Anti-Hero: In some of the original cartoons.However, this magic bag helped establish the formula of these cartoons, of giving the villain of the pictures, the Professer, a reason to hunt down Felix. For character, he went back to the original Felix template of him being a thinking character, but added some changes of his own, such as Felix's slicker, more streamlined design, as well as the series trademark 'Magic Bag of Tricks', made to largely replace Felix's improvisational tail from the original cartoons. In the late 50's, Joe Oriolo, a former assistant of Otto Messmer, took control of the Felix franchise and rebooted the series with the Trans-Lux Felix the Cat TV cartoons. While the shorts were fairly successful in spite of changing what Felix was about, the subsequent shutdown of Van Beuren Studios abruptly ended the series, once again putting Felix's animation career on ice. While there was the occasional bit of the original surrealism, it felt forced and tossed on, as if they were only done to remind the audience of what Felix is supposed to be like. Unfortunately, Instead of taking advantage of the possibilities layed down by the earlier cartoons, director Burt Gillett wrote off the surreal nature of Otto's Felix as 'outdated' and proceeded to turn Felix into a cookie cutter Mickey Mouse clone with no distinguishable characteristics, and overshadowed Felix's role with his own large cast of characters in a lush, Disney-like setting. In 1936, years after Mickey Mouse had taken the throne of cartoon king from him and, combined with inept management, caused his theatrical cartoons to fall out of popularity, Van Beuren Studios took a shot at reviving Felix's animation career (as he was still very popular in the comic pages). In the hands of Otto Messmer, Felix was, first and foremost, a thinking character, a being with a wit as fast and sharp as a razor, who could improvise to any situation at the wink of an eye, with a wide range of emotions or thoughts represented by his large, expressive eyes, as well as his detachable, shapeshifting tail. The world's most famous cat, and the longest lasting cartoon character in history.

Felix the Cat by Otto Messmer