Mickey Mouse (originally Mickey Mouse Sound Cartoons) is a character-based series of 130 animated short films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The films, which introduced Disney's most famous cartoon character, were released on a regular basis from 1928 to 1953 with four additional shorts released between 1983 and 2013. The series is notable for its innovation with sound synchronization and character animation, and also introduced well-known characters such as Minnie Mouse, Pluto, and Goofy.
The name "Mickey Mouse" was first used in the films' title sequences to refer specifically to the character, but was used from 1935 to 1953 to refer to the series itself as in "Walt Disney presents a Mickey Mouse." In this sense "a Mickey Mouse" was a shortened form of "a Mickey Mouse sound cartoon" which was used in the earliest films. Films from 1929 to 1935 which were re-released during this time also used this naming convention, but it was not used for the three shorts released between 1983 and 1995 (Mickey's Christmas Carol, The Prince and the Pauper, and Runaway Brain). Mickey's name was also used occasionally to market other films which were formally part of other series. Examples of this include several Silly Symphonies, Don Donald (1937), and Goofy and Wilbur (1939).
Mickey Mouse began production in April 1928 after the Disney studio lost the license to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The first two films, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho, were previewed in theaters but failed to pick up a distributor. For the third film, Disney added synchronized sound, a technology that was still in its early stages at the time. Steamboat Willie debuted in New York in November 1928 and was an instant success. The revenues from the film provided the studio with much needed resources, and the studio quickly began to produce new cartoons as well as releasing sound versions of the first two.