This is good news!

I remember seeing Oswald posters and such in various Art of Disney and animation books. Dumb question, have any Oswald cartoons been available?
Donna

Well, there were basically three groups of Oswald cartoons: the Disney ones, the Mintz ones and finally the Walter Lantz ones. Some of the Disney ones have appeared through the years on collections of "public domain" cartoons (whether they are actually public domain is questionable). They're not bad - not quite Mickey - more similar to Felix the Cat in my opinion.

Whether they're in the public domain depends on whether their initial copyright registration was renewed in the '60s. If not, then they are in the public domain, if so then they won't enter the public domain until 2022-2023.

Then there is also the trademark issue, if one is on file. Trademarks don't enter the public domain as long as they're maintained so it could be that Disney was also buying Oswald related trademarks from Universal (which would allow them to use the image in marketing and whatnot).

okay, cool and thanks! That gives me a general idea. I never wuite knew how close Oswald might have been to Mickey. Of course, stating the obvious, Mickey went through significant personality changes as he evolved.
So did Ub Iwerks, I find his Flip the Frog cartoon rather crass! Very pre-code toons!

Donna

Ub did some really great crass cartoons in his post Disney years. As well as some really silly cartoons about eggs.

Lordy, there were some 169 Oswald cartoons by Walter Lantz, all the way through 1943. Um, other than via Disney, I've never heard of Oswald. Disney did only 26 Oswald cartoons.

In looking for some info on Oswald, I came up with this site TOONOPEDIA
And I thought my site had too many pages, but my this is informative :snap:

Donna

I remember wishing that Oswald had made an appearance in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. I thought it would have been fun to see him walk past Mickey and say something derogatory about Charles Mintz. (I was also disappointed that Screwy Squirrel was nowhere to be seen.)