Sometimes a story begins with breaking news.
Other times, it begins several days earlier, sitting around with family, laughing about something none of us realized would soon become a little more meaningful.
Last week, our family conversation somehow wandered backward through time. You know how those conversations go. Someone mentions an old game show, which reminds somebody else of another television program, and before long everyone is trying to remember names, characters and moments that haven’t crossed our minds in years. We didn’t know it at the time, but within a few days that simple family conversation would become a little more meaningful.
There were plenty of smiles and more than a little laughter.
Eventually, somebody mentioned The Ed Sullivan Show.
And that brought us to a little mouse with enormous ears.
Topo Gigio.
If you are of a certain age, perhaps you just smiled.
Topo Gigio wasn’t on every Sunday night, but when he appeared, he was memorable. Here was this tiny Italian mouse standing beside Ed Sullivan—a man who wasn’t exactly known for being loose, animated or particularly cuddly—and somehow Topo could bring out an entirely different side of him.
Then came the familiar request at the end.
“Eddie, kiss me goodnight.”
A few days after our family conversation, my brother-in-law Ken sent me a text message.
It contained a photograph and the news that Giuseppe “Peppino” Mazzullo, the man whose voice helped bring Topo Gigio to life for generations, had died.
He was 100 years old.
Suddenly our little trip down television’s memory lane felt different.
The Man Behind the Mouse
Peppino Mazzullo was born June 6, 1926, in Santo Stefano di Briga, Sicily. He died there on September 30, 2026, having reached his 100th birthday just a few months earlier. For 45 years—from 1961 until 2006—his unmistakable voice belonged to Topo Gigio. ANSA.it
That alone is remarkable.
Think about 45 years.
Television changed. Society changed. Children grew up and had children of their own. Some of those children had grandchildren.
Yet there was that voice.
Mazzullo’s career included much more than Topo Gigio. He worked in theater, radio and television and portrayed Richetto, the mischievous schoolboy associated with the Italian children’s program Zecchino d’Oro. Later in life, he returned to his native Sicily and founded the Piccolissimo Teatro di Messina, where he helped train young actors. Sicilia Daily
But for millions of people around the world, Peppino Mazzullo will forever be connected to a ten-inch-tall mouse.
And what a mouse he was.
There Was More Behind Topo Than We Ever Knew
As children, we weren’t supposed to think about how Topo Gigio worked.
That was the point.
We were supposed to believe.
Maria Perego and the team behind Topo created something technologically remarkable for its time. Three puppeteers dressed completely in black worked against a black background, manipulating different parts of the little foam mouse while Mazzullo supplied the voice from offstage. Perego controlled Topo’s legs and mouth while the other puppeteers helped create his hand, arm and ear movements. Ithaca College
There were no visible strings.
Topo could walk. He could gesture. His ears moved. He could climb onto things and interact with a human being in a way that seemed surprisingly natural.
Four adults disappeared so one little mouse could come alive.
Perhaps that is part of what made him special.
We didn’t see the mechanics.
We saw Topo.
Even Ed Sullivan apparently felt it. Sullivan once remarked that when Topo was on his arm, he actually felt as though he were holding a living thing and talking to somebody. Ed Sullivan
Topo appeared about 50 times on The Ed Sullivan Show, beginning in 1962, becoming one of the program’s most memorable recurring characters. Ed Sullivan
But I don’t believe the mechanics explain why we remember him.
I think innocence does.
When Television Was Something We Watched Together
Our conversation the other day wasn’t really about television programs.
Not entirely.
It was about us.
It was remembering where we were when we watched them. Who was sitting beside us. Who controlled the television. The programs Mom and Dad enjoyed. The ones the kids couldn’t wait to see.
There was generally one television, and the family watched it together.
That certainly doesn’t mean everything on television in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was wonderful, nor does it mean television today has nothing worthwhile to offer.
Nostalgia has a way of smoothing the rough edges of yesterday.
Still, something was different.
Television was only part of our childhood.
Our parents were constantly telling us to go outside.
It didn’t much matter whether the sun was shining, the snow was falling or somewhere in between.
“Go outside and play.”
With eight kids in our family, that didn’t require much additional explanation.
We didn’t need an app to entertain us. We didn’t need somebody else to create an imaginary world for us.
We created our own.
A stick could become almost anything. A backyard could become a baseball stadium, battlefield, racetrack or unexplored wilderness. Snow became forts. Trees became destinations. Bicycles took us farther than Mom probably wanted to know.
Our imagination supplied whatever was missing.
Then eventually we came back inside.
And sometimes the family gathered around the television.
The Stranger Arrives
Thinking about all of this reminded me of something I read years ago.
In August 1999, Warren E. Berkley published an essay titled “The Stranger.”
The premise is wonderfully simple.
Berkley describes a mysterious stranger whom his father invited into the family home. The stranger became a storyteller. He entertained the family, introduced them to famous people, showed them sporting events and carried them to places they could never have visited themselves.
But as the years passed, this stranger also began introducing ideas and behaviors that didn’t always agree with the values the parents were trying to teach their children.
Yet nobody asked him to leave.
At the end, Berkley reveals the stranger’s identity.
Television.
That essay was published in 1999.
Think about that for a moment.
There was no TikTok.
No Facebook.
No YouTube.
No smartphone in every pocket.
No streaming service waiting to play the next episode before you have decided whether you want to watch it.
Television was still largely a box sitting in the corner.
Today, the stranger doesn’t have to sit in the corner anymore.
We carry him with us.
Maybe Television Was Never the Real Problem
This is where I have been doing some thinking.
It would be easy to write that television used to be good and television today is bad.
I don’t believe it is that simple.
Television brought Topo Gigio into our home.
It also brought Walter Cronkite, moon landings, baseball games, comedy, music, history, news from around the world and events we otherwise could never have witnessed.
Today, those screens can do even more.
The same device that can waste hours can teach someone how to repair an RV water heater. It can allow grandparents to see grandchildren hundreds of miles away. It can show us a national park before we visit, teach a child about another culture, help someone learn a language, or allow an old fellow like me to share camping stories with people I’ve never met.
Perhaps the question has never been whether the stranger is allowed inside.
Maybe the question is:
Who is in charge once he gets there?
There is a difference.
What Topo Gigio Left Behind
Peppino Mazzullo spent 45 years giving a mouse a voice.
That sounds like such a small thing.
It wasn’t.
For countless children and families, he helped create a few minutes of gentleness, imagination and laughter.
No explosions were required.
Nobody had to be humiliated.
Nobody needed to be angry.
A little mouse simply looked at a rather stiff television host and somehow made him smile.
There is something rather beautiful about that.
And perhaps that is why learning of Peppino Mazzullo’s death struck me differently after our family conversation.
We weren’t remembering Topo Gigio because someone told us we should.
We remembered because more than half a century later, he was still there.
Somewhere among childhood bicycle rides, scraped knees, snow forts, family dinners, brothers and sisters, Mom and Dad, and being told for the thousandth time to “go outside and play,” there was a little Italian mouse waiting for Ed Sullivan to kiss him goodnight.
And we remembered.
Giuseppe “Peppino” Mazzullo and the beloved Topo Gigio. Mazzullo gave the little mouse his voice for 45 years. Photo credit: Especial.
Around the Campfire
Was Topo Gigio really operated by four people?
Yes. Three puppeteers manipulated the little mouse while Peppino Mazzullo supplied his voice. The puppeteers dressed in black and worked against a black background so they essentially disappeared on television. Ithaca College
How many times did Topo Gigio appear on The Ed Sullivan Show?
The official Ed Sullivan history records 50 appearances, beginning in 1962. Ed Sullivan
Did Peppino Mazzullo really voice Topo for 45 years?
He did. Mazzullo became Topo Gigio’s voice in 1961 and continued through 2006. He died September 30, 2026, at age 100. ANSA.it
Final Thoughts
Maybe that is why I decided to write this.
Not simply because Peppino Mazzullo died.
And not simply because I remember Topo Gigio.
I wanted to remember a man who spent much of his life giving generations of children something gentle to smile about.
I also wanted to remember what happened when we turned the television off.
We went outside.
We played.
We argued.
We made up.
We got dirty.
We imagined.
And when Mom called us home, eventually we came running.
Technology changes. Entertainment changes. The stranger Warren Berkley wrote about more than a quarter century ago has certainly changed.
But perhaps our responsibility hasn’t.
We still get to decide when to turn it on.
We still get to decide what comes into our homes.
We still get to decide when enough is enough.
And most importantly, we still get to decide when it is time to turn everything off, open the door, step outside and discover what our own imagination can do.
Thank you, Peppino Mazzullo, for lending your voice to a little mouse for 45 years.
You gave millions of children something worth remembering.
And somewhere in my memories, I can still hear that little voice asking one more time:
“Eddie, kiss me goodnight.”
Rest well, Peppino.
And goodnight, Topo.
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