MeTV Toons - A New Cartoon Channel

On June 25th, 2024, MeTV debuted a new channel devoted strictly to cartoons: MeTV Toons. This was obviously in response to viewers requesting more cartoons than what was offered through MeTV's regular morning "toons" lineup on Toon in with Me. 

What a great selection of cartoons this new channel has to offer! In addition to Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, Casper, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear and The Flintstones, there are also shows that are not as frequently shown on mainstream TV like Atom Ant, Wacky Races, The Peter Potamus Show, Marine Boy, Popeye and Pals, Inspector Gadget and The Underdog Show. Best of all is the Cartoon All-Stars Hour playing at 1pm EST and 10pm EST which features the oldies-but-goodies from the golden age of Hollywood (Warner Bros, MGM, Columbia, Fleisher and other studios). 

24-hours of toons. Sounds good to me! 

To see what channel MeTV Toons plays in your area, check out their website here. The colorful site also offers some great toon-related articles and games. 

Check it Out! - The Landing of the Pilgrims ( 1940 )

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers! 

We hope you are having a wonderful day and counting all of your blessings. There is so much we can all be grateful for!

If you have a few minutes and want to watch something Thanksgiving-related then check out this fabulous little cartoon from 1940 - The Landing of the Pilgrims. It's a bouncy light-hearted look at how the pilgrims from the Mayflower came to America and contended with the Native Americans. It is far from being historically accurate but that's what makes it so wonderfully fun! 

Have a wonderful holiday! 

- Constance & Diana 

Tintin et le Temple du Soleil ( 1969 )

Tintin, the beloved comic book creation of Belgium illustrator Herge, was transferred to the big screen as a fabulous full-length feature film in 1969 - Tintin et le Temple du Soleil. It was based upon one of Tintin's most famous escapades, his search for the missing Professor Calculus and a band of archeologists who are under the spell of an ancient Incan curse. The film took the two-part adventure ( from the books The Seven Crystal Balls and The Prisoner of the Sun ) and condensed it into one 77-minute film.

This was a French production from Belvision studios and the animation is spot-on, matching Herge's style as closely as if the artist himself painted each cel. This isn't surprising, considering Raymond LeBlanc was the producer of the film. LeBlanc was the publisher of the original Tintin magazine series, as well as the founder of Editions du Lombard and Belvision Studios. He was a giant in the Belgium animation industry, much like Walt Disney was here in the States. 

In 1957, Belvision brought the Tintin stories to television as an animated serial of five-minute episodes which covered seven of Hergé's most popular books. The success of this series made the studio attempt two animated feature-length films: Asterix the Gaul ( 1967 ) and Asterix and Cleopatra ( 1967 ), both featuring the comic strip character Asterix. These films were great successes and it led them to bring Tintin to the screen. 

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun differs only slightly from Hergé's original story, with a few additional scenes added and Thompson and Thompson ( the twin detectives ) getting a much larger role. Like the book series, however, it is filled with adventure and plenty of opportunities for Captain Haddock to lose his temper..."Ten thousand thundering typhoons!!"  Beautiful music by François Rauber also enhances the picture. 

Three years later Tintin returned for Tintin and the Lake of Sharks which featured many of the same actors voicing the characters. Both pictures are available on DVD in their original French language version and dubbed in English. 

Happy Harmonies 1936 Cartoon - To Spring

If you ever wondered where the splendid colors of Spring come from after a black-and-white Winter, wonder no more.... Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1936 Happy Harmonies cartoon To Spring demonstrates the entire process in full detail. For those who took the time to research the science behind the Winter-to-Spring season change, then it is no secret at all that gnomes control the varying pastel tints that are apparent in the flowers, trees, and fields in April and May.

These little elves work furiously to pump vibrant colors through the veins under the earth into the roots of the trees and flowers, struggling to get the colors of Spring above ground and on schedule every year. Old Man Winter sometimes has other notions about their schedule, and before he is ousted out of the country he usually attempts to blow some cold air onto the budding flowers, but the gnomes always prevail in the end.

"It's time for Spring.....It's time for Spring, I say!"

This nine-minute classic from the "Harman-Ising" duo of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising brilliantly captures the excitement of the season change in that customary bouncing fashion of 1930s cartoons. It was the 24th of 38 cartoons that the team worked on together and one of their best. The animation is marvelous and beautiful color tones literally burst into view thanks to the Technicolor process it was filmed with. To Spring also marked the directorial debut of William Hanna, who later started his own studio with Joseph Barbara ( Hanna-Barbara...just in case you missed the connection ).

Many of the animation techniques seen in the segment featuring the gnomes hammering away with their pick axes hint at the style that would be seen in the "Heigh-Ho" sequence of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was released by Walt Disney just a year later. To Spring also has many clever character touches, such as the black-bearded little gnome scrambling to put his pants on so he can help pump the colors and finally giving up at the end, instead tripping along with one pant leg up and one down. If you listen carefully, you'll hear the voice of Mel Blanc as one of the gnomes. 

This cartoon was one of my favorites when I first saw it several years ago on a DVD collection of public domain cartoons, and after numerous viewings I have still not tired of it. Ultimately, whether a cartoon wins animation awards or receives plaudits for its creative techniques does not matter, it is the lasting entertainment value of a cartoon that makes it a true winner. 

Ready to watch To Spring? Simply click here! 

To read more articles about cartoons check out the One of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon being hosted by MovieMovieBlogBlog. 

The Reluctant Dragon ( 1941 )

After the immense critical and box-office success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney Studios was bombarded with requests from his fans to show how these cartoons were created. The brass at RKO Pictures were also keen to see how the cartoons that they were distributing were made, and so Walt Disney decided to create a film that combined a series of short cartoons ( in the same vein as Fantasia ) interspersed throughout a Technicolor live-action segment that featured a host giving a guided tour of the Disney Studios. This host was none other than the delightful satirist Robert Benchley. 

The idea was clever and, with the films relatively low budget ( $600,000 ) it was expected to bring in a substantial return, but once audiences saw the final production, many felt they were cheated. This was due in no small part to the film's misleading title - The Reluctant Dragon. Having enjoyed the richness of Disney's previous features, audiences were simply not expecting the casual documentary style film that followed. 

The Reluctant Dragon was in no way different than any of the behind-the-scenes segments which later appeared on television during The Mickey Mouse Club, and it gave us a most entertaining look at the process involved in the making of a Disney motion picture - even though it uses actors in the roles of animators, musicians, and cameramen ( with the exception of an appearance by one of the Nine Old Men, Ward Kimball ). Frank Faylen, Nana Bryant, Frances Gifford, and Alan Ladd are some of the actors playing Disney personnel. Keep your eyes peeled for a young John Dehner in his feature film debut too.

Three animated sequences act as interludes on Benchley's tour and these include Baby Weems, a Goofy short - How to Ride a Horse - and one of our all-time favorite cartoons - the titular Reluctant Dragon, which tells the tale of a dragon who prefers picnics to fighting. 

The cartoon begins with an intellectual young boy discovering that a real dragon was seen in his village. He ventures to take a peek at the fabled creature only to find himself greatly disappointed. He was imagining a fierce beast with fire flaming out its nostrils, instead he meets a silly blue creature that doesn't look at all monstrous ......worse yet, it's a tea-drinking poetry spouting coward! 

"Punk poet! Punk poet!"

An even greater disappointment to the boy comes when he visits the knight, Sir Giles, who does not look or act at all like the knights in the books he reads. In place of the strong hero is a Quixote-like old man with frightfully skinny legs. 

Sir Giles and the Dragon get on capitally during their first encounter for Sir Giles is also a great admirer of picnics and poetry. They begin to exchange verses they wrote ( Radish so Red, Ode to an Upside-Down Cake ) when the boy reminds them that they are supposed to fight. The town expects it of them. And so they agree to stage a battle that will have the knight declared victor. 

Critics of Walt Disney's animated cartoons often claim that The Reluctant Dragon was one of the weaker shorts, but we feel just the contrary. It holds up marvelously well after numerous viewings and features some preposterously cute animation. 

Radish so Red

by Sir Giles

"Radish so red, radish so red, 

plucked from the heart of your warm little bed, 

sprinkle with salt on top of your head, 

~ crunch! ~ delicious."

Sir Giles is the epitome of the veddy-British stereotypes with his curling mustache, skinny neck and ever-present monocle. He's an upper-crust gentleman, a true knight who wouldn't dare fight an unarmed dragon, while the dragon itself is just what one wouldn't expect a dragon to be - a sissy. 

The Reluctant Dragon was based upon a story by English author Kenneth Grahame, whose "The Wind in the Willows" Disney also cartoonized in 1949. Two British ex-pats Barnett Parker and Claude Allister voiced the part of the Dragon and Sir Giles ( Allister would later do the part of Rat in The Wind in the Willows ).

When The Reluctant Dragon was first released on VHS it was paired with another one of Disney's rarer animated classics - Morris the Moose ( 1950 ), which is worth taking a look at too. 

This post is our contribution to the One of Our All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon, be sure to head on over to Movie Movie Blog Blog to check out all the other great posts on the cartoons of yor.