To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, the six most terrifying words in the English language are: “This Theatre Regularly Shows Terrytoons Cartoons!” – or language to that effect.
Let’s be clear – I love Terrytoons. The general public, not so much. The cartoons were the polar-opposite of Disney’s product, as far as story, gags and music were concerned. But there is a lot of gold to mined if one looks past all that, to the art and animation.
Educational Pictures and later 20th Century Fox had no problem with their relationship with the New Rochelle based studio. They certainly promoted the cartoons as well as – and in some cases better than – the other Hollywood studios. Here is a gallery of most of the one-sheet posters created during the studios lifetime. A pretty attractive bunch.
Most of these posters were contributed to the Terrytoons Facebook page (thanks to Mark Newgarden, Nick Richie and others), and they made their way online mainly through the efforts of poster-maven Bruce Hershenson. I’ve posted them below in chronologic order (the latest one, from the early 1960s, is above). Click on any below to see a larger version.
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of Cal Arts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
Can someone post any “Super-Mouse” images they have ? Title cards, ads, posters, etc. . . Just curious what made it out there before the “cease and desist”. . .
Being a Terrytoons junkie, this studio made some of the “best” theatrical one sheet posters during the studio’s 30+ plus years output, even better than the ones from MGM, Warner Bros and Universal.
You wouldn’t exactly need much work to outdo MGM in that regard. MGM cartoons had some of the ugliest posters in classic animation history, in stark contrast to employing some of the greatest animators in the business for the actual cartoons.
Just discovered your great new site, Jerry. Keep up the good work — and thanks for this Terrytoons post!
Has anyone seen any of Terry’s Nancy cartoons? I find the idea hard to imagine.
Both cartoons are on Youtube. They are not that good.
Yes, they’re quite terrible…Makes me wonder why Terry ever bought the rights to the strip in the first place.
Have to admit, they ARE more attractive than MGM and even Warner cartoon posters shown here in past posts.
But I can’t remember ever seeing a cartoon poster at a theater, even when a cartoon was still standard (maybe a Disney featurette, but not a standard one-reeler). All the frames were filled with current or upcoming features.
Any geezers out there remember seeing posters like these in use?
Another great post,Jerry! Do you ,or anybody else,know if CBS still owns the rights to Terrytoons? Especially Super Mouse/Mighty Mouse.It’d be neat to see them with their original titles.Also am a fan of the Hashimoto
series with rather impressive Oriental backgrounds for a concern like Terrytoons. I would imagine Bob Kuwahara had a hand in creating it.
Oh yes, CBS still owns them. They’re not doing anything with them, but they do own them.
imagine standing outside a theater and looking at that last poster with eight different characters (counting the magpies as one) from two radically different periods of the studio, and realizing that if you go inside you’ll see a cartoon featuring any one of them at random.
It’s like Russian roulette with worse odds.
Since the TERRYTOONS cartoons have become so scarce (I’m not even sure how many have fallen into the public domain), that scarcety makes me want to have them restored on DVD and blu-ray all the more, despite their shortcomings…and, yes, I, too, remember the comic strip character of NANCY appearing in a TERRYTOONS cartoon, but I was unaware that her appearance marked a series.
You know, if a comprehensive DVD set ever did come out around the decades of TERRYTOONS cartoons, how nice it would be if the box art included some of these posters.
My father grew up in New Rochelle in the 1930s and 1940s, and he remembers school assemblies in those days when Terrytoons animators would show up and do sketches on big sheets of paper on easels of whatever characters the kids called out. Based on these posters, I only wish someone had saved some of them.
He also told me that Phil Scheib, the Terrytoons music director, lived only a couple of blocks from his house.
Did Heckle and Jeckle have their own seperate film poster like Mighty Mouse or were they not as popular as him?
Who is the little guy in the red hat? I remember most here.
That’s FLEBUS!
Ahhh ok I remembered him but not the name. Most of the stuff here: Luno, Dawg, Hashimoto, were all over the place 40 yrs ago when I was a kid, but have vanished. Its too bad Terrytoons deserve better exposure.
My favorite – Terrytoons! Love this post!
I would love to see the old and not so old Terrytoons cartoons on sell thru DVD sets, I cannot understand why they haven’t been released as yet.
You might want add the Chris Columbo poster to the gallery:
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/terrytoons-chris-columbo/#prettyphoto%5B40493%5D/0/
I would like to know why old and not so old Terrytoons cartoons weren’t released on DVD?