Casper The Friendly Ghost And Friends

Here are some Harveytoons, Noveltoons and other cartoons produced by Famous Studios. Most are known to be in the public domain. Casper's friends include... Baby Huey, Wendy Witch, Little Audrey and Little Lulu.



Given that Casper is depicted as a ghostly little boy, an ongoing issue with the series regards the question of whether or not he is, in fact, a dead child. Early Casper cartoons seemed to suggest this, as they portrayed him "living" beside a gravestone. Specifically, the short There's Good Boos To-Night featured a fox befriended by Casper coming back from the dead as a ghost.

This rather macabre premise was later abandoned in favor of the idea that ghosts were merely a type of creature, similar to ghouls, goblins, etc. He was thereafter portrayed with feet and shown to have ghostly parents. In the 1960s and 1970s, the stock answer provided by Harvey Comics in response to those wondering how Casper died was that he was a ghost simply because his parents were already ghosts when they were married.[1]

Casper the Friendly Ghost is the protagonist of the Famous Studios theatrical animated cartoon series of the same name. As his name indicates, he is a ghost, but is quite personable.

The 1995 feature film Casper, however, revived the concept that Casper was a deceased human and a portion of the plot dealt with him trying to remember his life and had him rediscovering the circumstance of his own death. The first direct-to-video film to follow the feature, Casper: A Spirited Beginning, showed Casper's early days as a ghost, not showing how he died (although implying he did) and ignoring the story provided in the previous film. All films to follow A Spirited Beginning avoided the issue altogether.