The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996 and briefly returned to social media in 2017.

[4] The Mickey Mouse Club was hosted by Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the Head Mouseketeer, who provided leadership both on and off the screen.

In addition to his other contributions, he often provided short segments encouraging younger viewers to make the right moral choices.

Inspired by a visual gag in The Karnival Kid,[6] he helped create these ears, along with Chuck Keehne, Hal Adelquist, and Bill Walsh.

The most popular of the Mouseketeers constituted the so-called Red Team, who appeared each day in the show’s opening roll call & closing segments.

9 of those Red Team Mouseketeers were kept under contract for the entire run of the show (1955–1959): Other Mouseketeers who were Red Team members but did not star on the show for all three seasons included: The remaining Mouseketeers, who were members of the White or Blue Teams, were Don Agrati (who was later known as Don Grady when he starred as "Robbie" on My Three Sons), Sherry Alberoni, Billie Jean Beanblossom, Eileen Diamond, Dickie Dodd (not related to Jimmie Dodd), Mary Espinosa, Bonnie Lynn Fields,[8] Judy Harriet, Linda Hughes, Dallas Johann, John Lee Johann, Bonni Lou Kern, Charlie Laney, Larry Larsen, Paul Petersen, Lynn Ready, Mickey Rooney Jr., Tim Rooney, Mary Sartori, Bronson Scott, Margene Storey, Ronnie Steiner, and Mark Sutherland.

Major serials included:[5] The opening theme, "The Mickey Mouse March", was written by the show's primary adult host, Jimmie Dodd.

[11] Walt Disney filed a lawsuit against ABC, and won the damages in a settlement the following year; however, he had to agree that both the Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro could not be aired on any major network.

The prohibition which prevented major U.S. broadcast networks from airing the original Mickey Mouse Club (or any later version of it) was disputed when Disney acquired ABC in 1996.

Some new features were added such as Fun with Science or "Professor Wonderful" (with scientist Julius Sumner Miller) and Marvelous Marvin in the 1964–1965 season; Jimmie Dodd appeared in several of these new segments before his death in November 1964.

The original Mickey Mouse Club films aired five days a week on The Disney Channel from its launch in 1983 until the third version of the series began in 1989.

Cast members Annette Funicello, Bobby Burgess, Tommy Cole, Sharon Baird, Don Grady, and Sherry Alberoni were reunited on the 100th episode of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, during the show's third season in 1990.

Mouseketeers Doreen Tracey, Cubby O'Brien, Sherry Alberoni, Sharon Baird, Don Grady, Cheryl Holdridge, Bobby Burgess, Karen Pendleton, Tommy Cole, and Mary Espinosa performed together at Disneyland in Fall 2005, in observance of Disneyland's 50th birthday, and the 50th anniversary of the television premiere of The Mickey Mouse Club.

In 1977, Walt Disney Productions revived the concept, but modernized the show cosmetically, with a disco re-recording of the theme song and a more ethnically diverse group of young cast members.

In addition, one original serial was produced, The Mystery of Rustler's Cave, starring Kim Richards and Robbie Rist.

Often shown were scenes from animated Disney films, from Snow White to The Jungle Book billed as "Mouseka Movie Specials".

Additional stations picked up the canceled program, which continued to run until January 12, 1979; 130 new episodes, with much of the original material repackaged and a bit of new footage added, and a shortened version of the theme song, was produced to start airing September 5, 1977.

WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois, also aired this version on a delayed basis in 1977 and 1978 during the Cubs baseball season due to game coverages.

The show's most notable alumnus was Lisa Whelchel (born in 1963, in Littlefield, Texas), who later starred in the NBC television sitcom The Facts of Life, which ran from 1979 to 1988, before becoming a well-known Christian author, and overall runner-up, and winner of the $100,000 viewers' choice award, on the fall 2012 season of the CBS television reality series Survivor.

Future rock musician Courtney Love (wife of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain) claims to have auditioned for a part on the show, reading a poem by Sylvia Plath; she was not selected.

The lyrics of the "Mickey Mouse Club March" theme song were slightly different from the original, with two additional lines: "He's our favorite Mouseketeer; we know you will agree" and "Take some fun and mix in love, our happy recipe".

While the show was popular with younger audiences, the Disney Channel executives felt it had become dated over the years, particularly because it was aired in black-and-white.

Grady, along with fellow Mouseketeers Annette Funicello, Bobby Burgess, Tommy Cole, Sharon Baird, and Sherry Alberoni were reunited on the 100th episode, during the show's third season.

The series featured music videos of the Mouseketeers singing their versions of popular songs in front of a live studio audience or at locations within Walt Disney World.

Due to the age of both the performers and the target demographic, lyrics with objectionable content were generally edited out of the songs and replaced with more appropriate language.

Theme days were: The adult co-hosts for the show were Fred Newman (1989–1993), Mowava Pryor (1989–1990), Terri Misner Eoff (1991–1993), Tiffini Hale (1994), and Chase Hampton (1994).

During the last three seasons of MMC they had a pre-recorded drama series called Emerald Cove with the older cast members: The Mickey Mouse Club was rebooted under the name Club Mickey Mouse with a new set of Mouseketeers in September 2017,[18] and for the first time, the series was made available on Facebook and Instagram, rather than its original half hour to full hour format on television, and is more like a reality show than a variety show, with about 90% of its content being behind the scenes.

This incarnation of The Mickey Mouse Club featured eight Mouseketeers who ranged in age from 15 to 18: Regan Aliyah, Jenna Alvarez, Ky Baldwin, Gabe De Guzman, Leanne Tessa Langston, Brianna Mazzola, Sean Oliu, and Will Simmons.

Entertainment's pre-debut trainees team SM Rookies, consisting of five boys – Mark, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, and Jisung – and four girls – Koeun, Hina, Herin, and Lami.

But due to the shutdown of the channels, the season 4 of Club Mickey Mouse was aired in 2021 exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar instead and SKTV Kids in 2023.