In fact, I don't think I've even seen a single Mickey Mouse cartoon...
If you go a bit later, to when they started doing new animation for Looney Tunes tv specials in the 70s and 80s, the cartoons got dumber as well.
American audiences want their comic lead to be the cool guy making witty remarks, British audiences want the lead to be the butt of the jokes.
>You know that scene in Animal House where there’s a fellow playing folk music on the guitar, and John Belushi picks up the guitar and destroys it. And the cinema loves it. [Belushi] just smashes it and then waggles his eyebrows at the camera. Everyone thinks, "God, is he great!" Well, the British comedian would want to play the folk singer. We want to play the failure.
But in the USA, Donald Duck (and comics in general) had growing competition whereas in europe he had time to become a nostalgic tradition.
Additionally, my understanding is that Donald Duck had at least a few American fans. Though their numbers are probably limited to the few Americans who enjoy Looney Tunes, Homer Simpson, and the stereotypical sitcom dad (among other characters).
I grew up with a weekly Disney comic book that was a collection of mostly Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse (detective) stories. Almost always skipped Mickey, he's just way too boring as a character.
But didn't you guys have Duck Tales as well? I thought that was massively popular.
And yeah. Mickey's a boring goody-two-shoes. The earliest cartoons had him as an anarchic troublemaker but once he became the Disney mascot he got all the fun siphoned out of him and everyone quit giving a shit about him.
A large part due to how utterly annoying it is to listen to him "talk".
>But didn't you guys have Duck Tales as well? I thought that was massively popular.
Yes - at least in my childhood/area it was very popular. They also didn't talk like Donald Duck though. That probably has a lot to do with it.
Ducktales was a very well done series, but what appeals to adults doesn't always appeal to kids, and the Ducktales movie bombed so bad it canceled the rest of the movies based on Disney Afternoon shows.
For comparison, the best Disney Afternoon series in the states was Aladdin, which outlasted Ducktales by several years, and spawned several direct to DVD movies.
I collected hundreds of them at flea markets about 40 years ago.
And I actually disagree with the premise that this contains no lessons or morals. Children are able to see clearly how ridiculous and ill-advised the behavior of these characters is, and so learn to recognize it in themselves and others.
Someone once pointed out that while Mickey Mouse is the mascot of Disney in the U.S. and the main character of the franchise, in Europe it was Donald Duck who became popular. Europeans like the flawed anti-hero, while moralizing America (sorry!) preferred the do-gooder know-it-all Mickey Mouse.