Mickey Mouse circa 1920s, as seen in the black-and-white shorts Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, has entered the public domain with its United States copyright expiring after 95 years.

This means that the image of Mickey Version 1.0 could be appropriated and (mis)used by entities other than the Walt Disney Company. This early, liberties have been taken with that Mickey, as the internet is now swamped with mousy creatives.

Like Winnie the Pooh, whose copyright expired in 2022, and like Tigger, whose own patent is going out the window next year, plans have been floated about making horror films featuring Mickey.

Really, what would people do to make or try to make fast bucks because not a lot of people warmed up to Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, released early last year?

Reimagining the iconic Pooh as a feral and bloodthirsty killer targeting women in a remote log cabin came off as a mere novelty slasher film that bombed at the tills in most countries, probably due to an overestimation of the franchise’s hold on the present generation.

Nonetheless, considering its limited release and production budget estimated at just $100,000, the Pooh gorefest enjoyed relative financial success, with a worldwide gross of $5.2 million. We can expect the same treatment for Mickey as bastardizing everything the character stands for is the only way to rejuvenate it, sort of.

I saw Steamboat Willie in the 1970s, and well-remembered it as a crude and grotesque version of the prevailing Mickey at the time, its legs and arms puny, as if it had not eaten for years.

That first Mickey was a jarring apparition, as I’d grown up with the Fantasia-era version of the mouse. Truth is, I did not give a rat’s behind for Steamboat Mickey.

In the original Fantasia, which was remastered aurally and visually, as well as the remade Fantasia 2000, Walt Disney’s marriage of classical music with live-action animation proved to be a moneymaker, especially with home video sales.

With Fantasia’s Mickey and Friends, now we’re talking of a cuteness overload — and Disney could not be faulted for hardly deviating from that version onward. This, as so many other cartoon characters — Marvel’s and DC’s superheroes, to name a few — had somehow stolen some of the Disney franchise’s luster.

Still, there’s always something special about originals, and those who had taken a fancy to the original Mickey, nearly a century after it flew off illustrator Ub Iwerk’s sketch pads, may be in for both a treat and a trick.

It is a treat for those who want a rebirth for the very first Mickey and a trick for those of the Silent Generation still alive who may want to remember the mouse as he was when he first appeared in 1928.

Either way, there’s no stopping those who think they can resuscitate that version of Mickey, which Disney itself discarded after collaborating with Iwerks to breathe life into him.

While Disney has been credited with conceiving Mickey Mouse, it was Iwerks who brought to life Walt’s ideas by meticulously designing Mickey in Steamboat Willie as having a round head, white gloves, black shorts, and big floppy ears.

Through the years, through visual tweaks, there’s something about Mickey that has endeared him to generations, something that any horrific reimagining cannot take away.