It All Began with the Brave Crusader Rabbit

In 1948, a new concept of cartooning was born, fresh from the mind of animator Alex Anderson. Working as a young cartoonist for his uncle, Paul Terry of Terrytoon studio in California, Anderson brainstormed the idea of creating a new cartoon character whose aggressively large personality would be opposite his meek and scrawny appearance.

For fear of lessening Terrytoons association and prestige to movie theaters, Anderson’s pitch was turned down by the company. Nonetheless, he was determined to get his cartoon idea on television. He approached business associate and friend, Jay Ward, who was not only stable enough to finance the project, but loved the idea as well!

The two decided to make the star of the series a small rabbit with a big personality, who called himself Crusader Rabbit. However, the rabbit was not endowed with many of the usual crusader traits we are all used to seeing. For instance, he could not stop a freight train at full flight with a simple touch of his hand. He could not fly into the air with the greatest of ease and he certainly did not have X-ray vision. In fact, the cartoon points out that he was actually rather near sighted. The only thing that Crusader could do in a time of crisis was run, however in all fairness; he developed that trait to the highest degree. The point was, that even though Crusader Rabbit possessed none of the traits that one might presume a fearless crusader to have; it never stopped him from having big ideas. Not surprisingly, children of the baby-boomer era loved this concept and Crusader Rabbit was a hit amongst the kiddie masses.

Anderson and Ward made the blueprint of the show very simple and something children could easily grasp. They made sure to tell Crusader Rabbit's voyages as humorous adventures. They included cliff hangers and made sure the whole thing was under five minutes long, which is short enough to keep those easily sidetracked youngsters at peak attention. Add an intelligent hero, a big dumb sidekick, and a recurring villain and you have yourself a recipe for animated success! A very interesting note is that in later years, Ward actually took that recipe and mixed it with an adventurous flying squirrel and dim-witted moose, producing another hit animated TV series, Rocky and Bullwinkle, along with Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.

In 1949, the poorly produced black and white shorts began airing in the mix of over-the-top cartoons appearing repeatedly on children’s TV shows. Episodes would appear daily, but storylines would extend for weeks, swaying kids to tune in again and again to see how Crusader and his pal Rags would get out of whatever unfortunate situation they had managed to get themselves in.

After 195 episodes, production ended in 1951, allowing the creators to go on to other projects. However, the animated short will always be embodied in TV-land's history as television's first cartoon series.