There’s a parodic riff on duct tape, takes by Scientifically Accurate and CollegeHumor, and at least one alarmingly N.S.F.W. spoof, starring Webby Vanderquack and a Beagle Boy. One video, with 1.1 million views, pairs the unaltered original music with the clip for “Single Ladies.” Another video, with seven times as many views as that one, re-creates the opening sequence with actual ducklings.

In a category of its own, in 2016, Laurie Hernandez jived to the theme on Dancing with the Stars. (Judge Julianne Hough praised Hernandez’s performance: “You are Disney’s Beyoncé!”) And, if you visit Marie’s Crisis piano bar in Manhattan, there’s a chance you’ll find yourself in the midst of a giddy sing-along version of it, as I did recently.

Mueller is regularly astonished by the pervasiveness of his own creation. “When people find out what I do for a living, they’ll always ask if they’d know one of my songs,” he says. “Sometimes they won’t know my pop hits.” (For one, Mueller co-wrote Jennifer Paige’s 1998 hit “Crush.”) “But almost everywhere I’ve gone, people know DuckTales. The reach of it is so mind-blowing.”

“Just recently I was playing with my band at a club,” says Jeff Pescetto, the theme’s original singer. “A group of guys from England walked up and said, ‘We heard your voice and knew right away that it was the guy who sings the DuckTales theme song.’ They were so excited to meet me. I just couldn’t believe they recognized my voice.”

DuckTales aired in more than 100 countries in 25 different languages. It was the first American cartoon broadcast in the former Soviet Union after the Cold War; in Hungary, those born in the early-to-mid 80s are known as “the DuckTales generation” (Kacsamesék generáció).

Only in Korea, and only for a time, did the show have a completely different theme song: a nauseating little ditty, replete with irritating quacking noises and performed by children.

That unfortunateness aside, Mueller’s theme song was free to become a global phenomenon. And it did—albeit with modified lyrics. Roughly translated, the opening lines of the Norwegian version are “Come along … meet an acquaintance. Scrooge, Donald, people and animals offer you excitement. Here, almost everything happens. Here, almost everybody lives.” The Spanish theme promises “many adventures … with the bad guys and also the good ones”. The French version emphasizes Scrooge’s impressive status and wealth: “He’s the greatest boss of all the city . . . He’s the most powerful . . . He’s worth billions in gold, in dollars.” Even the “woo-hoo!” gets fine-tuned from culture to culture. It’s more of an “oh-oh!” in Finnish; the Norwegians go for “ah-ha!”; the Polish offer a frisky “yoo-oo!”

The rebooted DuckTales theme was arranged by Michael “Smidi” Smith and TJ Stafford, with former American Idol contestant Felicia Barton on lead vocals. “There was never a question as to whether we would use the original theme song in the new series,” says Jay Stutler, vice president of Disney Television Animation’s music division.

“It was actually a pretty surreal experience,” says Stafford. “I have such a nostalgic soft spot when it comes to DuckTales the cartoon, that to actually work on the theme song was a little confusing at times. The music made me feel the feelings I had as a child rushing home and watching the cartoon, yet I had to act like an adult and take it seriously.”

“My only note to Felicia during the production process,” says Smith, “was, ‘Sing it like you can’t believe that you are singing the DuckTales theme song.’ She did it, and absolutely killed it.”