FELIX KEPT ON WALKING [438]

Original and current versions of Felix the Cat and "Felix the cat"

Felix the Cat is an animated cartoon character that first appeared in the cartoon “Feline Follies” in 1919. Like a hand-drawn Charlie Chaplin, but with a tail that magically transformed into anything needed in the moment, Felix’s surreal cartoons were a big hit in the 1920s, making him a mascot to celebrities and sports teams, and entering homes in toy form. Losing out to Mickey Mouse by the end of the decade, Felix continued in newspaper comics strips and on television, now carrying a magic bag that changed shape as required. Having not starred in a major film or series in over twenty years, Felix survives as intellectual property owned by DreamWorks Animation since 2014, his image licensed for merchandise in a manner not unlike that of another character not seen on screen in years, Betty Boop. 

“Felix the cat” has been the mascot of Felix cat food since 1989. Originally a manufacturer of dry cat biscuits in Biggleswade, Felix Catfood Ltd was bought by the Quaker Oats Company in 1970, and a relaunched product range included wet food in tins. A new advertisement campaign launched in 1989, including television for the first time, which featured a realistically-drawn black-and-white cat, named for the product and behaving as mischievously as any regular cat. This campaign continues to the present day, surviving the brand’s change in ownership to Spillers, the former makers of Kattomeat, and to Nestlé Purina Healthcare.

Searching “Felix the Cat” on Amazon.co.uk brings up “Felix” ahead of Felix, and while that is an indicator of which one has consistently made more product in the last thirty-five years, it still annoys me – I never got used to one of the UK’s Brexit negotiators being named David Frost, when they were not the same David Frost that interviewed Richard Nixon and presented “Through the Keyhole”.

There is precedence in the UK, also involving cat food and a cartoon cat, of something arriving with the same name, but it resulted in a name change to avoid confusion: Spillers already had a cat food named “Top Cat”, meaning the Hanna-Barbera series was renamed “Boss Cat” on television from 1962. This cat food is no longer produced, so there is no longer any confusion. Later in the 1960s, Marvel Comics were able to introduce their own superhero named “Captain Marvel” in the absence of the original Fawcett Comics character, now largely known as “Shazam” due to new owner DC Comics being legally unable to use their original name to title their books.

With DreamWorks’ copyright for Felix the Cat extending to “prerecorded goods” and “musical instruments, namely, guitars” with licensing of that image from there, there is the space for two Felix-es to exist, and because they exist in industries separate from each other, there should be no issue, apart from my own cognitive dissonance.

What I do find amusing is that, while DreamWorks’ copyright covers the later version of Felix the Cat, with a rounder head, larger eyes, no whiskers, longer legs and shorter body than the 1920s version – this also means that, like the “Steamboat Willie” Mickey Mouse, the original Felix the Cat is in the public domain – the cat food “Felix” that continues to appear in animated ads on television was recently redrawn with larger eyes, a more human-like smile and, like the original Felix, their own song “It’s Great to Be a Cat”, sung by Robbie Williams. However, this will remain contained within the space of an ad break, and away from the original Felix.

RUN RABBIT, RUN RABBIT, RUN RUN RUN [375]

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an animated cartoon character introduced almost a century ago that is now having their moment, having stayed fresh through little exposure. Most notable for having been taken away from Walt Disney in a contract dispute with the series’ distributor, leading to his creation of Mickey Mouse, Oswald has made only sporadic appearances in video games, cartoon shorts, theme park appearances and merchandising since The Walt Disney Company regained rights to the character in 2006, but the appearance of two new shorts in December 2022, one to advertise a collaboration between Disney and fashion brand Givenchy, have given Oswald new vitality.

Oswald appears superficially to be a rabbit version of his 1920s contemporary Felix the Cat, and the “rubber hose” animation, frantic stories and stretchy cartoon logic in Oswald’s cartoons were pioneered by Felix, whose tail could turn into objects just like Oswald’s ears can. To a modern audience, these cartoons could appear either to be jerky, slow or repetitive, which is down to the innovation and sophistication in animated shorts produced later by Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM, taking advantages of using plastic cels over paper, multi-plane camerawork, as well as colour and sound. Watching these earlier cartoons is like bridging the gap between what animated cartoons became, and newspaper strip cartoons like “Mutt & Jeff” and “Krazy Kat”, which themselves received their own animated series.

Likewise, both Oswald and Felix suffered from the rise of Mickey Mouse, and the change in direction of animation and story towards a more realistic and natural style, but while Felix the Cat retained a similar appearance through major reboots in the 1930s and beyond, Oswald was redesigned multiple times by successor animators Hugh Harman & Rudolph Ising, and by Walter Lantz, who later created Woody Woodpecker. With the stylised black rabbit design supplanted by shorter limbs, then Mickey-like white gloves and shorts, and a more childlike personality, and again by a very Disney-like realistic rabbit design, the character that became known as just “Oswald Rabbit” had no connection to the Disney original. 

The 2006 deal with NBC Universal that traded Oswald for the services of ABC and ESPN American football commentator Al Michaels was for the trademark of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”, the twenty-seven Disney-produced cartoons produced in 1927-29, and anything physical relating to them that Universal still possessed – anything made from then remains with Universal in almost complete obscurity, leaving Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to be known as only Walt Disney’s original creation, existing in one particular moment of animation history, untouched by time or entropy. Mickey Mouse, personality bland-ed out of him by changing times, tastes and placement as a corporate mascot, comes off worse to me as a result, although the more recent “Mickey Mouse” TV series produced by Paul Rudish reintroduced some of the irascibility the character first displayed in 1928, which over time had been subsumed into Donald Duck.

The new Oswald short, directed by “Pocahontas” director Eric Goldberg, and the new Givenchy fashion campaign, are notable for featuring hand-drawn animation, with the clothes featuring Oswald with the aim of capturing “the spirit of adventure”. A special animated billboard has also appeared in Times Square, New York. There is the sense that Disney is building towards something. It may prove to be the beginning of another Disney franchise, but with this character still being relatively untouched, it has the potential to be its most vibrant.