Pluto’s Birthday: The Animated Pup Who Changed Character Animation

Today, Sept. 5, is the “birthday” of a dog who transformed character animation forever and is still one of the most popular animals in the world: Walt Disney’s Pluto.

Pluto has gone through many changes over the years, from jail hound to anxious father of puppies, from Mickey Mouse’s sidekick to a star in his own right. But as one of the first Disney characters and one of the most endearing, Pluto always proves that a dog is indeed a man’s — or a mouse’s — best friend.

On Sept. 5, 1930, a Mickey Mouse cartoon debuted, which became famous for depicting a hound dog who would later be dubbed “Pluto” and recast as Mickey’s pet. But there wasn’t just one dog! Walt put it this way: “We needed a bloodhound. Pluto got the part and turned out so well, we used him twice.” In “The Chain Gang”, Mickey is a prisoner who escapes during a riot and goes on the lam. He’s chased by hounds, whose appearances are recognizable as the rudiments of Pluto, and eventually is recaptured.

You can watch below:

If there’s one animal Americans love, it’s a dog. Walt Disney and his crew soon found many uses for the lovable hound, voiced by Disney Legend Pinto Colvig. The dog was recast first as Minnie Mouse’s dog, Rover (per D23), and then dubbed Pluto, since Norm Ferguson created him the same year as the planet Pluto was discovered. And unlike the Greco-Roman god of the underworld, Pluto the dog has always been full of fun. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to take the literal meaning of πλουτών — “wealthy” — since he achieved such success.

Indeed, the following sequence, in which Norm “Fergy” Ferguson drew Pluto, changed character animation forever. Why? It was the first time a cartoon character had ever been depicted thinking over a (literally) sticky situation! Walt was so impressed by how Ferguson was able to convey Pluto’s thought processes through the dog’s expressions that he told his other animators to take heed and start drawing other cartoon characters that way, too. Just another animation first for Walt Disney’s company, and one that is still impacting the industry today.

Pluto’s famous flypaper sequence pic.twitter.com/dHF4Tw8T8R
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) September 5, 2025

“[So] much depended on the building up of the situation and the pauses for Pluto to think about the different ways to get rid of the flypaper,” Fergy explained of his creation. “Good expressions were necessary… to build the gag or situation to a climax… The animator has to feel the situation himself.” It turned out so brilliantly that the sequence was later reshot in color for a different short, and Pluto ended up being the star of nearly 50 cartoons, including WWII shorts, besides showing up in many a Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoon.

The cartoon canine was so wildly popular during WWII that numerous military outfits asked Disney to design logos for them with Pluto as the mascot. To this day, the only non-Disney entity I know of that is allowed to use Pluto as an official mascot — courtesy of Walt himself — is the U.S. Marines’ junior program Devil Pups.

Walt Disney created our logo 66 years ago and every Devil Pup has worn it on their uniform. But he wasn't just a great artist and visionary, he had a wealth of wisdom too. Here's a great quote from a great man. What's your favorite Walt Disney quote? pic.twitter.com/Ott0HPxOwF
— The Devil Pups (@TheDevilPups) May 12, 2021

Before that 1934 “Playful Pluto” cartoon with the flypaper sequence, animated characters — not just Disney’s but in general — tended to lack much individual personality, and certainly they were not designed to express a range of realistic human-like emotions. They went from one gag scenario to the next. That was true even of Mickey Mouse, who predated Pluto by less than two years.

“Playful Pluto” proved that cartoon characters could display genuine emotions. It laid the groundwork not only for the first-ever animated film, Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which portrayed a range of emotions never before imagined in animation, but every other cartoon and film that has moved beyond gags and stock characters since.

Here’s Norm Ferguson himself demonstrating how he drew Pluto in the film “The Reluctant Dragon”:

pic.twitter.com/oY5P7AQW8N
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) September 5, 2025

But why take my word for it? Hear the master himself, Walt Disney, give a short history of Pluto’s rise from prison hound to fame and fortune (start at timestamp 13:30):