MOUSE TOY
AIRED: Season 3, Episode 2; Season 4, Episode 4
THE DETECTIVES: Wes Cowan and Elyse Luray
THE PLACE: San Francisco, California
THE CASE:
Popular history has it that Mickey Mouse was born from a drawing sketched on a napkin by Walt Disney during a train ride from New York to Los Angeles in 1928.
Disney's wife detested the mouse's original name "Mortimer" and suggested "Mickey."
Mickey Mouse became the biggest fictional character moneymaker in the world, bringing in over $5.8 billion annually.
A San Francisco toy collector, however, believes his small mouse figurine may turn the legend of Mickey on its ears.
With a red label on its chest that reads "Micky" and a patent label on the bottom of one foot that says "Pat. Aug. 17, 1926," the figure appears to have been produced two years before Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse.
History Detectives heads to California, New York and Pennsylvania to trace the ancestry of America's most famous mouse and shed light on the bare-knuckle business fights in the toy industry.
More Leads
Book - Broken Toy by Craig L. Andrews
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