I can’t even recall how many times I’ve said things are busy as heck here when writing here. There’s a bunch to do, and when I’m not really tired I’m having a great time making all these various puzzles come together. I can see a time in the next year where there will be a lot more ability to concentrate on just one or two projects, with help doing others.
The Thunderbean MeTV deal is lovely in that there’s about to be a whole lot of people seeing things they’ve never seen before; I love the accessibility of all these films once again finding an audience bigger than the little cartoony community. I really love the channels and their support of classic animation, with even more to come soon.
My friend Milton Knight has a Kickstarter up for his independent animated film “Cat and Mouse”. Spread the word and support this film if you’re able. It’s dark subject matter for sure, exploratory and exploring new territory for him as an artist. [Click Here to help].
As we’re working on more licensing and streaming possibilities, we’ll be turning away from the special discs that we’ve had so much fun producing. Several people requested we have them up a few more days, so we’ve done so- and there’s a discount at the shop right now as well at the Thunderbean Shop. [Direct Link]
And onto today’s subject: What are some of your favorite vintage animated commercials?
I’ve always loved collecting commercials in 16mm. There’s a lot of prints of commercials out there, and they used to be incredibly cheap on the collectors market since people would keep the shows and often cut out the commercial interrupting them, or sell the little boxes and tiny reels with them on, or sell big reels of them.
Over the years it’s been fun to borrow a bunch from various collectors as well as mulling through my own collection and scanning the ones I really like. Here’s a few of my favorites from over the years. Find some of yours if you can and put a link in the comments.
In this week’s and last week’s animation history class at the College for Creative Studies, we showed quite a few from the Thunderbean commercials set and the Mid Century Modern Blu-rays. It was a lot of fun to see them through their eyes.
1) A Smattering of Spots (Storyboard, Inc). This commercial reel from the Huibley Studio is one of my favorite things to show in class. There’s so many styles and so much fun animation by so many people that worked at most of the big animation studios over the years. This is just the standard definition version. It’s on the Mid Century Modern, Volume 2 disc that we’ll get back in print at some point…
2) Coo Coo Wheats commercial (1974)
Mark Kausler animated a big chunk of this spot back in the 70s- and maybe he can tell us a little more about it too! It was a favorite of mine when it showed on WKBD, Channel 50 in Detroit. This copy is from my not-so-great telecine transfer that made it onto the first commecial disc we did- and further compressed from YouTube re-uploading— one of these days I’ll get a better copy!
3) Freakies commercial (1974)
I guess I’m taking a trip back into my childhood a little bit with this one too. Freakies was my absolute favorite for about a year and a half as a kid— then it vanished off the shelves! I still have my Freakies figures and magnets all these years later. This spot was largely animated by Preston Blair at Jack Zander’s Animation Parlor. I have a drawing from the opening shot.
4) Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with Woody Woodpecker
Is there anything better than Woody suggesting children almost get hit by cars in their pursuit of cereal? I wish there were more of these around with Woody honestly. I have no idea how many were made.
5) Dick Williams Harlem Globetrotters animated spot
This animated spot from the mid-70s was used for many years, and really highlights what was especially wonderful about Dick’s studio and animation. Wish I could find a 16mm on this one and do a really nice scan.
6) Mickey Mouse Nash Spots
These always have to be on the list of favorites for me. Again, Mark Kaulser plays a role here, having lent these prints twice to me, once for a standard def scan, then later in HD. Here’s the standard def:
Ok— so, now, some of yours! I’m hoping we can all sit back and watch some things we haven’t seen before…