Here’s a subject I’d love to have your feedback on — obscure finds on the internet!
But first — some Thunderbean news!
The Tom and Jerry Blu-ray set has been going out, and I’m getting the first feedback from it. It’s so nice to talk about a set being actually done!
We’re working hard on getting Mid Century Modern 3 in the can right now. Here’s some stills from the set. I’ve really loved gathering films for the set over the last six years or so, especially more obscure things. I’m always astonished finding so many things I had never seen before.‘‘‘ We’ll be sending it out to replication this month.
We’re also hoping to get the Rainbow Parade, Volume 2 set in replication by the end of February or early March.
We have another few special sets available for a limited time at the Thunderbean Shop. Thanks to everyone for supporting these sets over the years.
And – onto this week’s subject!
The internet is amazing is so many ways, especially in the power of individuals to both help locate as well as find things you never thought you’d see. Finding a community (like the one here at Cartoon Research) of animation fans, historians and collectors is also pretty incredible as well, and has allowed information to flow freely between people around the world; we’re at a point where it would be hard to imagine life without it.
In working on the Thunderbean Blu-ray sets, it’s really helped in unearthing more things then I ever thought possible. Nearly every film I scan has an internet component to the workflow; sometimes in acquiring but more often in arranging and working out various deals. Even though there are specific things I’m happy to find though my friends and established connections, it’s especially fun when something shows up nearly out of the clear blue.
I thought it would be fun to highlight a few of my favorite things that have shown up on the internet in the last 10 years or so, and better to hear some of *yours*. If you’ve been following these Thursday posts you know I seem to love the especially bizarre things that show up. This is partially Jerry Beck’s fault for writing that article in Film Collector’s World in 1981 about obscure cartoon titles.
So, here’s some of my favorite finds. Now, you have to promise to post some of yours:
The Lone Ranger Cartoon (mid 30s)
Sometimes the things that have shown up I’d heard of but never had the chance to actually see. Happily, the little oddity Lone Ranger cartoon was posted. This is the particular kind of obscure animation I love- even though it’s often not great in execution. There’s something really fun about small attempts that didn’t go further.Produced by Roy Meredith. My guess is that it’s the same people that made the ‘Little Orphan Annie’ silent short, also distributed to home movies by Pathe Gram. Wonderfully strange.
Youtube Lists that Curate Drive-In Ads!
There are so many amazing drive-in reels on youtube that it’s pretty hard to pick through. This particular list has been especially fun – and has a lot of Toddy Drink ads I’ve never seen before. The Chilly Dilly ad at the beginning almost looks like a spoof!
Ugokie Kori No Tatehiki (1931)
Here’s an early Japanese animated short, clearly inspired by New York animation especially in the early 30s.
Animated by Ikuo Oishi.
The ‘Lost Media’ Wiki: Category: Animation
When I get especially despondent about not being able to find a particular thing, I just go to the ‘Lost Media’ Wiki and look at the “lost Animation” category to see all the things that aren’t— and probably never will be — *REALLY* lost. When you see 2 Stupid Dogs bumpers listed as being lost you really know where you are in the internet world.
I always think it’s funny that there’s very little about really lost animation here. There isn’t a mention of Toby the Pup cartoons being lost (or are they?). A fun distraction for a few minutes once in a while anyway— so in that way it’s one of my favorite things dealing with lost cartoons.
https://lostmediawiki.com/Category:Lost_animation
Tip Tops in Peppy Land (early 30s)
A short by Jam Handy for the Bureau of Milk Publicity, New York. Films promoting Milk have always been sort of fascinating to me, especially this one and “Out of a Milk Bottle” here:
Craig Davison put up a version of the film with a track. This print is from the Rick Prelinger collection, right from Jam Handy’s saved archives.
Ok — so now it’s *your* turn! What have you found that’s obscure and especially cool?
Have a good week everyone!
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.
It almost makes me despondent that you find worth in Lost Media wiki.
The site gives the impression it was written by teenagers who believe that anything they couldn’t find on a simple google search must be lost.
Best of luck with Toby – most of what they cover is circa 1990 -2012.
Well, since you asked, recently I found some Soviet propaganda cartoons from World War Two that were pretty entertaining. I was struck by how closely the design of Hitler (or “Gitler”, as he’s known in Russian) resembled that in the Wagnerian interlude in Disney’s “Education for Death”. (The Soviet cartoons came out a couple of years earlier.)
But I really have Thunderbean to thank for exposing me to a host of strange, wonderful and obscure cartoons, either through your video collections or here on your weekly posts. How else would I ever have discovered “Monkey Doodle”, “La joie de vivre”, Ted Eshbaugh’s “The Wizard of Oz”, or the incredible “Courtin’ an’ a-Snortin'”? To paraphrase Chico of the Three Dogeteers: You are magnifico, I think!
I collect dvds of intermission ads and ever since I wanted someone (like Thunderbean) to properly restore them. Some of them like Something Wierd and others just lazily splice them together that makes it hard to enjoy them. FTDepot is doing an excellent job in restoring the animated snipes (along other trailer) in 4K and posting them on YouTube. Here’s the Coca Cola Banjo that was restored… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHQ3UktLxeE
I have a couple of the Something Weird discs. They also did a few double features with a plausible intermission betwixt, mostly small town film ads. The actual movies, however, were cheap and depressing teen exploitation flicks without even camp value. I ending up getting rid of mine. Found another, but it was mostly trailers for unpleasantly gory cheapies.
Pretty recently Something Weird put out an audio CD of jingles, music, and soundtracks from drive-in intermissions. It’s nicely organized with informative notes; good background when one is in the mood. But I still wish somebody would do a curated video disc re-creating some proper intermissions (hardtop as well as drive-in).
Thanks for the heads up on FTDepot. I just subscribed. Appreciate the link.
Some of the old commercials that have faded into obscurity are a lot of fun to watch. Here’s a few favorites of mine, plus a few other gems:
The Kellogg’s commercials featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters
The Post Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles commercials
The Yogi Bear PSA’s of the late sixties/early seventies
The interstitials for the Huckleberry Hound Show and the Quick Draw McGraw Show
The Bugs Bunny Kool Aid commercials
Anything to do with the Linus the Lionhearted series (including the shameless promotion of the Post cereals)
The Florida Orange Juice commercials featuring the Orange Bird
Commercials for Donald Duck Orange Juice
The original opening titles for “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” (I only once came across the original opening with the original lyrics intact; most of the time the longer version which opened the series every week is shortened to just the chorus’ rendition of the title alone without the Sherman Brothers’ lyrics such as “the miracle of imagination, the marvels of earth, sea, and sky”. The Disney Treasures DVD sets only included the short version of the opening not the complete one. The lyrics have essentially been lost.)
Disney’s “Symposium of Popular Songs” featuring Ludwig Von Drake
Disney’s “Scrooge McDuck and Money”
Rankin-Bass “Tales of the Wizard of Oz”
I have a number of episodes of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” which feature the longer version titles including the lyrics “the miracle of imagination, the marvels of earth, sea, and sky”.
They were recorded off TV in Tasmania Australia from 1978-1994.
There were many different versions of both “World Of Color” and “The Wonderful World Of Disney” opening credits (using different film clips and musical variations).aired during this time.
(as well as “Disney’s Wonderful World: and Walt Disney”)
Repeated shows sometimes were remasters with different opening titles.
Some episodes of “World Of Color” featured the long version (many were remastered video copies), while others the shorter version.
Don’t know what you mean by “The lyrics have essentially been lost.”
I just meant that without much availability or exposure, those wonderful Sherman Brothers lyrics are now essentially forgotten by all but the most diehard fans. I’m glad to know the longer version of the “Color” opening has not been entirely lost.
I’ve known about this short for a few years now, L’amico degli animali (1968). This short is Italian and was made for the variety show Carosello and features Alvin and the Chipmunks. 4 more of these were made but I can’t find them anywhere.
https://youtu.be/pSvWtpgxC1k?si=gjTrG2jZLYfMNiZR
Since the Lone Ranger print you have was intended for home use, I assume the version that was released to theaters had sound and not intertitles?
im very found of HOUND FOR HIRE (Sam Basset). would love to see more (mayhaps an hd upgrade from the old transfers on jerry’s worst cartoons ever dvds?) zagreb film website has them and the astro-mutts pilot listed there, very nice quality screenshots of the latter too. i wonder if they have any elements on hand?
How about something found, lost, found again, lost again?
50 years ago, when I saw Pink Flamingos in a theater for the first time, it was preceded by a pornographic silent B&W cartoon. The style was obviously 1920s-30s, there was no soundtrack, and it was a copy of a copy of a copy….
Never saw or heard of it again until a few years ago when I somehow stumbled onto it on the internet! I was flabbergasted – it was just as dirty as I remembered. According to the notes, it was made for a stag dinner honoring Windsor McCay at the end of the 1920s. Whether that was true or not, I was excited/relieved to discover I hadn’t hallucinated it.
Well, cut to 2024, and I again have no idea how to find it, or even if it still exists on the net!
Gummo – allow me to be the first to direct you to: Eveready Harton in “Buried Treasure”.
Wow, Jerry, thanks! Not only is that my Obscene Holy Grail, there’s an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to it!
Here’s an obscurity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ikaVdllBko&list=LL&index=2
I remembered seeing this on Sesame Street in the 80s, wanted to see it again for decades, and it finally surfaced on YouTube last year. Who animated this? And why? Was it authorized?
https://youtu.be/LQ3qJ5ArQa8?si=hxDUMc2AwsLB7y5k
While I’m a Krazy Kat fan, it seems odd that a cartoon labeling throwing a brick at someone as an act of love was run on Sesame Street.
Speaking of drive-in ads that look like parodies, there’s the famous one with a bun holding itself open so a hotdog could jump into it. I first saw it in Grease and was sure they created it for the movie. Something so obviously Freudian couldn’t be a real ad! But it was.
Yes, it was authorized. From 1971-75, King Feature Syndicate disturbed the “Sesame Street” comic strip which was written and drawn by one of the animators of the shows’ inserts, Cliff Roberts. The strip consists of new characters created by Cliff such as Christopher Clumsy and the team of Jasper and Julius (by the following year, some of the Sesame Street Muppets started appearing in the strip).
A year after the strip was launched, Cliff got permissioned from King Features to do animated adaptions of some of the strips which debut on the show’s fourth season. In addition, King Features got to produce some animated segments featuring their own characters such as Tiger, Beetle Bailey, and Krazy Kat. The Tiger segment was on the official “Sesame Street” website for a several years until it was removed (along with 85% of the videos) due to a site remodel. The Beetle Bailey segment (which I believe was narrated by Lionel Wilson) is included in the first “Old School” DVD set (complete with King Features copyright!).
As usual: the moment I’m asked, I draw a blank! Honestly, most of the obscurities I find are because of this blog and/or its contributors. How else would I have learned about Mighty Mister Titan, the weird Yogi Bear theme cover, or god-knows-how-many forgotten anime?
All that in mind, would it be cheating to throw TV series into the mix? Because Moeru Oni-san feels properly obscure. Yes, its manga sometimes gets love from Shonen Jump as a nostalgic legacy property from the the turn of the 90s. The anime hasn’t got an official home video release past rental VHS tapes back in the day and the first episode being put in a freebie compilation DVD. It’s not lost, mind – NoruInuG on YouTube went through the trouble of applying English subs to raws they downloaded back in 2004 of (mostly) original broadcasts. Ironically, I guess that makes it more accessible than more famous animanga… If anything, I only point it out because, even in Japan, the anime seemingly flopped and there was zero international presence for it like there was for Dr. Slump, Saint Seiya, Kimengumi, etc.
I do agree that the Lost Media Wiki + community at large can seem, oh, a little corny? They’ve tried to mitigate the problem lately by letting people post their finds to a notice board, rather than simply making new articles for menial bits and bobs. More importantly, I do think we get cool finds from that community, and they do document some important things (for better or worse – it’s surreal to read about some real disturbing things on there next to Lost UK Dub of Nick Jr Show). I guess they suffer from being an isolated community rather than being (overall) connected to any larger thing like animation history.
Actually, one interesting bob I did find out about was a contest regarding the United Kingdom release of Toy Story. One would, I think, send in fanart of a Toy Story character with their name, address and age, and hopefully win the chance to go to the Toy Story Funhouse in Paris (it was a temporary installation at El Capitan and later Disneyland – *no* info on a Paris installation exists, but I assume it was at *its* Disneyland). The thing that makes it notable is that Disney presumably knew that its just-launched Disney Channel UK didn’t have much of an audience yet. So, the contest was actually held by the channel that beat both Nick and Disney to the punch: Cartoon Network. I think most animation-related contests and sweepstakes are shrouded in mystery, but the fact that Disney ceded a little control to Turner? That’s rich.
You’re not a fan of the LMW? Ah well.
Anyhoo, here’s a few of my picks;
1. Mix Master: King of Cards – I’ll admit, I’m a bit biased on this one because I love this series, I’m not even 100% sure it’s obscure enough but I don’t hear anyone talk about it. Fun little Korean-Japanese anime from 2005, if you’ve seen like Yu-gi-oh or Pokémon it’s in the same vein, but it doesn’t take itself as seriously and there’s a lot more humor. It got an English dub in 2007ish courtesy of Taffy Entertainment and Ocean Studios but in the US it was exclusive to Kabillion (a VOD service about 6ish years before VOD really took off, it’s still up and kicking actually) so it never really got that much attention. It’s charming, funny, and you should totally watch it.
2. When Funnies Were Funny – You could have filled this entire article with Fred Ladd’s escapades with the sheer amount of weird stuff he made. I remember first discovering this series in a big honking book of cartoons (The Encyclopedia of Animation or something along those lines) and just being fascinated by it. It was a syndie package from the mid to late 70s of old silent cartoons redrawn to be in color (prob the same process as the WB cartoons he did in the late 60s) with a weird score added, mostly APM library music. Very strange choices with the colors too, alot of the Felix cartoons made him orange for some reason. Did any station actually pick these up?
3. Cap’n Sailorbird/Bozo’s Storybook – Very much in the same vein as WFWF, except with strange foreign cartoons (mostly Nazi era Germany and Communist Europe shorts iirc), info is much more scarce on these packaged from what I’ve seen, but IIRC Jerry mentioned it on the old FAQ page about the Snowman cartoon.
4. Funky Italian commercials – On one of Yowp’s old posts, he posted a link to an Italian Huckleberry Hound commercial featuring a girlfriend(!) for Huck named Kitty. I’m fascinated by comics of cartoons featuring weird characters that only exist in that continuity, so it got me looking for more info on Kitty. Wasn’t able to find very many comics with her, but I did find a few other neato Italian cartoon commercials. (sorry for the links)
https://youtu.be/xCROe-BYP7s
https://youtu.be/WBJNnbwidgw
https://youtu.be/FjzfOaNHBUI
There’s one more I haven’t been able to find (mainly because I don’t remember what it was called), I think it was for some brand of food? It features a guy who sorta looks like Mr. Whoopee from Tennessee Tuxedo playing the accordion, and he keeps saying “Taccobana!” or something while telling crazy stories.
One more, I swear. Belgian studio Belvision, better known for making adaptations of various European comics like TinTin and Asterix and Obelix, made this strange test animation some time in the 60s of the Flintstones. Not sure what it’s for considering I don’t speak French, but it looks really nice. https://youtu.be/Wc3kAdMm6aE
The Italian commercial you are looking for featured a guy who was a one-man-band; the word he used to say is “Tacabanda!” which means in Italian something like “Let the band play!”. It was a commercial for Doria, a biscuit brand. Here is one of such commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvxgxGrp6Sw
Steve: Years ago, you told me about some WWII Japanese propaganda cartoons where American’s were depicted very much like crabby and nasty “Bluto” characters and even had the gruff grunts you’d associalte with the character – especially the Fleischer versions. Have these ever turned up here? These films would be valuable here as a history of propaganda films – from all “sides” – from the Wolrd War II era!
That’s “Momotaro no umiwashi [Momotaro’s Sea Eagles]”, a 37-minute film directed by Mistuyo Seo in 1943. The American sailor Bluto is depicted as a slobbering, cowardly drunk. It’s on YouTube.
Drive-in ads were something I found a while back as well. There’s a bunch of sources on YouTube and elsewhere I like to look at, but a fun one is the AV Geeks channel. Skip runs a daily show at 12PM EST where he shows various shor subjects for roughly an hour. Not all of them are animated, of course, but I’ve had a lot of surprises and some of the better ones get split off into individual shorts.
Antonio Rubino’s “Nel paese dei ranocchi,” (circa 1942)
IN THE LONE RANGER CARTOON THEY SPELLED “HEIGH HO” INCORRECTLY- AS “HIEGH-HO”- DIDN’T THEY HAVE SPELLCHECK BACK THEN?
Some people take that “I before E” rule too literally.
One of my grails used to be pre-UPA Columbia shorts: Krazy Kat, Scrappy, Fox & Crow, the guy with the magic hat, Li’l Abner … They ran constantly on one local kid show (Captain Satellite, KTVU Oakland) and nowhere else. Seeing them here and elsewhere online is decidedly weird, recognizing blurrily recalled gags and bits after a half century.
Also those European / Soviet shorts, and what seemed to be features cut up into serials. Whatever happened to the gazelle who kicked up gold coins out of the ground, or the wooden soldiers who repainted themselves after being disqualified from a Toyland soccer championship?
Still wishing Disney would humor us aging boomers with a release of more intact Disneyland / Walt Disney Presents / World of Color episodes. Even the animated clip shows, because the framing stories and new animation were usually nifty. At the very least, give us “From All of Us to All of You” with Uncle Walt.
Aargh, the amount of stuff Disney keeps locked up kills me. The worst part is Disney DOES have all/a lot of the Walt Disney Presents shows in a broadcast ready format (prob SD Betacams but it’s good enough for me), they ran them in the late 90s on Vault Disney! If I was on charge of Disney (oh what I would do), I’d put stuff like that on D+; you can’t show them on television because it’s too niche, you can’t put them on DVD because not enough people would buy them, so it would make all the sense in the world to put them on streaming, especially if it’s owned programming that you don’t need to spend money on, but I suppose Home Alone 6 and crummy Marvel shows are more important.
I’m still looking for “The Restless Sea” which was the last of “The Bell Telephone Hour” shows and the only one done by Disney.
To be honest, even if the Walt Disney Presents shows could be released on DVD, they would probably fare best as manufacture-on-demand titles because like you mentioned, these shows are pretty niche.
Glad there’s going to be more Modern Animation sets!
I can’t think of anything really obscure, but I remember some drive-in Crush ad with a Nesquik-ish rabbit who acted like and vocally-resembled Bugs. I can’t find it anywhere.
Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSFoVEsLN3U&list=PLDNJRIBXF0FOEDWHfkExKHFaztQrof6aE&index=64
I recall coming across only one capture of a likely found 35mm Toby the Pup film print on a YouTube community post, but it’s gone from viewing. What I could describe from the image was Toby playing a harmonica beside a bar stand
To the question at the end of this post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7v8v6Ti0z4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsjAyDTFp8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMInrAMEzyU
BONUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88-caxZywoM
ok so according to a gone upload by a yt user (who leaked two cartoons), it was revealed that the character was actually playing a violin
I really love this wonderfully animated advert for Breton crackers. I actually remember seeing these bears on packaging for Dare cookies in the early 90s.
https://twitter.com/DannyDingo88/status/1531861178854555648
Are you trying to give me false hope? Because that is what it feels like.
Fine, false hope. Enter me, and make sad. I want the following cartoons to have complete, high quality, official releases:
>Bounty Hamster
>Eek! The Cat
>Bureau of Alien Detectors
>Animalia (it was made in HD, so Bluray please)
>Sherlock Yack (it’s on Amazon Prime for a reasonable price, but a Bluray would be nice too, release it in Europe where it was made, with French and English dubs)
>Commander Clark (another euro show)
>Hanazuki (come on Hasbro, I know you love to bury your own shows, but you CAN release this one)
Off the top of my head. Other people can bring up others obscure cartoons.
You know darn well I love looking into obscure animation, otherwise I wouldn’t be here!
I agree with you that the Lost Media Wiki has a lot of interesting articles. Some I recently found:
-The Italian cartoon “Gatto Evaristo”, which a prominent Italian YouTuber covered a few months back: https://youtu.be/5sOq2O1nGsI
-The 1990s Australian cartoon “Dinky Di’s”, about a squad of animal superheroes. Creator Mel Bradford wanted to do a video release, but passed away before it came to fruition. https://youtu.be/LLM90Osykxk
-“Ang Panday”, a 1987 animated series based off the Filipino comic character Panday, advertised as “the first Filipino animated series in television”.
And here’s some “lost media” I HAVEN’T seen covered on the English-speaking web:
-“Prince Siscon”, a 1963 stop-motion adaptation of a Fujiko Fujio A manga. It’s so obscure that even the English Wikipedia doesn’t mention it.
-“Futa-kun”, a 1966 animated pilot based on the manga by Fujiko Fujio A. Reportedly, this showed up on several local Japanese stations in the early 1970s. A print for this was found recently.
-“Parasol Henbee”, a 1989-1991 animated series, again based on a manga by Fujiko Fujio A. Several episodes were released on Laserdisc in the 1990s, so this still stands a chance of being rediscovered.
-“Kiteretsu”, the 2002 live-action NHK drama based on the Fujiko F. Fujio manga “Kiteretsu Daihyakka”. It features Mami Koyama as a CGI Korosuke, her first time portraying the character since 1990. NHK posted a clip on their website, and another clip surfaced on a Japanese quiz show sometime last decade. Fujiko-Pro is celebrating the 90th anniversary of Fujiko F. Fujio’s birth this year, a perfect time for NHK to re-air this. https://www2.nhk.or.jp/archives/movies/?id=D0009040375_00000
(Hey, if anyone who edits the Lost Media Wiki is reading these comments, that’s your cue!)
Paul: Thanks for the info on “Momotaro’s ‘Sea Eagles.” I just watched a chunk of that a little while ago. Very strange to see what looks like early “Anime” for kids, but propaganda against US! One of the comments – I think on YouTube – was almost hysterical, in that the poster was surprised that the Japanese animators didn’t get permisson from Max Fleischer to use the “image” of Bluto! In times of war – and Japan was certainly at war with us – I’d find it a bit more than surreal if somebody from the Japanese animation department actually DID try to contact Famous or KFS for “copyright clearance”!
Are there any German ainimation propaganda cartoons that survived from World War II?
There’s “Vom Bäumlein, das andere Blätter hat gewollt”, a 1940 antisemitic propaganda cartoon produced in Nazi Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vom_B%C3%A4umlein,_das_andere_Bl%C3%A4tter_hat_gewollt
There are some, but the ones I’ve seen are very tame compared to what the American studios were putting out. Germany only had a small animation industry before the war, and much of its output was abstract or satirical rather than humorous or sentimental. In 1941 Propaganda Minister Goebbels set up a company called Deutsche Zeichentrickfilme (German animated films) in the hopes of rivalling or even surpassing Disney. In spite of the government pouring a lot of money into it, however, the studio only produced one completed film, “Armer Hansi [Poor Hansi]”. A caged bird longs to be free, especially when he sees a pretty female bird of another species primping on the windowsill. After escaping, he learns that freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and in the end he finds happiness with another caged bird of his own species. Moral: don’t mess with the status quo, and stick to your own kind. It’s quite a well-made film, comparable to the better Fleischer Color Classics, and it contains nothing that would have raised the ire of American audiences at the time (not even a swastika on the title card). After a couple of years, the government shut down the studio and sent all its employees off to work in munitions factories.
You might be interested in “Nimbus libere”, a propaganda cartoon from Vichy France that was included in Thunderbean’s “Cartoons for Victory!” collection, as it contains unauthorised appearances by several American cartoon characters such as Popeye, Mickey Mouse, and Felix the Cat. The title character, Professor Nimbus, was the star of a French comic strip whose creator was an outspoken Nazi sympathiser and anti-Semite. He escaped prosecution after the war by fleeing to South America.
As for the film cited in Popkorn Kat’s comment above, it’s actually a faithful retelling of a classic children’s poem written in the early 1800s. A little fir tree wishes he had leaves instead of needles. He wakes up in the morning covered in gold leaves, but a Jew picks them and takes them away in a sack. The next day he wakes up with glass leaves, but they shatter in the wind. The third day he wakes up with green leaves like the other trees, but a goat comes along and eats them. The fourth day he wakes up with needles and is glad to have them back. Modern editions of the poem replace the word for “Jew” with either “robber” or “farmer”.
There are a couple of German WWII-era animated films extant but rarely seen. “Das dumme Gänslein” (The Silly Goose, 1944) is one; here, a girly gosling is fascinated by city life but is moved to the boring rural boredom. There, she is seduced and lured into a trap by a fox, to a tune resembling the Yiddish song “Bai Mir Bistu schein”. Directed by Hans Fischerkoesen who also made the more famous (and apolitical) “Der Schneemann” (Snowman in July, also 1944) and “Verwitterte Melodie” (Weather-beaten Melody, 1943). “Der Störenfried” (The Intruder, 1940) is still out there, too, with antisemitic undertones but more a war-themed cartoon, mentally prepping the audience for fighting the enemy. Made by Hans Held who also directed “Armer Hansi” mentioned above and in addition the beautiful “Eine Winterreise” (Baron Munchhausen, 1944). My personal “obscure” favorite is “Tanz der Farben” (Dance of Colors, 1939), directed by Hans Fischinger, who stayed behind in Germany when his more famous bother Oskar emigrated to the USA. How that abstract fim escaped the “Enartete Kunst” verdict by the Reichskulturministerium is still a mystery to me. I saw that film on TV once as part of a documentary. Somebody taped that show back in the days and put it on Youtube recently. The film certainly seserves better presentation.
There was also “Van den vos Reynard” (About Reynard the Fox), a color cartoon produced in 1943 in occupied Netherlands by Dutch collaborators. Based on folk-tales of Reynard the Fox, in this version, Reynard leads other forest animals in overthrowing an usurping rhinoceros (a crude Jewish caricature) who is robbing them and destroying their morals. Most copies of the film were destroyed during the war, but reportedly a few fragments survived, along with some stills.
Many foreign cartoons outside of North America is obscure, mainly in Europe. Maybe you could check out Hungarian, Croatian or Soviet animated films summary on youtube and I will tell you what they are. Very interesting period in animation.
I have seen that “Chilly Dilly” ad rock a full house, get ’em ROFL, on several occasions.
Another rare animated “Sesame Street” insert: Among the numerous pieces that the Hubley’s Storyboard, Inc did for the show’s second season, one that involved a bandit that tries to shoot a sheriff at the count of three didn’t air for obvious reason. It did however aired two years later on “Vila Sésamo”, the Brazil version of the show. The segment, which was aired dubbed and in black and white (as color television was then a rarity in the country), can be seen here at the 1:09:28 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6CzAWuBho4
A few years ago, there was a special event at “The Museum of the Moving Image” as part of a celebration of the show’s 50th anniversary where they showed segments that either were unaired or were pulled after a few airings (including an unaired weird, animated adaption of the song “Bein Green” set to Sinatra’s version by animator Etienne Delesseet that was adapted as a large 1974 Western Publishing Golden Book), but I don’t know if the Hubley’s segment was included in the screening.
BAT BEAGLE, a failed pilot, never even aired on TV (but it’s on You Tube). In this spoof of TV hit Bat Masterson by Sam Singer, the cane wielding canine squares off against escaped convict Sourpuss.
Total Television gave us another unsold pilot called GENE HATTREE, a singing, guitar strumming steer who went up against bad hombre Tortilla Fats (voiced by Sandy Becker and Jackson Beck). Also on You Tube.
The crunchy sound and smell of a pickle in a movie theater does not seem ideally suited for snack food, but an interesting idea anyway and good advertisement
To Coop: The visuals in the Chilly Dilly trailer imply that the pickles were sold (at least mainly) in drive-in theatres, where you would eat them in your car. Drive-in snack bars sold many of the same items sold by drive-in restaurants, like sandwiches (hot dogs, hamburgers, Sloppy Joe’s,) pizza by the slice, egg rolls or taquitos, French fries, ice cream bars, etc.; which were not generally sold in indoor theatres. Like indoor theatres, though, they also sold popcorn, candy, and soft drinks. They apparently also did quite a trade in cigarettes.
There used to be a local bank in Providence, Rhode Island called “Old Stone Bank,” which I remember had animated commercials featuring Fred Flintstone as “spokesman,” ending with “Yabba dabba doo, love that bank!” (Old Stone Bank collapsed during the S&L Crisis). The only other Flintstones-based commercials I’ve ever seen were for national-branded products. Anybody else heard of Flintstones commercials for local companies like this?