Before there was Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney created Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, who appeared in a total of 26 cartoons between 1927 and 1928. The films were made for Charles Mintz, who contracted with Universal to handle distribution. Walt, however, would lose the rights to his rabbit character, and on this day in 1928, the last Oswald cartoon short, Hot Dog, was released. Although the loss of the lucky rabbit was a terrible loss to Walt, it led to his next success, a little mouse named Mickey. More than three quarters of a century after Oswald’s departure from Disney, the Company reacquired him in 2006, upon which occasion Bob Iger said, “As the forerunner to Mickey Mouse and an important part of Walt Disney’s creative legacy, the fun and mischievous Oswald is back where he belongs, at the home of his creator and among the stable of beloved characters created by Walt himself.”