Why not a Frog Instead of a Mouse?

While searching the internet for any topic which featured a frog... (no kidding!)... we stumbled across old cartoons of "Flip the Frog" drawn by U.B. Iwerks. Anyone who knows animation history knows of U.B. Iwerks, the man responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney cartoons. U.B Iwerks was also responsible for creating Mickey Mouse.

U.B. Iwerks drawing Mickey

Flip the Frog was Iwerks second most famous cartoon character. He appeared in the time when Iwerks started his own cartoon production company after a falling out between him & Walt Disney.

Despite a contract deal with MGM to produce cartoon comedy shorts, Flip the Frog never made a huge splash (pun intended), as Disney's Mickey Mouse, despite having the Iwerks animation magic and comedy so much a signature of early Walt Disney cartoons.

Guess lightning doesn't strike twice, and Flip the Frog has been relegated to the ash heap of animation history, a footnote in the life of a legendary pioneer of cartooning.

Still, check out Flip the Frog, in a early cinemacolor MGM short from 1930, which features Flip in a piano/violin duet, with a vaguely familiar Mouse.