Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Mouse cartoon to be filmed was "Plane Crazy" in the summer of 1928, but it was produced as a silent and held back from release. The first Mickey Mouse film with a synchronized soundtrack, "Steamboat Willie", reached the screen that fall and became a major hit, eclipsing Oswald. "Plane Crazy" was later given its own synchronized soundtrack and released on March 17, 1929. Mintz, meanwhile, opened his own studio consisting primarily of former Disney employees, where he continued to produce Oswald cartoons, among them the first Oswald with sound, "Hen Fruit" (1929). While things were going in Mintz's favor, animators
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with both sound and color (two-strip Technicolor), a 2½-minute animated sequence of the live action movie "The King of Jazz" (1930), produced by Laemmle for Universal. However, it was not until 1934 that Oswald got his own color sound cartoons in two-strip Technicolor, "Toyland Premiere" and "Springtime Serenade". The Oswald cartoons then returned to black-and-white, except for the last one, "The Egg Cracker Suite" (1943), released as a part of the Swing Symphonies series. "Egg Cracker" was also the only Oswald cartoon to use three-strip Technicolor. But before he was permanently retired, Oswald made a cameo appearance in "The Woody