-By Mike Shields

Seth MacFarlane’s experiment in original content for the Internet is off to a roaring start.

The first six of a planned 50 animated shorts to be produced by the Family Guy creator— dubbed Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy—have generated 14 million total views since their Sept. 9 debut across various syndication partners, according to distributor Media Rights Capital. One short, Super Mario Rescues The Princess, has amassed over 6 million views on YouTube alone.

Last month MacFarlane and MRC launched Cavalcade in a unique partnership with Google, which besides launching a branded channel on YouTube (which to date boasts of 100,00 subscribers), is distributing these shorts across the Google Content Network--often in the form of ad placements. Thus far however, it appears that YouTube is responsible for the lion’s share of traffic; the Cavalcade channel was YouTube’s most popular during the week ending Sept. 12, generating millions of views in less than 48 hours. Among the other popular YouTube clips is A Dog on the $25,000 Pyramid, which has been viewed over 1.5 million times on the site to date.

The first 10 of the MacFarlane-produced shorts are being sponsored by Burger King. The fast food company’s branded channel, youtube.com/bk, is now the second most popular sponsored channel of all time on YouTube.