Trivia / The Mickey Mouse Club

• Dueling Shows: The 90's version, The All New Mickey Mouse Club, was this with All That on Nickelodeon, which followed a pretty similar format of short segments with laugh tracks in them, a mainly child and teenage cast and live musical performances. However, despite launching the careers of quite a few famous people, The All New Mickey Mouse Club lost to All That because it was more popular, launching two spin-offs and a movie and airing in re-runs on several networks long after its' initial run. It probably didn't help matters, however, that during All That's network run, Nickelodeon had already transitioned to an advertiser-sponsored basic cable channel, while Disney Channel was still operating as a pay cable channel, and thus, didn't have as much full national distribution as Nickelodeon had. Additionally, MMC was nearing the end of its run around the time that All That premiered.
• Edited for Syndication: The 1950s run, whose episodes were an hour long, was rerun in syndication beginning in 1962 as edited half-hour episodes. Newly-filmed segments were added to the reruns, some of which featured Jimmie Dodd before his untimely passing in 1964. Many markets stretched the reruns back to an hour by adding locally produced segments involving educational subjects and live kid audience participation à la Romper Room. The reruns proved popular enough to last until 1968 in certain markets. The 30-minute episodes were later aired in syndication again in 1975-77 and on the Disney Channel five days a week from its launch in 1983 until the 1989 revival debuted, followed by occasional airings until 2002.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For most of the show's incarnations, this is the only way to see the show aside from a handful of DVD releases. The most notable example is the 70's version, which unlike the original and 90's version doesn't have any DVD releases.
  • For the 1950s version, there was a 10-volume VHS collection between the 1980s and mid-90s, which featured episodes from the third season (volumes 7-9 also featured episodes from the syndicated run). On DVD, the first week of episodes from the first season were released as part of the Walt Disney Treasures collection in 2004. In 2005, five episodes previously included from the VHS collection were released on a "Best-Of" DVD in 2005. The Walt Disney Treasures collection's stand-alone DVD releases of the serials also included complete and previously unreleased Mickey Mouse Club episodes as bonus features, including "Spin and Marty" (featuring a season 1 episode), "The Hardy Boys" (featuring the season 2 premiere), and "Annette" (featuring two season 3 episodes).
  • Disney+ has the first five episodes of the '50s series, and a Wonderful World of Disney special starring the '70s Mouseketeers, The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World^note sourced from a videotape that retained commercials from its 1977 broadcast. However, it doesn't have any episodes of the '90s Mickey Mouse Club.
• The Original Darrin: Even though Jimmy MacDonald had taken over as Mickey starting in 1946, Walt Disney would reprise his role as Mickey in the 1950s version.
• The Other Darrin: The 1977 revival marked the first time Wayne Allwine voiced Mickey, replacing Jimmy MacDonald. He would go on to become the official voice of Mickey in most media for the next 32 years until his death in 2009.
• Romance on the Set: Tony Lucca and Keri Russell (both of whom joined The All New Mickey Mouse Club in Season 4) dated on and off for eight years.
  • Another MMC example being Damon Pampolina^note who would later join the spinoff band "The Party" along with four other older cast members in Chase Hampton, Tiffini Hale, DeeDee Magno and Albert Fields; who dated fellow cast member Brandy Brown for 10 years before the two split up.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite its popularity, the original 1950s run came to an end because Disney and ABC could not come to terms for a renewal. Disney's attempts at a Channel Hop were thwarted by ABC, who refused to allow them to air the show on another network. Disney subsequently sued ABC for damages and won, but part of the settlement was that this show and Zorro could not be aired on any major network, which is why the two subsequent revivals were done via syndication and the Disney Channel respectively. That restriction became moot when Disney acquired ABC, but no revival or reruns have aired there.
• Suppressed Mammaries: Annette Funicello and the other female Mouseketeers, supposedly at Walt Disney's personal insistence. Funicello's rapid development in particular became fodder for comedians.
• What Could Have Been:
  • During a 2013 interview with the "Stories of the Magic" podcast; 1990s Mouseketeer Jennifer McGill mentioned that she, along with Chase Hampton and Tiffini Hale, had auditioned for a proposed movie based on the original Mickey Mouse Club titled "Why, Because We Like You"; only for the movie to be tabled shortly after final auditions due to the 1988 Writer's Guild strike; resulting in their tapes being moved over to the 1989-95 Mickey Mouse Club auditions and their subsequent casting.
  • According to this article, Jessica Simpson, Nick Carter, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Kirsten Dunst, Ryan Phillippe, Joey Fatone, Brittany Murphy and Donald Faison were among those who auditioned to be Mousketeers in the 1989-95 revival, only to be rejected.
  • Courtney Love auditioned to be in the 1977 revival, only to be rejected.
  • Paul Williams and Candice Bergen were among the thousands who auditioned to be in the original 1950s version, only to be rejected.