CGI Ghosties

Alright so you may already know that Casper started out as a cartoon in the 40s- in the original he was not explicitly a dead kid, and he had numerous siblings who went out and scared the neighboring city every night at the stroke of midnight.

Side note- the rent's GOTTA be cheap in a city where ghosts come into your home every single night just to scare the shit out of you then leave.

MOST surprisingly, this short has Casper become so despondent at his inability to make friends because everyone and everything is so scared they run away, that he attempts to lay down in front of an oncoming train. Things were just different in the 40s :V

Anyway this short was one I had on VHS as a kid so I watched it a bunch. You can find it on the Internet Archive -> here!

He has 55 total theatrical cartoons from 1945 to 1959, though I'm not as familiar with them, given that they came out about three and a half decades before I did. The first three are in the public domain!

The Casper cartoons of that era that I have seen were all pretty formulaic- Casper searches for a friend, scares off all but maybe one or two, saves that one or two from some danger or problem, hooray! They're his friend now. Happy ending!

There were five cartoon series that featured him as a character once Harvey Comics purchased the rights to the character in 1959, most of which I have never seen or I have and forgot. These were aired from 1959 to 1994, with varying lengths and success.

He also had a series of comics, which I am not very familiar with, that gave him a number of supporting characters and a slew of adventures. Some characters who appeared in the animated series previously would return, such as the Ghostly Trio -then named Fatso, Lazo, and Fusso, with Fatso being the leader of the three, and his brothers depicted as weaker and dumber.

This is also where his most recognizable version is from!

We also were introduced to Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch, who would later appear in the feature length films.

Most (though not all) of his appearances tried to avoid portraying him as a dead child, given how unpleasant that is to include in what is intended to be a light-hearted children's series. Some cartoons showed a grave with his name and some depicted him as a living sheet of some sort.

Now we get to the ones I AM familiar with:

In 1995, Universal Studios released the first live-action Casper movie, simply titled 'Casper', featuring the boy himself and his three uncles (Fatso, Stinky, and Stretch) as the very first CG characters to star in a film!

In the movie, Casper is confirmed to be a dead child, which some critics did not appreciate, but personally I think it helped a young me process thinking about death in a way that nothing else had done thus far.

Absolutely WILD cast and cameos. Little Me didn't know who Clint Eastwood was, but I DID know Dan Aykroyd and was stoked as hell when his cameo linked the movie with my other favorite ghost movie at that time.

It wasn't super successful, which is a shame, but it's my all-time favorite movie and no critics of film OR nostalgia can change that.

ANYwho, for a short time there was an animated series based on the 1995 movie which ran from 1996-1998, and though it had 4 seasons in total, only the first season was released on DVD, with five episodes on two separate discs. For some reason. (Each episode consisted of two to three mini-segments, which is why the above image says 15.)

I own both, natch.

But! Thanks to the efforts of the Casper Preservation Project, the first two seasons AND the first three episodes of season three are up on youtube! Check them out -> HERE

The characters are ever so slightly different from their film versions, and more characters make their appearances- some are new, such as Ms Banshee, and some are returning, like Spooky and his ghoulfriend Poil.

Still with me? ok cool there's more.

In 1997, we got Casper: A Spirited Beginning, the second live action Casper film. It was direct to video, and the CG was, To Me, a little lifeless, pun intended. It was also a prequel, one which retconned nearly everything that the original had laid out.

(Don't worry about the thing at the bottom of that above image. We'll get there.)

It was set in an entirely different town, the Ghostly Trio were no longer his uncles, AND instead of Casper's primary unfinished business being to keep his father from being lonely, he... falls off a ghost train to the afterlife and stays in the human realm.

I never really cared for this one to be honest, but I intend to add it to my collection someday anyway.

This brings us to the third and so far final live-action Casper film, Casper Meets Wendy. (Apologies for the terrible resolution. I'm working with what I've got.)

Despite also being a direct to video movie AND the apparent sequel to the prequel, I have a soft spot for this one. Probably due to the witches. it certainly cemented the notion of witches and ghosts as eternal rivals in my head, which shows up in several of my projects throughout my life lmao

Casper's uncles decide to take a vacation at a resort at the same time as Wendy and her aunts are hiding there from a very powerful warlock who is hunting Wendy. (Pauly Shore told him she was more powerful than him so now he wants to kill her.) There's a lot of fun banter in this one.

Fun fact- this was Hilary Duff's first major film at ten years old!

And now we're back to the things I am less familiar with, either because they were... not good, or I was no longer the target market due to age or taste.

In 2000, we got the all-CG movie Casper's Haunted Christmas, in which Casper and his uncles are sent to the holiday themed town of Kriss, Massachusetts (Y'know. Kriss, Mass. It's a joke. We laugh.) because Casper sucks so bad at haunting and he has to intentionally scare one person a year or go into The Dark.

Like the shitpost.

In 2006 we got the second full CGI Casper movie, Casper's Scare School. This one I only saw once and it wasn't really for me, though it does have some concepts I appreciate, such as bringing in other monsters.

Notably, though, it does not feature Wendy or Hot Stuff, or any of Casper's other friends from his previous appearances. It does bring back the Ghostly Trio and Kibosh, who has primarily been an antagonist since his introduction, but I felt their characterizations were a little flat compared to the versions that came before.

Could be I'm just picky, or too old for the tone they were going for, whichever.

In 2009 they released a TV series based on and named after the movie, and it ran for a couple of years before getting cancelled in 2012. I'll be honest, I didn't watch it, given my disinterest in the movie.

Also in 2009, a comic mini-series was released called Casper and the Spectrals- a more modernized take on Casper, Wendy, and Hot Stuff.

I made a post a number of years ago -> HERE showing almost all the times the Ghostly Trio are featured in the issue I had, which I think was just the first one? I don't remember where my files are. It's been 12 years.

Since then, Casper has made a few sparse cameos in things, and there have been talks of reboots, remakes, sequels, etc., but none have happened yet.