The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle

CBS was looking to bring Mighty Mouse back to television for the first time since Mighty Mouse Playhouse went off the air in 1967. They had purchased the Terrytoons studio back in 1955 and eventually closed it in 1972. Without an animation studio of their own to produce new content, they licensed out their works to Filmation.^[1][3]

In the Mighty Mouse segments, Mighty Mouse protected the world and his love interest, Pearl Pureheart, from the evil machinations of Oil Can Harry and his new bumbling henchman, Swifty, a fat cat who could still run extremely fast. Their encounters could happen in any time period, with Pearl and the villains adopting roles specific for the era, though Mighty Mouse remained the same. Several changes were made to the Mighty Mouse formula for Filmation's series. The characters' operatic dialogue from the theatrical shorts was removed because producer Norm Prescott did not think that it would be acceptable to contemporary audiences. It was also removed to reduce the necessity to hire additional actors that could sing for roles that producer Lou Scheimer would fill in the various episodes (although Mighty Mouse would still belt some lines out, like his catchphrase, "Here I come to save the day!"). Filmation also abandoned the faux serialization tradition of starting off each entry as if it were a continuation of some non-existent previous part. Instead, events would unfold as Mighty Mouse usually watched for trouble through a giant telescope from his fortress on a cheese-like planet in space. One all-new story, the science fiction serial "The Great Space Chase", was serialized across the entire season in 16 parts. In keeping with broadcast standards of the time, the violence was toned down or non-existent. For the Heckle and Jeckle segments, the magpies' antics were toned down to reduce their malevolent and sadistic nature, though they still remained somewhat madcap in their antics, particularly with fourth wall breaks. Jeckle was portrayed as the smarter of the pair. The series introduced a new segment, Quacula. Quacula was a pale blue vampire duck with a Daffy Duck-like bill and fangs, dressed in a blue jacket and a black cape with a red lining, who slept by day in a white egg-shaped coffin, in the basement of a house owned by an anthropomorphic bear named Theodore. Every night Quacula would rise from his coffin and try to terrify Theodore and others, but he would never really succeed; his antics tended to be more comical than frightening. Also, Theodore would come up with one plan after another to rid himself of Quacula, but always fail to do so. Each hour of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle consisted of two Mighty Mouse cartoons, two Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, one Quacula cartoon, and one episode of "The Great Space Chase". Also included were "Mighty Mouse Environmental Bulletins" and Heckle and Jeckle's "Homonyms" (to add a little educational karma).^[1][2][4][5]

Filmation hired several animators and artists, including storyboard artists John Kricfalusi, Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald, and screenwriter Paul Dini, who got their start working on the show and other productions such as Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids' The Brown Hornet. Kricfalusi, Kent Butterworth and other animators did not understand the limitations put on by network strictures and economic realities, and wanted to rebel against Filmation's mandates of reusable animation and their strict "on-model" policies (where model sheets had to be traced).^[6][7] Fitzgerald, Minton and other storyboard artists drew some funny and lively boards as reference for the animators.^[a] As a result, the animation and art was a lot more energetic than the original Terrytoons.^[1][2] Fitzgerald storyboarded a scene in the episode "Movie Mouse" where Oil Can Harry does a wild take in response to Swifty telling him that he used handcuffs to tie up a snake. Scheimer and Prescott claimed that the scene could not be animated, but Butterworth insisted that it could, and spent a week working on it to prove it. The scene wound up in the finished episode.^[18] Kricfalusi, Fitzgerald, Minton and Butterworth would later go on to work on Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures,^{[1][19][20][16]} with Minton describing his work on that series as "revenge for what [they] couldn't do at Filmation".^[1][6] When he was first hired, Paul Dini was lighting models for Filmation. His father was a friend of Prescott's. During college, Dini was doing freelance scripts for Filmation. He sent the studio a script, and was given some work, writing some Quacula and Heckle and Jeckle episodes.^[6][21][22]

A panel of children's television experts assembled by TV Guide criticized the series, referring to it as "mindless and monotonous" with "relentless violence-based humor".^[2] After the series premiered, cartoonist Scott Shaw! filed suit against Filmation due to the fact that he had created a character named Duckula for the comic book Quack! #1 (July 1976), published by Star*Reach. Shaw! had been alerted by friends at Filmation that they had copies of Quack! on hand during production, and that Quacula's character model sheet seemed to be one of Bob Clampett's Daffy Duck with Duckula's features overlaid onto it (Shaw! would recruit Clampett as an expert witness). Additionally, Duckula had his own bear supporting character named Bearanboltz, a dim-witted pastiche of Frankenstein's monster. The matter was settled out of court by Filmation with Shaw! for $30,000, and after 16 episodes Quacula was dropped from the show. The show was shortened to a half-hour in 1980, and was moved to Sundays in its final season.^[1][23][24] In 1982, "The Great Space Chase" was re-edited into an 80-minute movie which had a limited release to theaters. It later appeared on home video.^[25][5]

• Alan Oppenheimer – Mighty Mouse, Oil Can Harry, Swifty, Narrator, Additional Voices^[26][27]
• Diane Pershing – Pearl Pureheart, Additional Voices^[26][27]
• Frank Welker – Heckle, Jeckle, Quacula, Theodore H. Bear, Additional Voices^[26][27]
• Lou Scheimer (uncredited) – Additional Voices^[26][27]
• Erika Scheimer (uncredited) - Additional Voices (episode 4)