Donald Duck's specific popularity has a lot to do with World War II and the marshall plan -- whereas the USA had TV And Radio, Europe's infrastructure was devas

Donald Duck's specific popularity has a lot to do with World War II and the marshall plan -- whereas the USA had TV And Radio, Europe's infrastructure was devastated and the influx of american comic books formed a cheap form of entertainment. One of those happened to be Donald Duck -- which was ALSO popular in the USA at the time and ran in lots of newspapers. But in the USA, Donald Duck (and comics in general) had growing competition whereas in europe he had time to become a nostalgic tradition.