percent (6,000 shares) of the company, and Roy owned 40 percent. The comic strip Mickey Mouse debuted on January 13, 1930, in New York Daily Mirror and by 1931, the strip was published in 60 newspapers in the U.S., and in twenty other countries. After realizing releasing merchandise based on the characters would generate more revenue for the company, in New York, a man asked Walt for the license to put Mickey Mouse on writing tablets he was manufacturing for $300. Walt agreed and Mickey Mouse became the first licensed character. In 1933, Walt asked Kay Karmen, the owner of an Kansas City advertising firm, to run Disney's merchandising; Karmen agreed and transformed Disney's merchandising. Within a year, Kamen had 40 licenses for Mickey Mouse and within two years, had made $35 million worth of sales. In 1934, Walt said he made more money from the merchandising of Mickey Mouse than from the character's films. Later, the Waterbury Clock Company created a Mickey Mouse watch, which became so popular it saved the company from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. During a promotional event at Macy's, 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches sold in one day; and within two years, two-and-a-half million watches were sold. As Mickey Mouse become a heroic character rather than a mischievous mouse, Disney needed another character that could produce gags. Walt invited radio presenter Clarence Nash to the animation studio; Walt wanted to use Nash to play Donald Duck, a talking duck character that would be the studio's new gag character. Donald Duck made his first appearance in 1934 in The Wise Little Hen. Though he did not become popular as quickly as Mickey Mouse had, Donald Duck had a featured role in Donald and Pluto (1936), and eventually was given his own series. After a disagreement with Columbia Pictures about the Silly Symphonies cartoons, Walt signed a distribution contract with United Artists from 1932 to 1937 to distribute the series. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor to produce cartoons in color until the end of 1935, beginning with the Silly Symphonies short Flowers and Trees (1932). The film was the first full-color cartoon and later that year, it won the Academy Award for the Best Cartoon. In 1933, The Three Little Pigs, another popular Silly Symphonies short, was released and also won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon. The song from the film "Who's