Several years ago when I was a kid, there was this big controversy about Mighty Mouse doing cocaine… I think. If I remember correctly, in the cartoon Mighty Mouse inhaled something when he felt depressed about something and whatever it was helped him fight crime. Anyone else remember this, or am I the victim of a “he-said, she-said” urban legend?
“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true” -Albert Einstein
You’re not imagining things- there WAS a controversy over Mighty Mouse a few years back. I haven’t watched Mighty Mouse in many, many years (not since the OLD cartoons, with the villainous Oil Can Harry were on TV), but about a decade back, Ralph Bakshi (the guy who did the x-rated cartoon “Fritz the Cat”) began doing all-new Mighty Mouse cartoons on TV. From what I’ve read/heard, in Bakshi’s cartoons, Mighty Mouse liked to relax by sniffing flowers. Some folks on the religious right suspected (perhaps correctly, knowing Ralph Bakshi) that the flower snifing was a veiled reference to getting high on drugs, and raised holy hell!
PErsonally, knowing what I know about Bakshi, and about the weirdness of professional animators in general, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were all kinds of veiled references to sex, drugs and all kinds of other things in the cartoons… but this one strikes me as VERY veiled indeed, and no little kid was likely to get the joke. And even if a 7 year old watching Mighty Mouse DID get the joke, what are the odds that he’s going to start doing crack as a result?
As usual, the religious right overreacted. And, as usual, they came across looking silly.
Maybe MM got a glimpse of Jessica’s “nether region” in the Roger Rabbit movie. 
Drove him to drugs.
Peace,
mangeorge
Something that might have contributed to this story: In the original cartoons, the mouse became Mighty Mouse after taking a whole lot of pills. Nevermind that they were a long series of vitamins.
The flower sniffing is pre-Bakshi. didn’t happen as often though. pehaps bakshi saw that and just thoght"Heh,heh" and expanded on it.
Man, I’ve got a (rather fuzzily scanned)jpeg of Jessicas nether regions, I don’t know if it would drive me to drugs but I might give serious thought to where the relationship with Pear Pureheart was going. for one thing every time she gets in trouble she bursts into song.
The pubic area in early Playboy photos was airbrushed out. Imagine the astonishment the first time young lads saw the real thing. Also, I imagine, in pubescent girls when they started to grow hair.
Peace,
mangeorge
There were actually three distinct waves of MM cartoons. The very first ones had a very fluid animation style and are distinguishable because EVERYTHING is sung. They were SO great…
then MM entered a sort of “long dark tea-time of the soul” when the animation was wooden, the plots awful, and the experience generally not worth the bother. Sort of like Saturday Night Live in the early Eighties, which if you ask me really put the “turd” in “Saturday.”
The Bakshi cartoons were fabulous in their own way, but even as I watched them and loved them, I knew they would not be on network TV for long…too hip and edgy for comfort.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
The flower sniffing did occur under Bakshi’s regime and was the victim of another of Rev. Wildmon’s own drugs of self-righteousness and paranoia.
In one episode of the first year that Bakshi had control of the MM production (with Wildmon already predicting that Bakshi planned to corrupt America’s youth), MM visited a group of kids (orphans?) and one little girl gave him a bouquet of flowers. He tucked the flowers into his cape (or wherever it is that leotard-clad superheroes store things) and went about his business.
Later in the episode, the girl (all the kids?) was/were kidnapped. When MM heard of the kidnapping, he pulled out the slightly faded bouquet, sniffed it, and went off to perform mighty deeds of rescue.
Wildmon deliberately mis-characterized the scene as “MM getting strength from sniffing something, probably drugs.” Wildmon’s group raised enough of a howl that when the episode was re-run during the summer, the network had ordered the scene snipped. Wildmon and his band of loonies then declared that this proved their original contention since the network wouldn’t have snipped it unless the scene had shown the use of drugs. (Never mind that the standard cowardly network is much more concerned about hits to the advertising budget than anything remotely like “truth.”)
Tom~
I don’t recall the flower sniffing (although it strikes a vague chord), but I do seem to remember an episode where Mighty Mouse got sprayed with a smoke cloud from an insect-spray type thing (it looked like smoke), whereupon he forgot his crime-fighting mission and just sort of floated on his back in a happy daze – I always thought that looked like a veiled drug reference.
Of course, MM also seemed to have a socialistic kinda bent – I remember a lot of times the mice were like the oppressd prole minions and the cat(s) the capitalist bosses, who MM freed them from. Of course, I’m crazy.
You guys are killing me !!!
Jessica’s nether regions ???
Next you’re going to tell me that Superman is on steroids and that Mr.Peabody and Sherman are more than just…well, you know
The worst thing that can possibly happen is not be used for something by someone - Kurt Vonnegut
Superman is an illegal alien. as all Sders know. Peabody and Sherman? No way, now Wilma Flintstone and Betty Ruble is a different story.
Well, actually Mighty Mouse is on steroids. And he’s not anatomically correct. That’s why the sight of Jessicas honey pot 
drove him to such distraction.
Jessicas story is on snopes, and they’ve got pictures.
Peace,
mangeorge
hee hee, I got my pikcher awready. i am offering peeks at 25 cents a minute. i gots little mermaid stuff too,even the renuzit can. but my favorite is the robot from Metropolis.
I’ll give you one robot for two little mermaids.
Renuzit can??
Peace,
mangeorge