A lost Walt Disney film of a character who preceded Mickey Mouse was recently discovered in Japan.
What happened: Yasushi Watanabe bought a cartoon film years ago when he was living in Osaka, Japan. He paid about 500 yen (or about $4.40 U.S. in 2018) for the film.
- He revealed just recently that the cartoon was a lost film produced by Walt Disney and featured a character who was a predecessor to Mickey Mouse, AFP reports.
- Watanabe realized the film was a lost Disney film after reading a book about the history of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit,” a Disney-created character from the 1920s.
- The book said seven of the 26 films about Oswald were missing. But then he remembered the film he bought from his friend decades ago, according to AFP.
The video: The video — which was labeled “Mickey Manga Spide” or Mickey Cartoon Speedy — shows a dog police officer chasing down Oswald and his girlfriend in a car. The characters shrank, stretched and showed off characteristics that are common among Disney character films.
Title: The film was later identified as “Neck ‘n’ Neck.” It is now housed at the Kobe Planet Film Archive.
Flashback: In 2015, a cartoon featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was shared for the first time in 87 years, BBC reported. The “long-lost” six-minute film called “Sleigh Bells” (1928) was shown in London.
- As BBC reported, Oswald was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iweks for Universal before they created Mickey Mouse.
Walt Disney later lost the rights to the character after a series of deals fell through. The character eventually faded from the public consciousness and has only recently resurfaced as these old lost videos have popped up.