“Casper, the friendly ghost,
The friendliest ghost you know.
Though grown-ups might
Look at him with fright,
The children all love him so.”

Though he was originally introduced in 1945 in the Paramount Pictures ‘Noveltoon,’ The Friendly Ghost, Casper would appear in two other cartoons before finding the show he would become most known for, Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Casper was a true anomaly in the ghosting world; with little interest in scaring people, haunting houses or engaging in other ghost-like activities, he just wanted to make friends like any other child. 

He was cute, pudgy and had a New York accent.  The original story involves him escaping his family at their haunted house, setting out to make friends.  The first things he comes across are animals that look at him with horror.  To make a long story short, distraught and looking for any way to attract friends, he eventually meets Bonnie and Johnny, who become his friends.  He moves in, and after freaking mom out, she decides it’s okay and lets him stay… and so on, and so forth.  The television series was slightly different, in that at the start of each episode, Casper would escape the afterlife and try to make friends with someone, an often difficult task, since most were inordinately frightened of the happy-looking Casper.  Eventually, he’d make a friend, usually some cute little kid or small animal, generally someone who was less concerned about Casper’s status. 

In 1963, new Casper cartoons were released in a series titled The New Casper Cartoon Show.  Though the show was increasingly complex, Casper remained relatively the same.  The show began adding more characters, a move inspired by the popular comic book series released during the 50s, including the Ghostly Trio, older, meaner ghosts that didn’t approve of Casper helping and befriending the living.  The new series also gave him some regularly occurring friend (as to ensure that not everyone loved him and left him), including Wendy, the Good Little Witch; Spooky, the Tuff Little Ghost (he actually could be really scary); and Nightmare, the talking ghost-horse.  Each week they were there to help Casper out, and even had their own segments.

Casper’s popularity afforded him the kind of exposure that was sure to give him lots of friends, even if it was with the Hollywood set.  But, it did him, and others, a lot of good.  By the middle of the next decade, Casper was the ‘spooks’-person for UNICEF, as well as a pitchman for General Electric, the Apollo 16 flight to the moon, Major League Baseball’s National League, the American Dental Association, the Boy Scouts of America, and even… Chex.  Within a few years, he’d appear again in Casper and the Angels, which might go down in history as one of the strangest TV exec ideas in history.  Though it would be the least successful in the Casper series, we’ve found it pretty hard to let it stop our love for the friendliest ghost around.

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