Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Good bit of trivia:

> In 2006, The Walt Disney Company acquired the trademark of Oswald (with NBCUniversal effectively trading Oswald for the services of Al Michaels as play-by-play announcer on NBC Sunday Night Football)

This was part of Disney’s early struggles, where the business was nearly killed off by losing the contract to continue with this successful character, because Disney never owned the rights.

Disney faced repeated failures and took big risks. It is often assumed that his success was inevitable or obvious, but this is far from reality.