A rough image of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has been brought out of the Walt Disney Company archive for the unveiling of their new video game, Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two:
The mischievous Oswald was co-created by Disney before Mickey, but he was lost in a 1928 contract dispute with Universal Studios. Oswald hopped back to Disney in 2006 when CEO Bob Iger brokered a deal that sent sportscaster Al Michaels to Universal-NBC. Oswald’s first appearance since his return came in 2010s “Epic Mickey” as the ruler of a forgotten realm.
“We’ve always known about the character and loved him and wished that we could do things with him, but he wasn’t a character that belonged to us,” said Walt Disney Co. archive director Becky Cline. “In 2006, we were over the moon when Bob Iger made (the deal).”
Miss Cline noted that most of the drawings from Disney’s early Oswald cartoons were destroyed, likely because there was a lack of storage when his studio moved to a new facility in Burbank, California, in 1939. She said the image of Oswald comes from a box of drawings that was found in the 1970s and has been preserved in the Disney archives for the past 40 years.
The image, drawn on paper in graphite, comes from the 1928 animated short film “Sky Scrappers.” It shows Oswald shielding himself from falling bricks with an umbrella.