Terrytoons
Encyclopedia
Terrytoons was an animation
studio founded by Paul Terry
. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York
, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse
, Gandy Goose
, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck
, Deputy Dawg
, Luno
and Heckle and Jeckle
; these cartoons and all of its others were released to theatres under the studio's solitary Terrytoons banner by 20th Century Fox
.
Terry first worked for Bray Studios in 1916, where he created the Farmer Al Falfa
series. He would then make a Farmer Al Falfa short for Edison Pictures
, called "Farmer Al Falfa's Wayward Pup" (1917), and some later cartoons were made for Paramount Pictures
.
Around 1921, Terry founded the Fables animation studio, named for its Aesop's Film Fables
series, in conjunction with Amadee J. Van Beuren
. Fables churned out a Fable cartoon every week for eight years in the 1920s. In 1928, Van Beuren, anxious to compete with the new phenomenon of talking pictures, released Terry's Dinner Time
(released October 1928). Van Beuren then urged Terry to start producing actual sound films, instead of post-synchronizing the cartoons. Terry refused, and Van Beuren fired him in 1929. Almost immediately, Terry and much of his staff started up the Terrytoons studio.
in this business, and I am the Woolworth's
." Terry's studio had the lowest budgets and was among the slowest to adapt to new technologies such as sound
(in about 1930) and Technicolor
(in 1938), while its graphic style remained remarkably static for decades. Background music was entrusted to one man, Philip Scheib, and Terry's refusal to pay royalties for popular songs forced Scheib to compose his own scores. Paul Terry took pride in producing a new cartoon every other week, regardless of the quality of the films. Following the success of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Paul Terry considered doing an animated feature film adaptation of King Lear
staring Farmer Al Falfa. However, after seeing the failure of Max Fleischer's
Mr. Bug Goes to Town, and the additional failures of Disney's Pinocchio
and Fantasia
he decided to abandon the project. Until 1957, screen credits were very sparse, listing only the writer (until 1950, solely John Foster, then Tom Morrison thereafter), director (Terry's three main directors were Connie Rasinski, Eddie Donnelly and Mannie Davis), and musician.
Terrytoons' first distributor was Educational Pictures
, specialists in short-subject comedies and novelties. The Fox Film company (later known as 20th Century-Fox) released Educational shorts to theaters in the 1930s, giving the Terry cartoons wide exposure. Farmer Al Falfa was Terry's most familiar character in the 1930s; Kiko the Kangaroo was spun off the Farmer Al Falfa series. Most of the other cartoons featured generic animal characters. One of the stock designs was a scruffy dog with a black patch around one eye; Terry ultimately built a series around this character, now known as Puddy the Pup.
Paul Terry may have realized that Educational was in financial trouble, because he found another lucrative outlet for his product. In 1938 he arranged to release his older cartoons through home-movie distributor Castle Films
. Educational went out of business within the year, but 20th Century-Fox continued to release Terrytoons to theaters for the next two decades. With a new emphasis on "star" characters, Terrytoons featured the adventures of Super Mouse (later renamed Mighty Mouse
), the talking magpies Heckle and Jeckle
, silly Gandy Goose
, Dinky Duck
, mischievous mouse Little Roquefort, and The Terry Bears.
Despite the artistic drawbacks imposed by Terry's inflexible business policies, Terrytoons was nominated four times for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
: All Out for V in 1942, My Boy, Johnny in 1944, Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life in 1945, and Sidney's Family Tree in 1958.
alumnus Gene Deitch
, who had to work with even lower budgets.
Deitch's most notable works at the studio were the Tom Terrific
cartoon segments for the Captain Kangaroo
television show. He also introduced a number of new characters, such as Sick Sick Sidney, Gaston Le Crayon, John Doormat, and Clint Clobber. Deitch brought much creativity and life to the Terrytoons cartoons, but because he was only 31 years old when he came to the studio, he wasn't entirely welcome. An internal battle was fought by studio stalwarts and Deitch was forced out. Soon after Deitch moved to Prague
where as of March 2011 he continues to live and work.
After Deitch was fired in 1958, Bill Weiss took control of the studio. Under his supervision, Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse went back into production. Besides the three core directors of the Terry era who were still involved as animators and directors, two Famous Studios
stalwarts joined the crew, Dave Tendlar and Martin Taras
. Other new theatrical cartoon series included Hector Heathcote, Luno and Hashimoto San. In addition, the studio began producing the Deputy Dawg
series for television in 1960. Another television production for the Captain Kangaroo show was The Adventures of Lariat Sam, which was written in part by Gene Wood
.
Phil Scheib continued as the studio's musical director through the mid-1960s when he was replaced by Jim Timmens and Elliott Lawrence.
The most notable talent at Terrytoons in the 1960s was animator/director/producer Ralph Bakshi
, who got his start with Terrytoons in the 1950s and later helmed the Mighty Heroes series. Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967 for Paramount, which closed its cartoon unit later that year. He would later go on to produce Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
for television in 1987.
reruns. Its last short was an unsold TV pilot called Sally Sargent, about a 16-year old girl who is a secret agent.
The Terrytoons cartoons (especially Mighty Mouse and Deputy Dawg) were syndicated to many local TV markets, and they were a staple of after-school and Saturday morning cartoon
shows for over three decades, from the 1950s through the 1980s, until the television rights to the library were acquired by USA Network
in 1989. They have seen relatively little air time since then.
In the 1970s, the CBS Films properties were spun off to create Viacom
, which itself re-merged with CBS in 1999.
In the late '70s, Filmation Studios licensed the rights in order to make a new Mighty Mouse series. Later in 1987, Ralph Bakshi produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
which lasted for two seasons. Bakshi and John Kricfalusi
inspired the staff to try to get as much Jim Tyer-style drawing in the show as possible. Tyer, a stand-out Terry animator of the original cartoons with a unique style, became a strong influence on the artists of the Bakshi series.
In 2002, the Terrytoons characters returned to television in original commercials for Brazilian blue cheese (for what is now America's Dairy Farmers) and a fine wine.
Through the years that have followed since the last Terrytoons TV series material in 1988, the rights have been scattered as result of prior rights issues and corporate changes involving Viacom (the ownership and distribution history is noted below). However, some Terrytoons shorts are believed to be in the public domain, and have been issued on low-budget VHS tapes and DVDs. The first official release of any Terrytoons material by CBS DVD has been announced (Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
was issued January 5, 2010).
Among the many licensed Terrytoons products are comic books, with the company's characters initially licensed to Timely Comics
, a predecessor of Marvel Comics
, in the early 1940s. Later, St. John Publications
took over the licensing, publishing comics featuring such characters as Mighty Mouse
, the magpies Heckle and Jeckle
, Gandy Goose, and Little Roquefort. The first such St. John comic was Mighty Mouse #5 (Aug. 1947), its numbering taken over from the Timely run. St. John's Terrytoons comics include the field's first 3-D
comic book, Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring Mighty Mouse
. According to Joe Kubert
, co-creator with the brothers Norman Maurer
and Leonard Maurer, it sold an exceptional 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece at a time when comics cost a dime.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
studio founded by Paul Terry
Paul Terry (cartoonist)
Paul Houlton Terry was an American cartoonist, screenwriter, film director and one of the most prolific film producers in history...
. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
, Gandy Goose
Gandy Goose
Gandy Goose was a classic Terrytoons cartoon character. He was frequently paired with Sourpuss, a cat, beginning in the 1939 short The Owl and the Pussycat. Gandy spoke in a lyrical vocal parody of radio comedian Ed Wynn while Sourpuss vocally impersonated an impatient Jimmy Durante...
, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck
Dinky Duck
Dinky Duck was a Terrytoons cartoon character that appeared in a number of animated shorts. Dinky was a young duck that lived on a farm with ducks, chickens and other typical farm animals. Dinky often took on the role of an orphan who simply wanted a place to call home. Other times, Dinky would...
, Deputy Dawg
Deputy Dawg
Deputy Dawg is a Terrytoons cartoon character featured on the animated television series of the same name in an original TV weekly run from 8 September 1962 to 25 May 1963, with no episodes on 8 December to 29 December 1962, resuming on 5 January 1963. The cartoons are between four and six minutes...
, Luno
Luno The White Stallion
Luno The White Stallion was a Terrytoons television series that aired in the mid-1960s. It centered on a little boy named Tim who had a marble Pegasus horse named Luno who would come alive and whisk him off on adventures in far off lands when Tim said the words, "Oh winged horse of marble white,...
and Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
; these cartoons and all of its others were released to theatres under the studio's solitary Terrytoons banner by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
.
Before Terrytoons
Farmer Al Falfa
Farmer Al Falfa , the quintessential grizzly old farmer type, is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. He first appeared in 1916 in a series of shorts produced by the John R. Bray Studios...
series. He would then make a Farmer Al Falfa short for Edison Pictures
Edison Studios
Edison Studios was an American motion picture production company owned by the Edison Company of inventor Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films as the Edison Manufacturing Company and Thomas A. Edison, Inc. until the studio's closing in 1918...
, called "Farmer Al Falfa's Wayward Pup" (1917), and some later cartoons were made for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
.
Around 1921, Terry founded the Fables animation studio, named for its Aesop's Film Fables
Aesop's Film Fables
Aesop's Film Fables was a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Terry came upon the inspiration for the series by young actor-turned-writer Howard Estabrook, who suggested making a series of cartoons based on Aesop's Fables. Although Terry later claimed he...
series, in conjunction with Amadee J. Van Beuren
Van Beuren Studios
Van Beuren Studios was an American animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons from 1928 to 1936.Producer Amedee J. van Beuren first became involved in the animation industry in 1920, when he formed a partnership with Paul Terry and formed the "Aesop's Fables Studio" for the production of...
. Fables churned out a Fable cartoon every week for eight years in the 1920s. In 1928, Van Beuren, anxious to compete with the new phenomenon of talking pictures, released Terry's Dinner Time
Dinner Time
Dinner Time is an animated short subject produced and directed by Paul Terry, co-directed by John Foster, and produced at Van Beuren Studios...
(released October 1928). Van Beuren then urged Terry to start producing actual sound films, instead of post-synchronizing the cartoons. Terry refused, and Van Beuren fired him in 1929. Almost immediately, Terry and much of his staff started up the Terrytoons studio.
Heyday
Through much of its history, the studio was considered one of the lowest-quality houses in the field, to the point where Paul Terry noted, "Disney is the Tiffany'sTiffany & Co.
Tiffany & Co. is an American jewelry and silverware company. As part of its branding, the company is strongly associated with its Tiffany Blue , which is a registered trademark.- History :...
in this business, and I am the Woolworth's
F. W. Woolworth Company
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first successful Woolworth store was opened on July 18, 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store"...
." Terry's studio had the lowest budgets and was among the slowest to adapt to new technologies such as sound
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
(in about 1930) and Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
(in 1938), while its graphic style remained remarkably static for decades. Background music was entrusted to one man, Philip Scheib, and Terry's refusal to pay royalties for popular songs forced Scheib to compose his own scores. Paul Terry took pride in producing a new cartoon every other week, regardless of the quality of the films. Following the success of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
Paul Terry considered doing an animated feature film adaptation of King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
staring Farmer Al Falfa. However, after seeing the failure of Max Fleischer's
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
Mr. Bug Goes to Town, and the additional failures of Disney's Pinocchio
Pinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
and Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
he decided to abandon the project. Until 1957, screen credits were very sparse, listing only the writer (until 1950, solely John Foster, then Tom Morrison thereafter), director (Terry's three main directors were Connie Rasinski, Eddie Donnelly and Mannie Davis), and musician.
Terrytoons' first distributor was Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
, specialists in short-subject comedies and novelties. The Fox Film company (later known as 20th Century-Fox) released Educational shorts to theaters in the 1930s, giving the Terry cartoons wide exposure. Farmer Al Falfa was Terry's most familiar character in the 1930s; Kiko the Kangaroo was spun off the Farmer Al Falfa series. Most of the other cartoons featured generic animal characters. One of the stock designs was a scruffy dog with a black patch around one eye; Terry ultimately built a series around this character, now known as Puddy the Pup.
Paul Terry may have realized that Educational was in financial trouble, because he found another lucrative outlet for his product. In 1938 he arranged to release his older cartoons through home-movie distributor Castle Films
Castle Films
Castle Films was a home-movie distributor founded in California by former newsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle in 1924. The company originally produced business and advertising films. By 1931 it had moved its principal office to New York City. In 1937, Castle branched out into 8 mm and 16 mm home...
. Educational went out of business within the year, but 20th Century-Fox continued to release Terrytoons to theaters for the next two decades. With a new emphasis on "star" characters, Terrytoons featured the adventures of Super Mouse (later renamed Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
), the talking magpies Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
, silly Gandy Goose
Gandy Goose
Gandy Goose was a classic Terrytoons cartoon character. He was frequently paired with Sourpuss, a cat, beginning in the 1939 short The Owl and the Pussycat. Gandy spoke in a lyrical vocal parody of radio comedian Ed Wynn while Sourpuss vocally impersonated an impatient Jimmy Durante...
, Dinky Duck
Dinky Duck
Dinky Duck was a Terrytoons cartoon character that appeared in a number of animated shorts. Dinky was a young duck that lived on a farm with ducks, chickens and other typical farm animals. Dinky often took on the role of an orphan who simply wanted a place to call home. Other times, Dinky would...
, mischievous mouse Little Roquefort, and The Terry Bears.
Despite the artistic drawbacks imposed by Terry's inflexible business policies, Terrytoons was nominated four times for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
: All Out for V in 1942, My Boy, Johnny in 1944, Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life in 1945, and Sidney's Family Tree in 1958.
Changing hands
The studio was sold outright by the retiring Paul Terry to CBS in 1955, but 20th Century Fox (TCF) continued to distribute the studio's releases. The following year, CBS put it under the management of UPAUnited Productions of America
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio of the 1940s through present day, beginning with industrial films and World War II training films. In the late 1940s, UPA produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures, most notably the Mr. Magoo series. In...
alumnus Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
, who had to work with even lower budgets.
Deitch's most notable works at the studio were the Tom Terrific
Tom Terrific
Tom Terrific was an early animated series on American television, presented as part of the Captain Kangaroo children's television show....
cartoon segments for the Captain Kangaroo
Captain Kangaroo
Captain Kangaroo is a children's television series which aired weekday mornings on the American television network CBS for nearly 30 years, from October 3, 1955 until December 8, 1984, making it the longest-running children's television program of its day...
television show. He also introduced a number of new characters, such as Sick Sick Sidney, Gaston Le Crayon, John Doormat, and Clint Clobber. Deitch brought much creativity and life to the Terrytoons cartoons, but because he was only 31 years old when he came to the studio, he wasn't entirely welcome. An internal battle was fought by studio stalwarts and Deitch was forced out. Soon after Deitch moved to Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
where as of March 2011 he continues to live and work.
After Deitch was fired in 1958, Bill Weiss took control of the studio. Under his supervision, Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse went back into production. Besides the three core directors of the Terry era who were still involved as animators and directors, two Famous Studios
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...
stalwarts joined the crew, Dave Tendlar and Martin Taras
Martin Taras
Martin B. Taras was an American cartoonist who mostly tenured at Famous Studios, the New York-based animation division of Paramount Pictures....
. Other new theatrical cartoon series included Hector Heathcote, Luno and Hashimoto San. In addition, the studio began producing the Deputy Dawg
Deputy Dawg
Deputy Dawg is a Terrytoons cartoon character featured on the animated television series of the same name in an original TV weekly run from 8 September 1962 to 25 May 1963, with no episodes on 8 December to 29 December 1962, resuming on 5 January 1963. The cartoons are between four and six minutes...
series for television in 1960. Another television production for the Captain Kangaroo show was The Adventures of Lariat Sam, which was written in part by Gene Wood
Gene Wood
Eugene Edward "Gene" Wood was an American television personality, known primarily for his work as an announcer on various game shows. From the 1960s to the 1990s, he announced many game shows, primarily Mark Goodson–Bill Todman productions such as Family Feud, Card Sharks, Password, and Beat the...
.
Phil Scheib continued as the studio's musical director through the mid-1960s when he was replaced by Jim Timmens and Elliott Lawrence.
The most notable talent at Terrytoons in the 1960s was animator/director/producer Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
, who got his start with Terrytoons in the 1950s and later helmed the Mighty Heroes series. Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967 for Paramount, which closed its cartoon unit later that year. He would later go on to produce Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is a 1987 revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon character. Produced by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures , it aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from fall 1987 through the 1988-89 season...
for television in 1987.
Post-history
After the departure of Bakshi after 1966, the studio petered out and finally closed in 1968. However, the film library was still regularly rereleased to theatres by Fox, thus ensuring its existing cartoon library a long life in TVTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
reruns. Its last short was an unsold TV pilot called Sally Sargent, about a 16-year old girl who is a secret agent.
The Terrytoons cartoons (especially Mighty Mouse and Deputy Dawg) were syndicated to many local TV markets, and they were a staple of after-school and Saturday morning cartoon
Saturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
shows for over three decades, from the 1950s through the 1980s, until the television rights to the library were acquired by USA Network
USA Network
USA Network is an American cable television channel launched in 1971. Once a minor player in basic cable, the network has steadily gained popularity because of breakout hits like Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Monday Night RAW, Suits, and reruns of the various...
in 1989. They have seen relatively little air time since then.
In the 1970s, the CBS Films properties were spun off to create Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
, which itself re-merged with CBS in 1999.
In the late '70s, Filmation Studios licensed the rights in order to make a new Mighty Mouse series. Later in 1987, Ralph Bakshi produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is a 1987 revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon character. Produced by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures , it aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from fall 1987 through the 1988-89 season...
which lasted for two seasons. Bakshi and 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...
inspired the staff to try to get as much Jim Tyer-style drawing in the show as possible. Tyer, a stand-out Terry animator of the original cartoons with a unique style, became a strong influence on the artists of the Bakshi series.
In 2002, the Terrytoons characters returned to television in original commercials for Brazilian blue cheese (for what is now America's Dairy Farmers) and a fine wine.
Through the years that have followed since the last Terrytoons TV series material in 1988, the rights have been scattered as result of prior rights issues and corporate changes involving Viacom (the ownership and distribution history is noted below). However, some Terrytoons shorts are believed to be in the public domain, and have been issued on low-budget VHS tapes and DVDs. The first official release of any Terrytoons material by CBS DVD has been announced (Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is a 1987 revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon character. Produced by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures , it aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from fall 1987 through the 1988-89 season...
was issued January 5, 2010).
Licensing and merchandising
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
, a predecessor of Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, in the early 1940s. Later, St. John Publications
St. John Publications
St. John Publications was an American publisher of magazines and comic books. During its short existence , St. John's comic books established several industry firsts. Founded by Archer St. John , the firm was located in Manhattan at 545 Fifth Avenue. After the St...
took over the licensing, publishing comics featuring such characters as Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
, the magpies Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle
Heckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
, Gandy Goose, and Little Roquefort. The first such St. John comic was Mighty Mouse #5 (Aug. 1947), its numbering taken over from the Timely run. St. John's Terrytoons comics include the field's first 3-D
Stereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
comic book, Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse
Mighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
. According to Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert
Joe Kubert is an American comic book artist who went on to found The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman...
, co-creator with the brothers Norman Maurer
Norman Maurer
Norman Albert Maurer , a comic book artist and writer, was also a director and producer of films and television shows.-Comic books:...
and Leonard Maurer, it sold an exceptional 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece at a time when comics cost a dime.
Ownership
- Independent (1930–1955, as company);
- Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (1955–1971, as company and underlying rights to library);
- ViacomViacom (1971–2005)Viacom , stylized as VIACOM in its current logo, was an American media conglomerate. It was the owner of CBS, Nickelodeon & MTV, among others. Effective December 31, 2005, this corporate entity changed its name to CBS Corporation...
(1971–2006, underlying rights to library); - CBS CorporationCBS CorporationCBS Corporation is an American media conglomerate focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The President and CEO of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's...
/CBS Television Studios, a division of CBS Corp. (2006–present, underlying rights to library).
Distribution
- Educational PicturesEducational PicturesEducational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
(1930 until 1936) - 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
(1936 until 1971; and theatrical re-distribution rights until 1994); - Paramount PicturesParamount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
(re-distribution theatrical rights, 1994–2006; and from 2006 forward, only on behalf of CBS); - CBS Home Entertainment, through Paramount Home EntertainmentParamount Home EntertainmentParamount Home Entertainment is the division of Paramount Pictures dealing with home video founded in late 1975.-History:...
(home video and DVD rights); - CBS Television Studios through CBS Television DistributionCBS Television DistributionCBS Television Distribution is a global television distribution company, formed from the merger of CBS Corporation's two domestic television distribution arms CBS Paramount Domestic Television and King World Productions, including its home entertainment arm CBS Home Entertainment...
(television syndication rights, 1956–present).
Theatrical shorts series
- Astronut 1964-1971
- Clint Clobber 1957-1959
- Dimwit 1953-1957
- Dingbat 1950
- Dinky DuckDinky DuckDinky Duck was a Terrytoons cartoon character that appeared in a number of animated shorts. Dinky was a young duck that lived on a farm with ducks, chickens and other typical farm animals. Dinky often took on the role of an orphan who simply wanted a place to call home. Other times, Dinky would...
1939-1957 - Duckwood 1964
- Fanny ZilchFanny ZilchFanny Zilch was a fictional cartoon character in the 1930s series Terrytoons which was composed of musical spoofs of melodramas. In these adventures she was pursued by the villainous Oil Can Harry and protected by the heroic Strongheart...
1933 - Farmer Al FalfaFarmer Al FalfaFarmer Al Falfa , the quintessential grizzly old farmer type, is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. He first appeared in 1916 in a series of shorts produced by the John R. Bray Studios...
1931-1937 - Foofle 1959-1960
- Gandy GooseGandy GooseGandy Goose was a classic Terrytoons cartoon character. He was frequently paired with Sourpuss, a cat, beginning in the 1939 short The Owl and the Pussycat. Gandy spoke in a lyrical vocal parody of radio comedian Ed Wynn while Sourpuss vocally impersonated an impatient Jimmy Durante...
1938-1955 - Gaston Le Crayon 1957-1959
- Good Deed Daily 1955-1956
- Half Pint 1951
- Hashimoto 1959-1963
- Heckle and JeckleHeckle and JeckleHeckle and Jeckle are cartoon characters created by Paul Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons for 20th Century Fox. The characters are a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes in the manner of Bugs Bunny, while maintaining a mischievous streak reminiscent of Woody...
1946-1966 - Hector HeathcoteHector HeathcoteHector Heathcote was a was a Terrytoons cartoon character. Created by Eli Bauer, he first appeared in 1959 in The Minute and a Half Man.Hector started out as a scientist who invented a time machine to take him back to the American War of Independence....
1959-1971 - James Hound 1966-1967
- John Doormat 1957-1959
- Kiko the Kangaroo 1936-1937
- Little Roquefort 1950-1955
- Luno The White StallionLuno The White StallionLuno The White Stallion was a Terrytoons television series that aired in the mid-1960s. It centered on a little boy named Tim who had a marble Pegasus horse named Luno who would come alive and whisk him off on adventures in far off lands when Tim said the words, "Oh winged horse of marble white,...
1963-1964 - Martian Moochers 1966
- Mighty Mouse/Super MouseMighty MouseMighty Mouse is an animated superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox.-History:The character was created by story man Izzy Klein as a super-powered housefly named Superfly. Studio head Paul Terry changed the character into a cartoon mouse instead...
1942-1943, 1944-1961 - Nancy and Sluggo 1942
- Oil Can Harry 1937
- Possible Possum 1965-1971
- Sad Cat 1965-1968
- Sidney the Elephant 1958-1963
- Terry Bears 1951-1956
TV series
- Tom TerrificTom TerrificTom Terrific was an early animated series on American television, presented as part of the Captain Kangaroo children's television show....
1957 - Mighty Heroes 1966-1967
- Deputy DawgDeputy DawgDeputy Dawg is a Terrytoons cartoon character featured on the animated television series of the same name in an original TV weekly run from 8 September 1962 to 25 May 1963, with no episodes on 8 December to 29 December 1962, resuming on 5 January 1963. The cartoons are between four and six minutes...
1962-1963 - The Astronut ShowThe Astronut ShowThe Astronut Show was a syndicated animated television series produced by the Terrytoons animation studio. It first aired on August 23, 1965. Each episode included an episode of Astronut and Luno The White Stallion, plus another cartoon from the Terrytoons stable.Astronut first appeared on the...
1965 - The Hector Heathcote Show 1963
- The Adventures of Lariat Sam 1961-1962