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Cartoon Evolution: Casper the Friendly Ghost
People have been screaming "Ah! A ghost!" for over eighty years!
Casper's a ghost who just wants to make a friend, and for years he has struggled to fit in with both ghost-fearing humans and human-hating ghosts, and perhaps that's why he has resonated with audiences over the past 80 years. Against all odds, Casper never loses hope on his search for friends, finding them in the most unexpected places.
Let's take a look at the origins of Casper and his animation history, starting at the very beginning with his first cartoon.
The Friendly Ghost - 1945
Casper made his cartoon debut on November 16, 1945, in The Friendly Ghost, which Famous Studios produced as part of their Noveltoons series. He then appeared in There's Good Boos To-Night and A Haunting We Will Go before getting his own cartoon series. The Friendly Ghost is available to watch on YouTube, and you can see that our cute Casper was originally a much more traditional-looking ghost, or rather a little kid in a white sheet pretending to be a ghost.
Between The Friendly Ghost and There's Good Boos To-Night, Casper underwent a redesign, making him look less like a kid in a sheet and more like a shapeless, translucent child. They made him look a bit more like a real ghost.
Casper's Spree Under the Sea - 1950
This was the first official cartoon in the Casper the Friendly Ghost series, and it even premiered on Friday the 13th! This cartoon was directed by Bill Tytla, who also directed Popeye shorts and other Noveltoons.
Dutch Treat - 1956
1956 was the year that Famous Studios was absorbed into Paramount Cartoon Studios, and many characters underwent redesigns, including Casper. Now, he had a bright blue outline to help him stand out more from the background.
Harvey comics era - 1959
In 1949, while his cartoons were airing but before his solo series launched, Casper became one of the most popular comic book characters in the nation with an annual circulation of 500,000. Famous Studios sold the comic rights to Harvey Comics in 1959, who later opened their own cartoon studio to produce more Casper cartoons.
The comics introduced characters who would later make their way into the cartoons, like Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost and the Ghostly Trio.
The New Casper Cartoon Show - 1963
This new Harveytoons show was meant to serve as a way to introduce the original Casper cartoons to new audiences, while also airing 26 new episodes. It aired for one season, but notably featured the return of Casper co-creator Seymour Reit to the franchise as a director of the new cartoon segments.
Enter Hanna-Barbera - 1979
Hanna-Barbera purchased the rights to Casper to make a new show, Casper and the Angels, a show featuring Casper and a new ghost character, Harry Scary, solving mysteries with a Charlie's Angels-esque girl group. That show lasted one season, but Hanna-Barbera featured Casper in two holiday specials, Casper's Halloween Special and Casper's First Christmas, which featured other Hanna-Barbera characters like Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw.
Casper underwent another redesign, making his body smaller and head larger, and changing his outline from a thick blue outline to a thin black outline.
Live action feature films
For a while, Casper mostly appeared in rerun shows like The Harveytoons Show, but in the 1990s he experienced a live-action revival with classic hits like Casper (1995), Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997), and Casper Meets Wendy (1998). In all three movies, Casper and the Ghostly Trio are CGI, interacting with live-action actors.
The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper - 1996
Despite the theatrical success of Casper (1995), it was difficult to get a live-action sequel off the ground. The other live-action films proved successful in the direct-to-tape format, so a theatrical sequel wasn't necessary.
But the sequel script was repurposed into The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper. This animated series followed a silly traditional sitcom format, but also filled in some darker details about Casper's story that the other cartoons and movies had glossed over - namely, that Casper had died from pneumonia after playing out in the cold too long. The cartoon also says that Casper is 115 years old.
And beyond!
Since the 1996 series, Casper appeared in the movies Casper's Haunted Christmas (2000) and Casper's Scare School (2006). A television spinoff series of Casper's Scare School aired from 2009 to 2012. Casper's most recent television appearance was a cameo in the DreamWorks Animation series Harvey Girls Forever! in 2020.
