Mickey Mouse Canasta Junior is based on the Canasta card game with Disney cartoon characters. In the late 1940s, Canasta was a popular playing card game in North America.

The game is for two to six players where they attempt to make melds of 7 cards of the same rank, and "go out" by playing all cards in their hand and discarding. It is commonly played by two players with two standard decks of cards, but many variations exist for 3 - 6 player games or teams.