"Bosko never caught on the way Mickey Mouse did, but for several years he was the mainstay of the Warners' cartoon studio. One day a porter at the studio said to young animator
Jack Zander, 'I want to ask you something about that character you've got. I know Mickey Mouse, and Krazy Kat, and Oswald the Rabbit ... but Bosko the what?' What indeed?
"If the porter had been able to see a number of the films, he would have realized that Bosko was in fact a cartoonized version of a young black boy. In
Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930) he spoke a Southern Negro dialect, but in subsequent films this characterization was eschewed - or perhaps forgotten. This could be called sloppiness on the part of [
Hugh Harman and
Rudolf Ising], but it also indicates the uncertain nature of the character itself."
--
Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of Animated Cartoons, NY, 1987, p. 225