Financial backers led by Pat Powers suspected that Iwerks was responsible for much of Disney's early success.
As the series progressed, Flip became more of a down-and-out, Chaplin-esque character who always found himself in everyday conflicts surrounding the poverty-stricken atmosphere of the Great Depression.
From 1933 to 1936, the studio release a series of shorts (independently distributed, not part of the MGM deal) in Cinecolor, named ComiColor cartoons, which mostly focused on fairy tales with no continuing character or star.
Although first developed in the 1920's by Lotte Reiniger, Iwerks made many substantial improvements in multiplane animation.
[1] This technology allowed for a three-dimensional look, separating layers of the background, resulting in a greater feeling of depth.