Mickey Mouse
American cartoon character and mascot of The Walt Disney Company
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime corporate icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company and a figurehead of American animation, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white gloves. He is often depicted with a cast of characters including his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, his best friends Donald Duck and Goofy, and his nemesis Pete.
Mickey was created as a replacement for a prior character created by Disney, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The character was originally to be named "Mortimer Mouse", until Disney's wife, Lillian, suggested "Mickey". Mickey first appeared in two 1928 shorts Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho (which were not picked up for distribution) before his public debut in Steamboat Willie (1928). The character went on to appear in over 130 films, mostly short films. His relatively few feature films include Fantasia (1940). Since 1930, Mickey has been featured extensively in comic strips (including the Mickey Mouse comic strip, which ran for 45 years) and comic books (such as Mickey Mouse). The character has also been featured in television series such as The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–1996).
“Mickey Mouse” enters the record as american cartoon character and mascot of The Walt Disney Company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mickey, Mouse and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Mickey Mouse” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mickey, Mouse and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11934. VIAF identifies the subject as 217068324. The Library of Congress control number is nb2015012767. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1940, 1930 and 1955.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Mickey Mouse”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Mickey Mouse primary sources, Mickey Mouse archive and Mickey research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mickey Mouse”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Mickey Mouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.