Glenn Phillip McGuire, 28, had originally pleaded not guilty after police found six such images of the cartoon characters on his computer.

The images had been doctored or drawn by unknown people and were downloaded while McGuire was surfing the Limewire website.

The Supreme Court ruled last December that child pornography can include sexually explicit images of cartoon characters.

McGuire changed his plea in Newcastle Local Court yesterday to guilty and was convicted, fined $1000 and put on a 12-month good behaviour bond.

The Supreme Court ruling came after a man was convicted in Parramatta Local Court in February last year of possessing pornographic images of child cartoon characters.

Justice Michael Adams agreed with the local court magistrate that the images could be classed as child pornography.

That ruling extended the legal definition of "person" to include cartoon characters.

Police searched McGuire's home in April last year and seized his computer and disks before charging him.

The case was delayed to await the Supreme Court's decision.

Defence barrister Mark Preece told the court yesterday that McGuire, of Renfrew Crescent, Edgeworth, received the images "mischievously" while downloading music and video files from Limewire.

"It's the sort of spam email garbage that is disseminated all around this country every day," Mr Preece said.

"The images are at the extreme lowest end of the scale.

"He's extremely embarrassed about the nature of the charge.

"To say that this is a very unfortunate matter is probably a gross understatement."

Magistrate Sharon Holdsworth said that even though the images did not depict actual children being exploited, the need remained to deter members of the community from viewing or disseminating such images.

"There have been rather extraordinary circumstances in this case," she said.

"It was both necessary and appropriate to await the Supreme Court decision."