I’m back home after a whole night up at the school steadying some films. The machines at the college are super fast compared to even the fastest machine I have here, so it made some sense when dealing with the 5k files to try and speed up the process. The last handful of days have just been filled with all sorts of digital tasks on so many things. I’m going to be happy to take a break to drive out east. It will be back into the digital world once there though, scanning films.

Since it’s Comic-Con week and our fearless leader, Jerry Beck, is traveling this week, I’ll keep the article a little short. I owe all of you a longer and more in-depth post sometime soon for sure though… and have a few things that I think everyone will like.

Now that I’m back and writing at home, I’ve pulled up the stuff in progress and almost finished. There’s a Van Beuren Tom and Jerry in cleanup that we’re working on here, and one more to be done after that, with the rest of the set now into the little tweaks stage. I’m ready to start working on the final timelines for that set.

As I’ve been looking through the proxy Rainbow Parade scans for the second volume, it’s clear I’ll be doing some traveling soon (!) in the other direction. I do enjoy the hands on aspects of these projects, although sometimes I wish they were ready for prime time.I’ll work on getting things a little cleaner before having them run through a scanner again.

One of the things we’re working on (and getting closer to finish) is the Mid Century Modern Animation, Volume 3 Blu-ray. It’s now up for pre-order at Thunderbeanshop.com, along with a special set called Dungeon of Lost Cartoons.

I was thinking today about how there really needs to be a lot more information on the many studios that have produced commercials, especially in the late 40s into the 70s. There is some information of course, but rarely a good way to see a good amount of the output from a particular studio. Since there’s so many different products and the commercials were made for many companies, it’s understandable in many ways while there isn’t curation of those spots. I think it’s time to work on changing that.

Here’s a few spots that are on YouTube that I really enjoyed this week. Have you found any recently that you especially like? Feel free to share in the comments! I really wish there were whole mornings of these types of commercials still!

One of the things I’d love to see well-documented are the commercials produced on the Disney lot in the mid-50s. While not official Disney productions, they sort of are, and are all interesting.

Here’s a recent upload of one I haven’t seen before, with Bucky Beaver as a stagecoach driver:

This one isn’t as good of quality, but I really love the animation. Bucky is a little mean to the bad guy here. I really enjoy a commercial with a story, however simple.

Here’s a cute little Navy spot from Playhouse Pictures – I’d guess early to mid 60s?

Here’s a Trix spot where the Rabbit seems especially sneaky. I don’t think the message is so clear here though…

Here’s one for Post Cereal with a dandy stop motion animated corncob. Does anyone have any idea who animated or what studio this one is from? Looks early to mid 50s from the Post packages….

Here’s a 1953 Kellogg’s Commercial. I wish I had a print on this one! This has to be a California spot, but I wonder who the animator was? There’s something vaugely Warners or Jones-esque in some of the face animation…

I remember this one form when I was a kid. I love the lifeless style here:

Ok – so, as Willie Whopper would say, sort of, Now you share one! Have a good week all!