Upon closer inspection, these Paramount Sales News publicity drawings are not exactly the same art as the images prepared for the one-sheet posters for the Fleischer cartoons themselves. While the poses and staging are practically identical, there are significant differences between the trade ads and theatrical posters for Big Chief Ugh-Amugh-Ugh, Sally Swing, and Learn Polikeness (called “Popeye Learns Ettikett” in print); the final poster versions are certainly slicker. Still, it gives us a hint of what the (as of now) still missing posters for such titles as Goonland and The Impractical Joker were like. Good to know — but that open mouth and chin…
Here are a few more comparisons of the exhibitor ads versus the final lobby poster:
Below is the complete batch Fleischer spots from Paramount Sales News for November-December 1938 (click each to enlarge):
11-01-38
11-16-38
11-23-38
11-30-38
12-07-38
12-14-38
12-21-38
12-28-38
Our usual weekly examples of Fleischer cartoons in release to theaters at the time the trade ads above appeared in print. Above, Popeye in A DATE TO SKATE (released November 18th 1938); Below, Betty Boop in ON WITH THE NEW (released December 2nd 1938).
THAD KOMOROWSKI is a writer, journalist, film restorationist and author of the acclaimed (and recently revised) Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. He blogs at 
There’s a low-res copy of the Goonland poster here:
http://letterboxd.com/film/goonland/
Thad, I am shocked! This poster exists aand you didn’t know it?…
Bob is more adept at finding Popeye minutiae than I am.
It used to be on Jerry’s Paramount original titles page (along with the posters for “King of the Mardi Gras” and “Bulldozing the Bull”), but it’s not on the pared-down current version.
Is it any wonder that Buzzy Boop never took off? She looks like a misbegotten hybrid of Betty and Olive Oyl. Maybe if her hands were daintier instead of those rubbery hams she’s sporting. Oh well, just one more resident for the Isle of Misfit Characters.
It’s interesting that Paramount would still be promoting “The Impractical Joker” a year after its release date (less so with “Learn Polikeness”, since that was the Fleischers’ last cartoon with Bluto up to that point, and what the marketing people wanted to sell to theater owners might be different than what the studio might be trying to do to keep the series from becoming too formulistic).