Well it says Walt Lantz on the panels, I guess he was involved?

Poor Oswald, don’t you just love when they ‘cuten’ up a great cartoon character design!

The ebay auction stated Lantz drew these, guessing because of the signature rather than historical background information. The Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck strips were studio signed as being by Walt Disney so Lantz may have been doing the same. With no Lantz heirs & most every Lantz employee now deceased, it’s anyone’s guess.

Didn’t Lantz have a studio in the Valley as late as the early nineties? Or was he in some way involved with one? I shared an elevator with him while visiting a friend who was working on “Where’s Waldo?” series.

That later Oswald design really makes me want to haul. At least when Disney re-designed Mickey they mainly just changed the eyes..

Eww… the sad part is that the back of the horse’s head (second panel in the strip above) looks more like “Oswald” than the cute furry rabbit does!

Vintage,
same for me. For a second I even thought it was some sort of black caricature of a rabbit…..

The character design suggests 1938 to both Andrea and myself. Note the lines demarcating lighter and darker regions of fur color (a la HAPPY SCOUTS), which probably would have been rendered with dot-pattern shading had the strips moved further in the production process.

The design of Oswald used here is most like that of “Happy Scouts” released in June of ‘38, as evidenced by the forehead markings. A very similar design was utilized in a childrens metal bank series which was also marketed in 38. Lantz was actively marketing all of the Universal “stars” at this time, he needed to muster revenue to support “his” studio which was struggling financially. The comic strip was probably not picked up because by this time Oswald had already lost his “edge”, ie familiarity with the general public.