"Breaking The Mold: The Re-Making of Mighty Mouse" 

Fun Fact: When the show was being pitched, one of the first few rejected ideas from John K and Bakshi was actually going to be Ren and Stimpy. Now imagine that.

We all have the thank Ralph and many of the other animators under his mentorship for paving the way for the Animation Renaissance that lasted from the late 80's til the mid-2000's. Without him or Mighty-Mouse, we wouldn't have Ren & Stimpy, Batman: The Animated Series, Powerpuff Girls, Animaniacs, Dexter’s Lab, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Rocko’s Modern Life, 2 Stupid Dogs, or even future Adult Swim shows, the list goes on.

Bruce Timm, John Kricfalusi and Ralph Bakshi on the same show... damn those were the days.

My favorite Ralph story is that he started out in Terrytunes doing painting or some minor thing but he wanted to draw, so he moved his drawing table down to the artist pool and started taking work. He was so good, the office let everyone upstairs taht wanted to come downstairs to draw. Great initiative.

Man, working for Bakshi looks like fun! He seems like a really cool boss/guy to work for.

So nice to see Ralph in person explaining himself here. For many years I only heard the myths and rumors of him as this insane tyrant. Yet I always admired his work, and that he got into so many facets and launched so many talents. So how crazy could he be? Nice to see he's simply driven to challenge than radical to care less. Which I think many still view him as. He should get his due BIG TIME now I'd say!

John K in his better days, before he went from bad to worse both IRL and later on in animation.

I wondered why the show got cancelled, still love the line, "I had a date with destiny but she stood me up."

Wow, this show was before The SImpsons and before Tiny Toons animations!

"Now I know why they call television a medium. Because everything on it is neither rare or well done." xD Best line ever!!! I miss Mighty Mouse. I used to have the episode where Ed Bell said that line. "I can't do it." After that it showed the entire studio staff yelling and throwing papers around. It was from the episode where MM was about to marry Pearl, his sweetheart, and he imagined what married life would be. It was entire episode that parodied "I Love Lucy." "TO THE MOON PEARL!!!" *Pearl uppercuts MM to the moon* ..."she's been practicing her uppercut."

I remember watching this as a kid and I knew that time that something off was going on with this show, that it wasn't so entirely innocent.

Right at the end where they did their Ralph Bakshi impressions: sounds like John K got the worst of it all from Ralph. LOL!

Thank You, John K!

I thank you for sharing this. Favorite'd for sure, and I'll prob link this video from my channel. Great back story here. I'm the world's largest collector of Ren & Stimpy merchandise, and stuff like this really pieces together the moments that allowed them to come to be. Thanks again!

I remember how much I enjoyed this show as a kid and how it stood out from all the other cartoons.

11:25 Right there sitting next to each other is the inspiration behind the look and character of Pinky & the Brain

I'm just here for John K.

Groundbreaking series to be sure. Unique animation and writing approach that definitely made Mighty Mouse a more interesting character than in his original Terrytoons version. Should have had a longer run if it wasn't for the flower-petal incident. Mike Kazaleh has a RU-vid page currently...user comments are disabled on all of his videos. Make of that what you will.

Holy crap, I had forgotten the art style of the Bakshi-helmed MM was a similar "near-abstract" to that blamed on John Kricfalusi.

These guys are legends. The young so called artists of today wouldn't survive

Used to watch this show all the time with my kids...;)

I loved Mighty Mouse, and I still have all of them on VHS. Subversive as hell.

All these years I thought Mighty Mouse had one cartoon. (The one with the wolves chasing a little sheep).

I saw that flower girl episode when I was little. I didn't remember the origin; just that it seemed messed up in a very good way.

This show was such a breath of fresh air at the time - a review called Mighty Mouse "The hippest rodent on Saturday morning tv since Pee-Wee Herman".

I just realized that without Ralph or John, we wouldn't have the humor today's cartoons have. Fritz the Cat proved animation can be for adults too, and while Ren & Stimpy also showed this, it had humor that you wouldn't see in any cartoon at the time.

I love these guys. Thank God they grovelled to the networks to get their ideas made so that we can enjoy the fruits of their laborious insanity!! It's comedy gold!!!

I was a huge fan, I was in high school and I would get up and watch Mighty mouse, and Pee Wee's playhouse!

I was thirteen and I knew this was different, the best on TV. Probably my last year of watching sat. morn. toons. Last year I bought a toy, or asked for one for my 12th birthday, a sharkticon transformer. anyway, I recorded two or three episodes of Mighty Mouse on the VCR and kept the tapes for years until in desuetude they decomposed and bacame holiday tinsel snappers. Elwey and the Tree Weasels was my favorite episode.

Ungodly looking characters and I ain't talking about the cartoons.

So John K was basically Philip J Fry in the '80s?

God dammit i never even really knew about this aside from a few mentions of this cartoon when i read of John K's filmography like it had some kind of significance but i didn't knew it was this significant

I was probably about 3 or 4 when I watched this show, it was one of favorites. A year or so later I remember watching Beany and Cecil on Saturday Mornings and loving that as well. And then when I was 11 or 12 Ren and Stimpy became my favorite cartoon. I had no idea John K. was behind all of those cartoons. It might be one of the reasons why I have such a twisted sense of humor.

Those old behind-the-scenes... John K. was an absolute CUTIE

One thing I don't understand is why the animation seems so loose and sloppy, especially with how every episode was animated by an entire animation company. It just seems really weird, considering that this show was produced by Ralph Bakshi of all people, who was able to make very fantastic looking films with only a hand full of people.

Just Roll with it baby *tsk* Just Roll with it

Amazing!

I had read The Fountainhead and seen the film, admittedly when I was in a heavy Rush phase (2112 was partially inspired by Ayn Rand's book Anthem)

Ralph Bakshi sounds like Mark Hamill trying to impersonate Ralph Bakshi.

Thanks for this!

Something and its core was broken and corrupted and disgusting and obscene. It disturbed me as a child but I see now what it was. And I can't turn away. As I couldn't then.

Question: Is there an easy way to find out who wrote and directed an episode for this show Individually, because as far as I'm aware (aside from the end credits which lazily lump every artist together) this show's stories just open with the episode's title and that's it. So you can't really tell who was in charge of what. Is there a website, a blog post, something?!

I love Banski's LOTR...wish he got to finish it

29:49 Lol how the hell is that man, but it hillarious he yells so much, that he fall out from his chair.

This is an awesome video. Thanks for uploading!

I was obsessed with this cartoon as a small child!

Great documentary. Thanks

I like the Deputy Dawg parts

Not into "Mighty Mouse", but this was great!

its weird knowing what john k did while watching this

Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Whats the music at the beginning someone tell me

wow awesome stuff.

rev. wildman disliked this video

It should be noted that The Simpsons shorts preceded this.

Wait, did John just shit on the hand that allowed him to make his show? lol

1:52 And Sea-Man.

I remember this kids cartoon show and it's neat.

Is Pat Pinney and Maggie Roswell in this? I’m so curious to see what they both looked like back then when this was made… But I really can’t find much…

These guys sure are impressed with themselves for making a show that's basically unwatchable. Oh well, at least they had a zany work environment!

omg, Ralph sounds like Dumb Pig Cop from Fritz the Cat.

Yeah but your making it worse bye saying "I'm not the right race" your only puting yourself down

I want to make cartoons for a living and work for a cartoon company... However, I'm not the right skin tone, so I have to stick to youtube.

Ralph Bakshi really comes off as a Jew