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| Cartoon Stars Re-Animated |
This post probably should have gone up on Halloween, but we'll have to settle for early November.
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| Title card for Famous Studios' Casper |
Casper the Friendly Ghost is a character that originated at Famous Studios, the cartoon studio that usaed to be Fleischer Studios after it was purchased by Paramount. The details of his creation are debated, but he was created by either Seymour Reit or Joe Oriolo. Oriolo claimed he created Casper to ease his four-year-old daughters fear of the dark. He created a cardboard cutout of a friendly ghost to hang from a tree to show his daughter that not all ghosts were scary. Reit claims that he created Casper for a short story andgave the story to Oriolo to illustrate. They intended to sell the initial story to Fleischer Studios where they both worked or to a children's storybook publisher. They eventually did line up a deal with the publisher Grossett & Dunlap. While Reit was away doing military duty, Oriolo sold the rights to the book to Famous Studios (formerly Fleischer) for $175. That one time payment was the only pay Oriolo received for what would eventually become a series of animated cartoons. Reit didn't receive any money at all.
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| An early sketch of Casper. Possibly for the storybook? |
Under Famous Studios and later Paramount Cartoon Studios, there were 55 Casper theatrical shorts produced and released. The grand majority of them follow the same formula. Casper is lonely because he wants a friend and other ghosts tease him because he doesn't want to scare anyone. He sets out to make a friend, encounters some trouble, but then saves the day from some calamity and makes multiple friends in the process. So, despite him making a whole bunch of friends in each cartoon, the status quo would reset by the next cartoon. While formulas are common in theatrical cartoons, this one has received some criticism for feeling repetitive.
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| Casper's first design, as a roly-poly little fellow. |
Now, Casper's cartoon stardom would not live forever, but he would find another platform. Casper first started appearing in comic books in 1949 from St. John Publications. But it was in 1959 that Harvey Comics started publishing Casper comic books. It was in these comics that Casper's current design was formed and where they started using what I refer to as the “Casper rule”. Basically, the idea that Casper was not the ghost of a dead child (hinted at in Famous Studios cartoons) but that ghosts were just a type of magical creatures separate from humans and that ghost children are simply born from ghost parents. This rule comes in and out of vogue with different versions of the character. Anyway, in 1959, Harvey Comics bought the character of Casper outright, along with other Famous Studios characters like Little Audrey, Baby Huey and Herman and Katnip. They would join the stable with Harvey in-house creations like Little Dot, Little Lotta, Hot Stuff and Richie Rich. Casper was a very prolific character under Harvey Comics, having 36 different titles over the course of his run there (note: the record for highest number of different comic titles for a single character actually goes to Casper's Harvey Comics compatriot Richie Rich, with over 50 different titles). Anyway, it's such that more people probably know Casper as a comic book character than as a character from theatrical cartoons. It also led to spin-off characters like Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch and The Ghostly Trio (note: The Ghostly Trio's names seem to change frequently. Originally they were Fatso, Fusso and Lazo. Then Eeko, Stretcho and Fatso. Then in the 1995 film, Stretch, Fatso and Stinkie. Fatso remains constant). After Harvey's run ended, Casper would appear as a licensed character in some other comics like Arden Entertainment's 2009 miniseries Casper and the Spectrals (I actually rather liked that one).
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| A typical Harvey Comics Casper title. |
Casper has also had his share of television cartoons. Five in total. They are Matty's Funday Funnies (sponspored by Mattel, hence the name), The New Casper Cartoon Show, Casper and the Angels (a Hanna-Barbera production that starred Casper but also tried to capitalize on the popularity of Charlie's Angels and ChiPs but set in the future. I'm not even kidding), The Harveytoons Show, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (this one was a spin-off from 1995 Casper movie, which I will talk about further on. It also apparently doesn't have an intro, so I linked a compilation of clips) and Casper's Scare School.
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| Casper and the Spectrals. Featuring new takes on Casper, Wendy and Hot Stuff. |
People around my age and a bit younger will probably remember Casper best from Amblin and Universal's 1995 film Casper. The film was popular and was one of the first to feature a CGI main character. One of the memorable things it did was discarding the previously mentioned “Casper rule” and gave a back story to who Casper was before he became a ghost. In this version, he was a 12 year-old boy who died of pneumonia which he caught after he stayed out playing in the snow too late. Loss, grief and having trouble moving on become central themes of the movie. The film also made some odd choices with the character. Like playing the friendship between Casper and Christina Ricci's character Kat Harvey (Ha! I see what you did there!) as something more akin to a romance. I guess they decided that if they were going to bother going dark and grown-up on the origin story, they might as well pull the trigger on that too. Anyway, the movie spawned two straight-to-video prequels Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy. The latter of which featured future Disney Channel star Hilary Duff as fellow Harvey Comics character Wendy the Good Little Witch. It also spawned a sequely cartoon on Fox Kids which was apparently called The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (I watched that cartoon when it aired and don't remember anyone ever calling it that). Anyway, it followed the events of the movie and included other Harvey characters like Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost and his girlfriend Poil (not Pearl. Poil. The Brooklyn accent is built into her name). It also followed the movies vibe of having a more adolescent Casper. Not by playing up any romance this time, but by hgaving Casper be a bit more of a little smart aleck.
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| Casper and Kat Harvey (Christina Richie) from the 1995 Casper movie. |
Casper's appearances have been sparing over the past few years since Casper's Scare School ended in 2012. He appeared in a Geico insurance commercial in 2019. He also appeared in an episode of the Netflix cartoon Harvey Girls Forever which stars other Harvey Comics characters Little Audrey, Little Dot and Little Lotta. But that's about it.
So, is there a future for Casper the Friendly Ghost in the current media landsape?
Well, first let's figure out where he is. He started at Famous Studios, which was owned by Paramount. Then he got bought by Harvey Comics. Then, Harvey Comics got bought by Classic Media (an IP firm that has also bought up the Jay Ward library, UPA, Veggie Tales and Western Media. Western Publishing being the parent company of both Dell Comics and Little Golden Books. Along with probably others). Then Classic Media was bought by Dreamworks, which is currently owned by Universal Studios. So, Casper is ultimately owned by Universal (the same studio that made the 1995 movie) but is specifically part of the Dreamworks stable.
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| Casper. Just a friendly little guy. |
As for Casper's future? I don't know. Looking at the character's history, specifically the story about him being made for a four-year-old girl, the initial sale to a storybook publisher, the pro-social nature of the character and the simple story formula, I can't help but think the best recourse would be to skew even younger. He feels like a character designed especially for little kids, unlike other theatrical cartoon characters that were designed for kids and adults alike. Casper as a preschool show? Why not? I could see him talking to his TV friends from behind the screen like some sort of spectral Dora the Explorer. And if that route can be taken with franchises like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Star Trek and Doctor Who, it seems like an easy leap for a friendly little ghost.
I do hope Casper has some kind of pop culture future. I can't help but root for a character whose own theme song says they're “kind to every living creature”.
