Favreau was known for keeping his projects, and most important his team sworn to secrecy. He managed to keep a great portion of the Mandalorian under wraps during its production. The things he could not control however were the public stumbling across his filming locations. He was spotted on multiple occasions shooting at Disneyland. Eagle-eyed visitors also spotted a scale model for Oswald that the actors could play to. We could assume that Oswald was going to be computer generated, and not a puppet like Grogu aka Baby Yoda. Now that I think about it a puppet Oswald would have been amazing. A few lucky fans that visited the park during filming were rewarded with challenge coins from the director himself. The stories of the coin were shared on Reddit.

You could see on one side of the coin that Oswald was playing a guitar. The neck of the guitar had 2025 printed on it, and the music notes actually spelled out “JF” for the director. I begged every Disney friend that I knew to see if they could score a coin for me. Many visited the parks at least once a week, the odds that they might stumble across the shoot were pretty good. As an Oswald super fan I also begged Favreau online yet never got a response. I’m sure he was getting millions of comments for every Marvel, Star Wars, and now cartoon project that he was associated with. Chances were that he would never see my posts. Still I held out hope!

I lost hope that I would ever come across the filming of the series. Ticket prices for Disneyland had soared in the past few years. I had been priced out for some time. Then I learned that they were shooting outside of the park as well. @fairy_drawsdb on Twitter posted several pictures of the “set.” It looked like an aged strip mall called “Hyperion Plaza.” Some of the people commenting on the lot said it looked exactly like 2829 Hyperion Ave in Los Angeles. The original Disney Studios were located just down the street at 2719 Hyperion Ave. This was now the location of the Gelsons market. You could read all about the original studio location here.

The strip mall had a big Oswald mural painted on the side where it read “Home of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.” The downside was that the people that posted images of the building never gave away its location. Even the people posting in the comments section asked, but didn’t get a response. Although some people speculated that it was on Hyperion I knew that wasn’t the case. When I did a Google street view of the mall I saw that the rails and elevated platform on one side were missing. I studied the street photos from the set carefully. I saw there was a Culver City bus stop in front of the parking lot. Disney would not be allowed to remove, or rename a bus route. Sure they might digitally get rid of it in post production, but they couldn’t touch the actual stop. I also saw that the building was on Jefferson Blvd. and not on Hyperion. There was also a Chic-Fil-A fast food restaurant in the distance. With these clues I was able to find the actual address on Google Maps.

I put on some of my best Oswald gear, got up early on a Saturday, and convinced my family to join me for a road trip from North Long Beach. Some 20 minutes later we got to 11800 Jefferson Blvd, in Culver City to see if the set was still there. Since Mr. Favreau was working on a television series rather than a film I guessed that the set might be around for months. I was also hopeful that the mural would not have been removed as it was only photographed a few days earlier. It was cool, and overcast when we arrived. Thankfully it wasn’t raining. Sadly the entire lot was fenced off. A number of lights, and generators were stored behind the fence. Along with a security guard that was keeping an eye on us. I could still get close enough to snap a picture of the mural.

I don’t know why but they had the “Home of Oswald” sign covered with butcher paper. Perhaps they were going to change the message during the shoot? Was it possible that Disneyland would become the new home of Oswald by the end of the series? As I did with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performance in 2015 I wanted to bring along a special guest. My crib toy from the 1930’s would be joining me for the picture. I wanted to show Oswald that he still had fans 98 years after his birth. Not only that but I brought the oldest piece in my collection. I had an Oswald W565 film strip card from 1928.

Film strip cards were collectables in the early 1900’s. They were photo-lithographs printed on cheap card stock, often with black backs. They were similar to early baseball cards in terms of print quality, and simplicity. What made my card unique was that Oswald was the only cartoon character in the 1928 film strip card set. The rest were actors like Charlie Chaplin, and sports stars like heavyweight boxer Young Stribling. The Lucky Rabbit was considered as big a star back then too. Unfortunately his fame would be surpassed by Mickey Mouse later that year. It would be the first, and last time that Oswald got the film strip card treatment. Little did he know that the card would end up with me 80+ years later.

I know for a fact that Oswald’s luck brought him back home. The mural may have been freshly painted, however it was a way for me to reconnect with his past. Every time a new project was announced I made it a personal mission to get a timestamp. I needed a visual record of my oldest Oswald toy to go along with the good news. I did this at the Disney Interactive booth at the LA Convention Center in 2010 for the Epic Mickey premier at the E3. I did it again in 2015 at the Ace Hotel Theater when the LA Chamber Orchestra performed an original piece for the restored Proud Papa short. In 2025 I was still keeping the tradition alive. It may sound silly but I wanted Oswald to know that he would never be forgotten.

I'm glad I went, and I might make the trip again before the end of the year. Do you have a character that you loved as much? I’d like to hear about it. Tell me in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Friday, October 24, 2025

The many almost returns of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Hello friends, I hope that your fall season is going well. My birthday is this month, and I am very much in a Disney mood. I want to talk about my favorite Disney character, and a project that was cut short. If you had read my older blogs then you would know that Walt Disney had created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927, and produced a number of animated shorts for Universal Pictures. He lost the rights to Oswald, and created Mickey Mouse in 1928 to keep his studio alive. He was incensed that the character, and many of his artists were stolen out from under him. From that point on he was determined to own his own work. He never discussed the character again to the media, or even his own family. Only animation historians were really aware of what had happened. Around 2005 Epic Mickey was pitched at the Disney studios, it was a way to reintroduce Oswald to audiences. Disney CEO Bob Iger loved the idea but was surprised that Oswald didn’t belong to them. He spoke with then NBCUniversal CEO Bob Wright and reacquired the rights to Oswald as a part of the trade for sportscaster Al Michaels.

From 2006 on Disney slowly reintroduced the rabbit to audiences. They did this with shirts, pins, collectables, and eventually in the parks with a walk around character. Epic Mickey from he Nintendo Wii was a major effort to get him back into public consciousness. There were countless ways in which they supported their original star. This included releasing a DVD with the early cartoons that were restored, and going on a global search for the missing films. One of the previously assumed lost movies “Poor Papa” turned up at auction. Disney got the film, restored it, and worked with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to have its first public showing in 80 years. The 2015 concert was a monumental event for animation fans. I secured a ticket, and went with my wife on a rainy night in June. To make the event something special I brought my Oswald crib toy. I wanted something that existed from the era of Walt to be there when the short was screened for LA audiences.

I had long hoped that Oswald might become as big a star as his younger brother Mickey Mouse was, but Disney didn’t seem to know what to do with him after Epic Mickey 2 was released in 2012. The concert was one of the last public events featuring the character. A few years later, and Oswald would be back on our radar. Disney Television Animation veteran Matt Danner was well known for his body of work. As an animator, and storyboard artist he had a hand in Warner Bros. projects like Shaolin Showdown, ¡Mucha Lucha!, and the Looney Toons Show. For Disney he had worked on Gravity Falls, Wander over Yonder, and Legend of the Three Caballeros. In addition to his art, he also provided a number of voices for cartoons including Kermit the Frog in Muppet Babies. It was obvious that his heart was in cartooning, and was going to be great on anything he worked on. Mr. Danner, and his team started development circa 2013 and around 2018 Disney formally announced that there was an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon for the streaming service Disney+. A year later it would be cancelled.

The show was named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Adventures in Coneyopolis. I suppose the city the cartoon was set in was a play on Coney Island and Metropolis. It had been 90 years since Oswald had a series under production from the Disney studios. For the majority of the time Universal Studios, and Walter Lantz held onto the rights. As a lifelong fan of the character you could imagine how excited I was to see him back on the air. The project was unfortunately cancelled while still in pre-production. Many of the artists, and animators that were working on it went on to different projects, or different studios altogether. Fans of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit were absolutely crushed. I was hurt even more than when I found out Disney would no longer pursue any other sequels in the Epic Mickey series. Game designer Warren Spector should have been the boss, and creative director for Disney Interactive, similar to how Shigeru Miyamoto was for Nintendo. The powers at be were too shortsighted to see the potential for that. A fully supported Mr. Spector, and gaming wing of Disney could have been revolutionary. But I digress…

A few seconds of test footage from the cartoon were leaked from the studio, as were a number of concept art pieces. The majority of the concept art was posted by WilliamOswald1 on Twitter @William40378514. The show was a call back to classic animation, and the early era of Hollywood when Oswald was a star. The concept art revealed that a lot of influences were pulled from both the early Disney, and Universal cartoons, but also from comics, and the theme parks as well. There would also be a chance to create new heroes, villains, and settings that would make Walt proud. It hurt knowing that the project was cancelled when there was so much potential left on the drawing board.

Mr. Danner hoped that public interest might get the studio to revisit the concept. There was no doubt that a number of animators would return, and try to elevate the cartoon to new heights. That sounded like an impossible feat. There was a huge public backlash against the Disney company at the end of September 2025. They took a $4 billion hit following the cancellation of the Jimmy Kimmel. The late night show host would get reinstated, but the public perception of the company was tarnished. It would take something exceptional to get fans to forgive, and forget. It seemed all but impossible for Oswald to return under these conditions. Yet luck was something that he was known for. I’ll talk about an Oswald revival more in the next blog. Did you have a favorite Oswald cartoon, or game appearance? I’d like to hear about it. Tell me in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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Wednesday, October 22, 2025

When was the blue Oswald the Lucky Rabbit created?

Hello friends, I hope that you are doing well. Today I want to talk about a question I didn’t have an answer for. As you may know I’m a huge fan of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I’ve done plenty of blogs about the character. No doubt I will write about him more in the future. What I didn’t know was when the character officially turned blue. I know that he was presented in an old rubber hose design, with blue fur, and yellow shorts when Universal Studios Osaka had his merchandise in their park. That was from around 2001-2004, just before the Disney company reacquired the rights. But was that really the first time the character was reimagined for audiences? I’ve been wondering if this new look was spearheaded by Japan, or the US.

I’ve also wondered how exactly this redesign came to be. After all, in the mid ‘90s Oswald was still brown in color, and looked like a traditional cartoon rabbit character. He had more or less stayed the same since his old comic book run from around 1937 until the mid 1990’s. There was a time stamp that showed one of his last media appearances from that era. In Brazil Woody Woodpecker was known as Pika Pau. “Coehlo Osvaldo” was brown in the game Férias Frustradas do Pica-Pau aka Woody Woodpeckers Frustrating Vacation. The title came out in October 1995 by Tectoy for the Sega Master System, and Sega Mega Drive. In it Oswald gave Woody a magic paintbrush. Mind you this was 15 years before the magic brush in Epic Mickey!

The next time Oswald appeared in an officially licensed game was in Woody Woodpecker Escape from Buzz Buzzard Park for the GameBoy Color. It was developed by Planet Interactive Development, and published by DreamCatcher Interactive (North America) on August 14, 2001. Oswald appears in Level 2 in his blue form. This time he wasn’t friendly with Woody, and would actually attack you with a drop kick.

A few years later Oswald got a cameo in a Japanese pachinko machine called CR Woody Woodpecker. Developed by Maruhon, and released in December 2004. In the game the blue Oswald made a short cameo on the game screen. In 2006 the sequel CR Woody Woodpecker 2 was released. Again the blue Oswald got a cameo on the video screen. What was interesting about this appearance was that it was the same year that Disney had gotten the rights back from Walter Lantz / Universal. This could possibly be the last piece of media featuring that version making it a rare collectors item. The blue Oswald was indeed in circulation between 2001-2004 just as I thought. The pieces were falling into place, however the pachinko machine made me realize the updated look lasted longer than I first suspected. 

It turns out that the blue version had actually been proposed much earlier. Universal was looking at relaunching the Walter Lantz IP with a new Woody Woodpecker show in the mid 1990’s. This meant that the characters would be receiving a minor stylistic update, to make their look a little bit more contemporary. You can read the details on the New Woody Woodpecker show on the Walter Lantz Fandom page. Not only were Lantz’ biggest stars like Woody Woodpecker, and Chilly WIlly getting a refresh, but rare characters like Space Mouse, and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit were also getting a makeover. The show started development around 1997, with a few revisions made before production began. The new designs were posted by Daily Woody Woodpecker on Twitter. As these new versions were being finalized the comics, and games featuring the updated begun licensing. 

Sadly we wouldn’t actually see Oswald, or a few other rare characters make it into the new cartoons. They would appear in Latin American comics, and the aforementioned games, and pachinko cabinets. As for Oswald’s earliest blue design, the oldest officially licensed item that I could find with him was a rectangular dish / tray from 1998. He was very loosely drawn, and didn’t have the standardized look used in the Universal Osaka merchandise. Altogether the blue Oswald lasted for about eight years. I began wondering if I could track down any US merchandise from this era, but I’ll probably stick to the Japanese items. Were there any rare cartoon characters that you want to see return? Perhaps in game form? Tell me in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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