This Mickey Mouse Trivia Quiz - What Do You Know About This Lovable Rodent?

Answer a series of forehead-slapping anecdotal factoids. It's up to you to weigh each fact in each anecdotal factoid. They're tricky. One might seem like total B.S. until it's revealed to be strangely and disturbingly "True." Another anecdotal factoid might seem to contain all solid and verifiable facts until it's revealed to be yet one more big fat garden variety "Bald-Faced Lie." And here's the trickiest part: an anecdotal factoid might even be "Half-True"; in other words, a mishmosh of truths and bald-faced lies, where you don't know where one ends and the other begins, much like the usual slop served by Madison Avenue, Washington D.C., and the Internet in its entirety.

Category: That Lovable Rodent Quiz

Decide for yourself, and mark "T" for "Truth", "F" for "Bald-Faced Lie" or "TF" for "Half-Truth" in the blank slot next to each factoid.

The answers will be revealed on the next page.

1) __ Walt Disney himself was the original voice of Mickey Mouse. After he died, Jimmy Dodd, the former host of television's "The Mickey Mouse Club" took over as Mickey's voice. After Dodd died, Billy West became Mickey's voice. Before that, West was best known as the voice of gross-out Nickelodeon cartoon characters, Ren and Stimpy.

2) __ Mickey Mouse's first on-screen appearance was as a minor background character in one of Disney's "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoons from 1925. When Disney lost the rights for Oswald, he started his own company and made Mickey his new star character.

3) __ The first Mickey Mouse watch came to market in 1933. In the seventies, Timex made both Mickey and Goofy watches. In the Goofy watch, the time-numbers were placed backwards and Goofy's watch-hands moved backwards.

4) __ It's often claimed that Walt Disney's 1928 Mickey cartoon "Steamboat Willie" is the first sound cartoon when, in fact, the first sound cartoon was a 1924 "Sound Cartune" by Max Fleischer (later of Betty Boop fame).

5) __ By the late thirties, Mickey Mouse's popularity was waning; so Walt Disney decided to create a special musical Mickey short called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The short cost him $125,000 to produce. This was a fortune next to the average Disney short, which was about $40,000. The cost was mostly because of the participation of Leopold Stokowski's 100-piece orchestra.

Stokowski suggested that additional music pieces be created to make it a full-length feature. Disney took the suggestion and "Fantasia" was born.

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Here are the answers for the That Loveable Rodent Quiz.

Answers:

A reminder: "T" is for "Truth", "F" is for "Bald-Faced Lie" or "TF" is for "Half-Truth".

1) TF: This anecdote is both true and false. It's true that Walt Disney himself was the original voice of Mickey Mouse. It's false that "Mickey Mouse Club" host Jimmy Dodd, took over as Mickey's voice. It's also false that Billy West is the current voice of Mickey Mouse.

After Walt's passing, Jim MacDonald and then Wayne Allwine took over to voice Mickey.

2) TF: This anecdote is both true and false. It's false that Mickey Mouse's first on-screen appearance was in an "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoon. It's true that Disney lost the rights to his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, causing him to start his own company and make Mickey his new star character.

3) T: It's true that the first Mickey watch came to market in 1933. It's also true that Timex's Goofy watch had numbers placed in reverse order and the watch-hands moved backwards.

4) T: It's true Max Fleischer's 1924 "Sound Cartune" preceded Walt Disney's Mickey cartoon "Steamboat Willie" as the first sound cartoon.

5) T: It's true that "Fantasia" was born from a musical Mickey short called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and a suggestion from conductor Leopold Stokowski.

SOURCES:

http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/characterstandard/mickey/mickey.html

http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/characterstandard/mickey/debut/debut.html

http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/characterstandard/mickey/watch/watch.html

http://www.toonopedia.com/mickey.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(film)#Mickey_Mouse_and_the_birth_of_Fantasia