Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi, if those two names don’t perk up your interest in this then you really should give up reading this review further; because if you didn't enjoy any of the other projects they've made then you're going find nothing in this series to make you change your mind.

Take two of the most notorious names in animation, one the director of Fritz the Cat and Coonskin, the other the creator of Ren and Stimpy (in later years), what do you get? An outrageously daft, surreal piece of work that I can’t for the life of me watch without wondering now it got passed the censors.

It the strangest of things, but I can’t remember a single Mighty Mouse short that featured the mouse for any longer than him being used as the Deux Ex Machina used to clean the mess up. He just never was given a personality; the strange thing was that despite this oversight, he become very popular nonetheless.

In the mid-eighties Ralph Bakshi, famed (or should that be infamous) director of such films as Fritz the Cat and Coonskin, gained the rights for the character. Ralph of course had plenty of connection with the character, having worked for the Terrytoons studio for years. He brought the character back for more contemporary times, gave him a job and a secret identity and gave the whole world around him a modern and wacky makeover.

Parody is the name of the game here, from, Bat-Man: in the form of Bat-Bat and his nemesis, the Cow… to Alvin and the Chipmunks (and cartoon and day-time TV in general) and other such generics being mocked for all their worth. Even the older Terrytoons have a guest appearance from a confused (but since when was that new) thawed out after forty years Gandy Goose (no idea what the Rev would have made of that episode if he had seen it), to a still villainous at heart Oil Can Harry.

If there is anything wrong with it, it's that it isn't quite as outrageous as the work of either of it two biggest names, whether in terms of the sheer adult sensibilities of Bakshi's earliest work or that of which Kricfalusi would later do with Ren & Stimpy. It kind of a go-between of their distinct personal tastes.

Yet with a looseness that was extremely fresh and a irrelevant streak a mile high, this is a fun and entertaining series of a good calibre and was perhaps the first post of what was to come. Animation was growing up, even if Bakshi and Fricfalusi had to drag it kicking and screaming to do so.

I'm torn between 3 and 3½ stars myself, but one thing is for sure, it's arguably the best thing that Mighty Mouse has ever appeared in and probably ever will.