Sometimes commercials can be a bright spot, and four them them can be bright spots!
But first, a little Thunderbean news:
Interesting week here. While some things have been going quite well, there was a pretty ‘digitally’ devastating incident: one of the main hard drives failed, causing a loss of most of the cleanups we were doing for the Rainbow Parade, Volume 2 set. Other things have been delayed because of it, but, in the larger picture, it’s more of a setback than the end of any one thing. We hope to catch the set back up soon, along with the other things we’re finishing off. In the whole time running Thunderbean, I’ve never had a disaster that’s this big, but a few smaller, frustrating ones that didn’t cause us to lose much have slowed us down before. There’s so many other good things happening that we really can’t let this bring us down too much…
Last week’s article has a whole bunch of great responses! It’s worth looking back at it, since it’s a great list of great films.
Now, onto some commercials!
I had posted these way, way back (in 2014), but I’ve found the YouTube account they were posted in is no more. As I was looking at materials (as I will be a lot in the coming weeks) I found these and took a little break to watch them again.
Many years ago (from late 1987 to early 1994) I worked for the University of Michigan in the Film and Video Library, and helped with the archive films and other collections. These spots were unearthed originally by a University of Michigan archivist, who called me over to take a look at them while he was viewing a 1949 Kinescope broadcast of a University of Michigan Football game sponsored by Ford. While the rest of the broadcast was a Kinescope (shot on video and filmed from a monitor), the four animated Ford Commercials were not- and were in excellent quality to boot. I’m pretty sure Ford had UPA make seven of these all together, but, so far, none of the other ones have ever shown up. None of the others were on any other U of M broadcast, sadly.
Our own Devon Baxter noted that the first spot features animation by Bill Melendez. I’m not sure who animated on the others or if it’s Bill as well on some, but I find them all to be really enjoyable and well-animated.The inking is beautiful on these spots, and especially nice on the closeups.
So, now, let’s all hope the others show up sometime— or even better, sometime soon.
Have a good week all!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
I am very familiar with these spots, as they appeared on the last Blu-ray around classic animated TV ads that you released. In fact, they let off the list of interesting bits of animation there. Thanks for this. I hope your computers are back up and running properly real soon, so we can get more of those “special“ discs as well as the projects that need to be worked on. Good luck as always.
This is amazing! I had no idea that Dr. Seuss and UPA ever collaborated on commercials for Ford auto parts. This is beyond a doubt the finest animation produced for television that I’ve ever seen from the pre-Crusader Rabbit era.
I was very interested to see the distinctive 1949 Fords pictured in these commercials. Detroiters of my parents’ generation were well aware of its importance in automotive history. Since the entire American auto industry had been converted to the war effort, it took some time and a great deal of effort to reconvert the industry to the domestic consumer market. While other manufacturers came out with slightly improved versions of their prewar models, Ford completely redesigned their postwar car from the ground up. They beat the competition to the market by months and sold over a million new cars in 1949. Had the 1949 Ford not been such a spectacular success, it’s very likely that the company would have folded.
Sorry to hear about your hard drive crashing, and best wishes in getting the Rainbow Parades and all your other projects back on track. At least Thunderbean isn’t one of those Michigan businesses that pulled up stakes and moved to Florida in the ‘90s, or you’d have a lot more to worry about right now.
On the assumption you have certain procedures in place to avoid such tragedies, so the software you use makes it impossible to do backups on an external source?
Can understand losing a day or twos work on a crash, but ….
I’ve never lost a big chunk of work in the over 20 years doing these Thunderbean things. I have backups on a lot of things, but didn’t for five and a half of the cleanups on this title as well as some new scans. I should have had a backup in this case, but didn’t.
The bird’s jaunty walk in spot number three looks like pure Bill Melendez to me.
Guess this partially gives insight to how UPA got ahold of Dr. Seuss’s Gerald McBoing Boing.
Watching these make me wish UPA created actual theatrical shorts in Seuss’s signature style, but such silliness was likely beneath the studio (ridiculous, especially when considering Zagreb’s existence).
Guesswork on my part, but I’m reasonably sure I detected Daws Butler, Marvin Miller, and Jackson Beck doing the voices.
Has anyone been able to discover anything regarding the animated Dr. Seuss Flit “commercials” produced in the late 1920s (1929, I think – I have notes somewhere). They may be in the ad agency’s archives.
It’s a shock to see this high quality of animation from a TV commercial, much less one dating before 1950. The animators did a fantastic job bringing the Seussian artstyle to life that wouldn’t be properly replicated for decades. The only downside is the distinct lack of rhyming, which I imagine had to be slimmed down to fit the Ford service spiels.
As an interesting footnote, Bill Melendez would animate more commercials for Ford 11 years later, in collaboration with another famous artist – Charles M. Schulz.