Scooby Doo on Gilligan's Island

I saw this image of Scooby Doo and Shaggy with Gilligan and the Skipper. It got me thinking how much fun it would be if they appeared together in something, and then I remembered that the current Scooby Doo series is called Scooby Doo and Guess Who, with each episode featuring some famous guest. Why not an episode where the Scooby gang ends up on a deserted island where they meet the cast of Gilligan's Island! I threw on a Scooby Doo and Guess Who logo onto the image, and now I'm super excited to see this happen!

That's a Lot of Missing Cartoon

I was watching an old VHS tape full of Tom and Jerry cartoons I taped off of TV in the 90's and something stuck out to me. During the 1951 cartoon, His Mouse Friday, Tom encounters some stereotypical island cannibals, and in one scene they have a close of  the cannibals face and you can hear muted music but when his mouth opens, there is no sound. I have recently purchased the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection DVD set which has all of the original theatrical cartoons (minus two; Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat), so I grabbed my DVD and popped in disc 3 which has the His Mouse Friday cartoon on it. When I watched the same scene, I could hear the original voice that came out of the cannibals mouth. He says "Mmmmm... [licks his lips] barbecued cat" in a voice that sounds like a million other cartoon voices of the time. The same thing happens just a few seconds later then a tiny cannibal does this same thing to Jerry. On the cartoon taped off of TV, there is no sound when he talks, but on the DVD you hear him say "Mmmm [licks lips] barbecue mouse". I found it kinda odd that they removed the voice which I guess was considered stereotypical 'black' voice, and yet left in Jerry smudging soot onto his face to create 'black face'.

I was happy that on my DVDs, they had the original sound. But then I noticed that the DVD seems to be a pan and scan of the cartoon, where they cut the ends of the picture off to make it square like an old TV screen and sometimes they just cut the two ends off, or sometimes they pan and scan which means they move to where the action is and cut out the rest - sometimes (such as in this case) losing crucial animation. Shown here you can see the original wide screen version I taped off of TV back in the 90's and then the letterboxed version from the DVD. Odd that the one shown on my old TV is the wide version and the one on DVD is the reduced version.

The quality of this one is not great as I took a photo of the VHS image off of the TV using my phone.

This is a screen grab of the DVD

I had been excited that I could finally throw away all of my old VHS copies of Tom & Jerry that I can collected over the years now that I had this complete collection on DVD, but now that I see there is actually cartoon missing from the DVDs, now I think I will keep my tapes along with the DVD collection. 

New Adventures of Gilligan on DVD

Advertising works on me. I finished reading Detective Comics #52 and was putting it away when I noticed the ad on the back page. I believe I may have made some sort of "Ooh" sound as I saw the Warner Archive ad advertiging The New Adventures of Gilligan, the complete series Now on DVD!
I am a huge fan of Gilligan's Island, and remember watching the Groovie Goolies show before school every morning in the 70's and 80's hoping to see an episode of The New Adventures of Gilligan. It may not have been the best cartoon on TV, but I have been waiting for this to come out as an official release for years. Back in the 90's while I was a member of the Gilligan's Island Fan Club, I managed to purchase a few episodes of this animated series that had been transferred from 16 mm film. Then some time around 2000 I purchased a DVD off the Internet that had 16 (of the 24 total) episodes in watchable, but not great condition. It took all of 20 minutes after seeing this ad to have my copy ordered and on its way to my mailbox.
Now I just need them to release the three Gilligan's Island TV movies, and a CD with the music from the TV show (and cartoons) would be great, as the music still fills my head all these years later.

Disney on TCM Time Again

March 9, 2016 Turner Classic Movies is once again hosting an evening of Disney material from the Disney vaults, hosted by Leonard Maltin. Be sure to set your DVR for all 7 hours of Disney fun.

Disney on TCM this October

Here is the line up for the upcoming Halloween edition of Disney on TCM on October 28th, 2015.

7 Day, 150 Hour SpongeBob Marathon!

What are you doing for the rest of the week. We are now into our 5th hour of SpongeBob marathon madness. Its a 7 day, 150 hour, all 300 episode marathon of SpongeBob Square Pants on Nick TV Canada.

Heckle and Jeckle Visit the Farm

Yesterday we visited a few of our local thrift shops and I came home with some really neat stuff including this Wonder Book, Heckle and Jeckle Visit the Farm. The copyright for the book is 1958, but this particular edition is from 1983. I have always been a fan of Heckle and Jeckle and back when I used to still get up early to watch cartoons, I used to get pretty excited when they would toss in a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon in the mix of usual Bugs Bunny, Casper and Popeye cartoons. I can also remember back in the 80's before VCRs became popular, you could actually pay to see cartoons in a little cartoon hut at the mall. Once I got this book, it got me to thinking about those little cartoon huts. I can remember that they had one in the Surrey Place Mall and than when I was working at the A&A Records and Tapes shop, I would use my breaks to run over to the Sears, where they had one such cartoon hut in their stairwell leading out to the parking lot. For just a quarter, you could sit and watch a full length (roughly six minutes) cartoon. I loved it because it only played Terry Toons and your odds of seeing a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon were pretty good.
After a short Google search, I found this guys site where he showed off his very own original Kiddierama Theatre. Be sure to check out his site to see who these things actually worked. Now a days, a quick YouTube search will instantly bring up a whole bunch of Heckle and Jeckle cartoons to view in the comfort of your own home. Pretty amazing to think back and realize how much things have changed in just 30 years.

The Wonderful World of Pixar

I picked up this copy of the June 2004 WIRED magazine with a great Pixar cover story for 20 cents at a local thrift shop. I am a big fan of the Incedibles movie, so it is always great to find something to add to my collection. Inside the magazine is a great 8 page article with the title "Welcome to Planet Pixar, How the pixel-packing upstart became an animation superpower and left Disney in the dust.

Catch the TMNT Turtles Forever this Saturday!

The world premier of the "Turtles Forever" movie took place on SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 at 10 a.m. on The CW4Kids TV, and although it was being billed as airing on TV ONE TIME ONLY!, that is only partinaly true - it WILL air in its entirety only one time. But starting on Saturday November 28th, you can catch the first 22 minutes of the movie, with the other two parts scheduled for the following two Saturdays. So if you missed it the first time like I did, either get up early like I plan to, or set your DVR's, VCRs etc.

TMNT: Turtles Forever is a made-for-tv animated movie that was produced by 4Kids Entertainment. Produced in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, the movie teams up different incarnations of the titular heroes—chiefly the light-hearted, child-friendly characters from the 1987 animated series and the darker cast of the 4Kids' own 2003 animated series—in an adventure that spans multiple parallel universes.
A rough, nearly finished version of the film premiered at the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009. The movie was to be released in theaters for one night on October 29, 2009 but due to disputes between 4Kids Entertainment and Fathom the event was canceled according to National CineMedia. The movie aired on TV on The CW4Kids station on November 21, after the 25th anniversary Top 10 Countdown.[2] An encore showing will air from Nov 28 to Dec 12, split into three 22-minute episodes. A release date for the movie on DVD has yet to be announced. It has also been announced that the uncut version of film will appear on the CW4kids's website sometime in December that includes 12 minutes of footage cut from the version that aired on TV.

BATMAN New Times

There is a ton of cool stuff on the internet, and it's impossible to find it all!
Here is something I found a year or two ago and forgot about until tonight when my son and I were hunting though YouTube.com looking for Batman stuff. I remembered seeing this amazing Batman student film a few years back and after a few seconds of Google searching we found it again. What makes this short film so cool is not only is it a very well done short film visually, but they actually got Adam West, Mark Hamill, and Dick Van Dyke to do the voices of Batman, Robin and Commissioner Gordon. Click here to check out the film, and when you are done, click the "Movies" logo at the top right of the screen to see all of their other student films from Dave School the Digital Animation & Visual Effects School.

My Frist Video Game: Wallobee Jack

Growing up in the 80's when home video games were gaining popularity with such titles as Space Invaders and Missile Command, I was resigned to visiting friends who owned such things. I don't really remember feeling left out, and I don't remember ever asking for a video game system, so I guess all was well in my childhood even without a game system in my home. I do however remember in the early 90's when CD-Rom games for computers were becoming popular. I purchased my first (and as it turns out, last) video game for the Macintosh 1n 1993. It was called Wallobee Jack: The Bingi Burra Stone as was billed as an interactive toon show. The drawing on the front of the box looked really cool to me and the idea of an interactive cartoon seemed so cool! What a disappointment! The graphics in the game were pretty limited and the actual game consisted of short animated scenes where you had to move the mouse around looking for a hot spot which would then activate the next scene. Obviously games have come a long way since then, but as my introduction to video games, it served to turn me off gaming ever since. To this day, my gaming experience consists of Snood and checkers, both of which are on my Mac and take up less than an hour of my time per week.

Bolt Sneek Peek Preview

Don't let the promo poster scare you away!

My wife, son and I went to a special advanced screening of Bolt tonight. Without doing a full review, let me say we all enjoyed it thoroughly. My wife who almost never laughs at movies laughed throughout the movie and my 3 year old son found plenty of chuckles throughout the movie, including a bunch of times when he was the only one getting a chuckle - mostly when someone was getting hurt! I myself found it to be a greatly engaging story from start to finish and it looked great visually. It is definitely a film both adults and kids will enjoy.
I was pretty surprised at how few people were at the screening, but then, they didn't promote this special prerelease screening that much. Those who were there all seemed to enjoy themselves. And best of all, we didn't have to stand in the incredibly insane lines that were all over the megaplex full of people there to see the new James Bond flick "Quantum of Solace."

Walt Disney Treasures, Song of the South

On November 11th the 8th wave of Walt Disney Treasures DVDs will be released. I have bought just about all of the previous sets, and have found them to be of great value, with lots of rarely seen material!
This upcoming 8th wave includes 3 sets; The Chronological Donald,
Volume Four, Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, and Mickey Mouse Club Presents: Annette. I am excited about the Chronological Donald, as I believe that this will complete the Donald Duck shorts, meaning I will have them all once I own this set! The other two sets, I will pass on, as neither sounds very interesting.
Now, if I had my way, there would be a few other sets to take the place of these two sets. For one, I would love to see a Song of the South Treasures set. Disney has held off on releasing this film because of its racial stereotypes. But the Treasures sets would be a perfect way to release the film, as it would be sold more to collectors than to the average family, and they could have Leonard Maltin do one of his spiels before the film. I already have the film as a Japanese laser disc and love the film. I do not have a laser disc player, but had a friend transfer it to VHS for me years ago. A new high quality DVD copy of the film would be great. And I am sure Disney could find some great extras to go along with the film, including some of the old cartoon shorts which have been shelved for years because of their controversial content.
Just for the fun of it, I have created my own Walt Disney Treasures Song of the South DVD tin cover. I don't know about you, but I'd be at my local DVD store on Tuesday morning to buy this!
Here's hoping Disney finally decides to release this long lost Disney gem!

Touche Turtle and the Fire Dog

Ever since 1983 when I started Firehouse Magazine (1983-2000), I have always liked collecting things with a firefighter theme. Here is a great Whitman book from 1963. It is Hanna-Barbera's Touche Turtle and the Fire Dog by Jean Lewis and illustrated by Mel Crawford. Check out this great artwork on the front and back covers. This cover alone was worth the $4 price tag I paid for this at the local used book shop.

Squirly Puffs Cereal

Here is an ad for some video game web site, but that's not important. What's important, is that there are some great 'fictional' cereals on the selves of the store in their ad.
There are; Fruity Kitty Pebbles, Okay, Honey Buzz, Honey and Nut Oatsy Dotes, Mallow Yellows, Shredded Shreds, and my favorite Squirly Puffs... they're crazy good!
(*If you haven't figured it out yet, click on any of the images to make them larger!)

Terrytoons and limited animation

I Picked up this cool 1977 Terrytoons coloring book at my local thrift shop the other day. Pretty amazing that it does not have any colored pages inside. Most times when you see old coloring books at the thrift shops, they usually have half of their pages already colored by some young artist.
Then I noticed that the front and back covers of this coloring book had the exact same drawing. The only differences were the Whitman logo and item number on the front, and the UPC code on the back.
After thinking about it for a minute, I decided that this book was just following the Terrytoons formula of using limited animation - the practice of using the same drawings over and over again making the characters look as if they are barely moving, if at all.
As for the uncolored pictures inside, again, probably a cost cutting measure by Terrytoons to save cash by not having to pay a 'painter'.
Just a though.

What Happened to Fraidy Cat?

While flipping though some old pictures I had collected from various Disney web sites, I came across this great desktop I had made (at the bottom of this story) for a Disney movie that was to have been released in 2009. The title of the film was "What Happened to Fraidy Cat?"
From Jim Hill Media: It was to have been Ron'n'John's first computer animated feature. A comedy thriller that affectionately paid tribute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. And -- according to WDFA insiders -- the rough story reel version of this picture was playing as well as anything that Ron Clements & John Musker had ever produced.
(For those of you who haven't figured out who Ron'n'John are yet: Ron Clements & John Musker are the writers / directors of such Disney animated hits as "The Great Mouse Detective," "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," "Hercules" and "Treasure Planet." Over the past 20 years, these gifted filmmakers are personally responsible for billions of dollars pouring into Disney's corporate coffers.)
So if a picture that these two guys (with their proven track record) have helped create is playing this well in story reel form, you have to assume that Walt Disney Feature Animation is naturally going to be putting that project in production, right?
Well, that's where you'd be wrong, folks. "Fraidy Cat" (which was originally scheduled to be released in late 2009) isn't going into production. In fact, this project was actually shelved last month. Which is the main reason that Musker & Clements -- after 31 years of working for Walt Disney Feature Animation -- are exiting the studio on September 11th and heading for ... parts unknown.
"Wait a minute?," you sputter, "If people inside WDFA are saying that 'Fraidy Cat' actually looked that good, then why isn't Disney then putting this picture into production?" Ah, that's where this cat's tail ... er ... tale gets interesting.
To read the rest of the story about this film, click over to Jim Hill Meadia to read the rest of the story.

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

I am so excited... Foster's Home for Imaginary Frinds, season 1 just came out on DVD. I had a bit of a hard time finding it, as none of usual places I buy DVDs had it in stock (they didn't even have any on order). I thoguht I would have have to order it online until I stumbled across a copy at WalMart.
If you have never heard of this cartoon, and you enjoy Saturday morning fare, then you have to check this one out! Although little kids will enjoy it, it has lots of humour for us older kids too! And the theme song is addictive!
Here is a description of the show from the back of the DVD "So what's a kid to do when they outgrow their imaginary friend? They find them a home at Foster's home for Imaginary Friends. Madame Foster's is the perfect place to abandon wayward imaginary friendds of all shapes and sizes. Liek Blooregard Q. Kazoo, the obnoxious wise-cracking uh... blue blob. Eudardo, the big, giant monster who's afraid of his own shadow. Wilt, the tallest imaginary friend you could ever imagine. And Coco. We're not really sure what Coco's deal is, but she is apperantly a bird of some sort. They've all taken up residence at Madame Foster's, and they place will never be the same again."
For less than $20 you can pick up this 2 disc set with all 13 first season episodes, plus commentary on a few episodes, a behind the scenes look, promos, end of episode gags, and more!

Pluto's Dream House

Recently I was watching a few of my Disney Treasures DVD and I happened to watch a cartoon titled Pluto's Dream House (1940). While watching the cartoon I was especially taken by a shot where they show the blue prints for Pluto's new dog house. I remembered that I can use my screen capture application to save anything on my screen, so I decided to turn the shot from the cartoon into a picture that I could just as a desk top for my Mac.

While I was at it, I also copied the title card for the cartoon. I have always loved cartoon title cards & posters - many times they are the best thing about a cartoon! They are often done by a different artist than the cartoon, and many times it looks like they have spend way more time and money on the title card and poster than they did on the rest of the cartoon.
I like title cards so much that a few months ago, I made this desktop using a bunch of title cards from some of my favorite classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

My Pal Pluto

I am a big Disney fan and Pluto is my favorite Disney character. Back in 2000, Sara and I decided to write to our favorite characters, Pluto & Tinkerbell, care of Disneyland to see what would happen.
Two weeks latter, we received a large white envelope with a letter from Pluto and signed character 8 x 10's from Pluto and Mickey Mouse. Apparently, according to the letter, they were not able to get a photo of Tinkerbell as she is "shy and flies to fast".
I love the paw print in Pluto's signature!