DuckTales
Walt Disney Television Animation began production on "DuckTales" in 1986, with the intention of having it ready for a premiere in 1987, and its episodes airing within a 4-6 p.m. placement, at a time when more children would be watching television, rather than within a morning timeslot. Seeking to create a cartoon with high quality animation, in comparison with other 1980s cartoons which had much lower budgets, the animation was handled by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, having previously been used on two other Disney cartoons in 1985 – "The Wuzzles" and "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears" – both of which had demonstrated better quality cartoons on TV than in previous years. Although the Japanese provided them with more available artists for the cartoon, this also increased production costs, due to the currency exchange rates between the yen and the dollar, though Disney intended to invest heavily in its "DuckTales"s production, with plans to recuperate its money by having it syndicated via its syndication unit, Buena Vista Television, with a 2.5/3.5 syndicator/station ad split. While this was a concept that worked well with live-action TV reruns, it had only ever been used with inexpensive cartoon series in the past that either recycled theatrical shorts from decades past or only featured limited, low-budget animation, and thus had never been attempted with a high quality animated series, with the heavy investment considered a risky move.
Mickey Mouse Adventures
Mickey Mouse Adventures was a comic book first published by Disney Comics from 1990 to 1991. It featured Mickey Mouse as the main character along with other characters from the Mickey Mouse universe. Somewhat similar in style to the animated series "DuckTales", it was based on the continuity of earlier print material starring Mickey, mainly Floyd Gottfredson's stories in the comic strip. These stories usually featured Mickey, with the help of longtime friends Goofy, Donald Duck, Pluto, Minnie Mouse, Horace Horsecollar, and Clarabelle Cow, having adventures in or out of Mouseton against adversaries such as The Phantom Blot, Big Bad Pete, Emil Eagle, and even newcomer villains like Wiley Wildbeest, Ms. Vixen, and Prince Penguin. The main feature was written by contemporary writers such as Michael T. Gilbert, Marv Wolfman, and others. The back-up features were reprints of classic Mickey Mouse comic stories. The comic ran for 18 issues from April 1990 to September 1991.