Mickey Mouse Clubhouse



Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a children's television series, that premiered in prime time on Disney Channel on. The program is part of the Playhouse Disney daily block of shows intended for preschoolers.

Production of the show was put on a four-month hiatus in the spring of 2009, due to the death of voice artist Wayne Allwine, the long time voice of Mickey Mouse. Bret Iwan is the new replacement.

Premise
Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto star in the series, which focuses on interacting with the viewer to stimulate problem solving. Ludwig Von Drake, Chip 'n Dale, Pete, Mr. Pettibone, Willie the Giant, Clarabelle Cow, Butch, Figaro, Humphrey the Bear, Salty the Seal, Buzz-Buzz the Bee and Mortimer Mouse have made guest appearances.

Each episode has the characters help viewers "solve a specific age-appropriate problem utilizing basic skills, such as identifying shapes and counting through ten." The series uses Playhouse Disney’s "whole child" curriculum of cognitive, social and creative learning opportunities. Once the problem of the episode has been explained, Mickey invites viewers to join him at the Mousekadoer, a giant Mickey-head shaped computer whose main function is to distribute the day's Mousekatools - a collection of objects needed to solve the day's problem - to Mickey. Once the tools have been shown to Mickey on the Mousekadoer screen, they are quickly downloaded to Toodles - a small, Mickey-head shaped flying extension of the Mousekadoer. By calling, "Oh Toodles!" Mickey summons him to pop up from where he's hiding and fly up to the screen so that the viewer can pick which tool Mickey needs for the current situation. One of the tools is a "Mystery Mouskatool", which is a surprise tool represented by a question mark. The show features two original songs performed by They Might Be Giants, including the opening theme song, in which a variant of a Mickey Mouse Club chant ("Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse!") is used to summon the Clubhouse. They Might Be Giants also perform the song used at the end of the show, "Hot Dog!", which echoes Mickey's first spoken words in the 1929 short The Karnival Kid.

This is the first time the major Disney characters have appeared on television in computer-animated form (except for Donald, who appeared in CG in the Mickey Mouse Works short "Computer.don"). The characters debuted in CG form in 2003 at the Magic Kingdom theme park attraction Mickey's PhilharMagic, then in the 2004 home video Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. However, in this latest incarnation, Mickey's and Minnie's 3D renderings are truer to their original hand-drawn likenesses, in that their ears remain distinct perfect circles regardless of which way their heads are turned. Along with improved animation for the second season, the series is now available in HD on Disney Channel HD.