Colonel Bleep
Encyclopedia
Colonel Bleep was the first color cartoon
ever made for television
. It was created by Robert D. Buchanan
, and was filmed by Soundac of Miami
. The show was originally syndicated in 1957 as a segment on Uncle Bill's TV Club. 104 five-minute episodes were produced. Of these episodes, slightly fewer than half are known to survive today.
The show took place on the fictitious Zero Zero Island, where the Equator
meets the Greenwich Meridian. There, Colonel Bleep, an extraterrestrial lifeform from the planet Futura, protected Earth
with the help of his deputies, Squeek (a mute cowboy
puppet
boy) and Scratch (a caveman
of great physical strength who was awakened from a sleep of several thousand years by an atomic explosion). Colonel Bleep, like all of his fellow Futurans, could manipulate butonic energy in a variety of ways; for instance, to propel himself through space (inexplicably, on a unicycle), or as an offensive weapon. The amount of butomic energy Colonel Bleep could absorb at any given time was finite, and in several episodes he runs out of energy and becomes vulnerable.
Their usual nemesis was a dark and mysterious hooded figure called Dr. Destructo, who could typically be found in his flying saucer and seemed to have no lower half. Other than that oddity, he was kind of a very-limited-animation, early version of Darth Vader
. Other regular villains included The Black Knight and Black Patch (a space pirate).
The animation in the show was extraordinarily limited, as was typical of TV animation during that era. Noah Tyler was the narrator for the show. Jack Schleh directed all of the episodes. The design of the series was greatly influenced by the futuristic googie designs of the '50s and early '60s: Cars had huge tailfins, boomerangs were frequently incorporated into signs and architecture, and atom symbols were used as frequently as possible.
In 1965 Schleh and Buchanan also produced a series of syndicated physical fitness cartoons for children through Soundac called The Mighty Mr. Titan. Although Colonel Bleep is generally well-regarded today, The Mighty Mr. Titan is not.
Unlike its contemporary series, Clutch Cargo
, practically no original material from the production of Colonel Bleep is known to exist today. In the early '70s, while Jack Schleh was closing Soundac and moving the company's materials to a van, car thieves stole the van. Its contents have never turned up.
Colonel Bleep has probably not been shown on TV in the United States since the early 1970s. Two videocassettes from the series were released in 1993, containing most of the episodes still known to exist at the time (reportedly discovered in the film storage vault of a southwestern U.S. TV station which had formerly aired the show). A third videocassette containing the remainder of the existing episodes, plus some existing footage of the Uncle Bill's TV Club series had been planned, but was never released.
Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi
has acknowledged the influence of Colonel Bleep on his own work.
On August 23, 2005, Alpha Video released a DVD entitled Colonel Bleep, Volume 1. The DVD contains 23 episodes, about 20 of which do not appear on the earlier videocassette releases, nearly doubling the number of episodes of the series still known to exist.
One episode can be seen as part of "The Speed Racer
Show", an anthology film created by Streamline Pictures
released on VHS and DVD by Family Home Entertainment
as "Speed Racer: the Movie." The episode occurs between the two Speed Racer episodes ("The Car Hater" and "Race Against the Mammoth Car, Part 1").
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
ever made for television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. It was created by Robert D. Buchanan
Robert D. Buchanan
Robert D. Buchanan is the creator of several animated TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s.Most notably, he created the five minute cartoon "Colonel Bleep", the first color cartoon produced for television. Produced at Soundac Studios in Miami, Colonel Bleep was syndicated in 1957. It was originally...
, and was filmed by Soundac of Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
. The show was originally syndicated in 1957 as a segment on Uncle Bill's TV Club. 104 five-minute episodes were produced. Of these episodes, slightly fewer than half are known to survive today.
The show took place on the fictitious Zero Zero Island, where the Equator
Equator
An equator is the intersection of a sphere's surface with the plane perpendicular to the sphere's axis of rotation and containing the sphere's center of mass....
meets the Greenwich Meridian. There, Colonel Bleep, an extraterrestrial lifeform from the planet Futura, protected Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
with the help of his deputies, Squeek (a mute cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
boy) and Scratch (a caveman
Caveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
of great physical strength who was awakened from a sleep of several thousand years by an atomic explosion). Colonel Bleep, like all of his fellow Futurans, could manipulate butonic energy in a variety of ways; for instance, to propel himself through space (inexplicably, on a unicycle), or as an offensive weapon. The amount of butomic energy Colonel Bleep could absorb at any given time was finite, and in several episodes he runs out of energy and becomes vulnerable.
Their usual nemesis was a dark and mysterious hooded figure called Dr. Destructo, who could typically be found in his flying saucer and seemed to have no lower half. Other than that oddity, he was kind of a very-limited-animation, early version of Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....
. Other regular villains included The Black Knight and Black Patch (a space pirate).
The animation in the show was extraordinarily limited, as was typical of TV animation during that era. Noah Tyler was the narrator for the show. Jack Schleh directed all of the episodes. The design of the series was greatly influenced by the futuristic googie designs of the '50s and early '60s: Cars had huge tailfins, boomerangs were frequently incorporated into signs and architecture, and atom symbols were used as frequently as possible.
In 1965 Schleh and Buchanan also produced a series of syndicated physical fitness cartoons for children through Soundac called The Mighty Mr. Titan. Although Colonel Bleep is generally well-regarded today, The Mighty Mr. Titan is not.
Unlike its contemporary series, Clutch Cargo
Clutch Cargo
Clutch Cargo is an animated television series produced by Cambria Productions and syndicated beginning on March 9, 1959. Notable for its very limited animation, yet imaginative stories, the series was a surprise hit at the time, and could be seen on 65 stations nationwide in 1960.- Plot :The...
, practically no original material from the production of Colonel Bleep is known to exist today. In the early '70s, while Jack Schleh was closing Soundac and moving the company's materials to a van, car thieves stole the van. Its contents have never turned up.
Colonel Bleep has probably not been shown on TV in the United States since the early 1970s. Two videocassettes from the series were released in 1993, containing most of the episodes still known to exist at the time (reportedly discovered in the film storage vault of a southwestern U.S. TV station which had formerly aired the show). A third videocassette containing the remainder of the existing episodes, plus some existing footage of the Uncle Bill's TV Club series had been planned, but was never released.
Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Michael John Kricfalusi , better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, its adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based...
has acknowledged the influence of Colonel Bleep on his own work.
On August 23, 2005, Alpha Video released a DVD entitled Colonel Bleep, Volume 1. The DVD contains 23 episodes, about 20 of which do not appear on the earlier videocassette releases, nearly doubling the number of episodes of the series still known to exist.
One episode can be seen as part of "The Speed Racer
Speed Racer
Speed Racer is an English adaptation name of the Japanese manga and anime, which centered on automobile racing. Mach GoGoGo was originally serialized in print form in Shueisha's 1958 Shōnen Book, and was released in tankōbon book form by Sun Wide Comics, re-released in Japan by Fusosha...
Show", an anthology film created by Streamline Pictures
Streamline Pictures
Streamline Pictures was an American media company that was best known for its distribution of English dubbed Japanese animation. -Founding:Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1988, Streamline Pictures was one of the first North American companies that was created primarily for the intention of...
released on VHS and DVD by Family Home Entertainment
Family Home Entertainment
Family Home Entertainment was an American home video company founded in 1980 by Noel C. Bloom. It was a division of International Video Entertainment, which had its headquarters in Newbury Park, California.-General information:...
as "Speed Racer: the Movie." The episode occurs between the two Speed Racer episodes ("The Car Hater" and "Race Against the Mammoth Car, Part 1").
Stations
Alphabetized by city.- WBAL-TVWBAL-TVWBAL-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station in Baltimore, Maryland. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11. It is one of the flagship stations of Hearst Television, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, which also owns sister radio stations WBAL and...
/ Channel 11 • Baltimore, Maryland - WBIR-TVWBIR-TVWBIR-TV, channel 10, is the NBC affiliate television station in Knoxville, Tennessee. The station is licensed to the Gannett Pacific Corporation, a subsidiary of the Gannett Company...
/ Channel 40 • Binghamton, New YorkBinghamton, New YorkBinghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers... - KHJ-TVKCAL-TVKCAL-TV, channel 9, is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, USA, owned by the CBS Corporation. KCAL-TV shares its studio facilities with KCBS-TV inside CBS Studio Center in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.-Digital...
/ Channel 9 • Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California... - WOR-TVWWOR-TVWWOR-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the flagship station of the MyNetworkTV programming service, licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey and serving the Tri-State metropolitan area. WWOR is owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox network flagship...
/ Channel 9 • New York, New York - WGAL-TV / Channel 8 • Lancaster, PennsylvaniaLancaster, PennsylvaniaLancaster is a city in the south-central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the county seat of Lancaster County and one of the older inland cities in the United States, . With a population of 59,322, it ranks eighth in population among Pennsylvania's cities...
- KPIX-TVKPIX-TVKPIX-TV is the CBS owned and operated television station in San Francisco, California. Through its parent company CBS Corporation, KPIX is co-owned with The CW affiliate KBCW-TV ....
/ Channel 5 • San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland... - WBRE-TVWBRE-TVWBRE-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station for Northeastern Pennsylvania that is licensed to Wilkes-Barre. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11 from a transmitter at the Penobscot Knob antenna farm near Mountain Top. It can also be seen on Comcast and Service...
/ Channel 28 • Scranton, PennsylvaniaScranton, PennsylvaniaScranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S... - KMOX-TVKMOVKMOV, virtual channel 4, is the CBS-affiliated television station in St. Louis, Missouri. KMOV is owned by the Dallas-based Belo Corporation, with its studio and office facilities in St...
/ Channel 4 • St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...