In Thunderbean news:

I really didn’t think that Thunderbean would be doing cartoon sets for 20 years, but here we are.

Today, February 29th, is 20 years to the day that I built my first DVD test for a reboot of sorts of the Snappy Video company, but now under the little animation company I was running called Thunderbean. I was cheerfully naive of what the technology could do at that point, but I had a ton of 3/4” and 1” tape masters I had made between 1987 and 1994 full of cartoons when I was running Snappy. In that time, I had scanned a ton of films, but of course didn’t have any kind of software to clean anything up. All the editing was done using an ‘insert edit ‘ method between Sony Umatic 3/4” tape decks.

I hadn’t missed doing those sets too much between those years, but the new technology was exciting to me, especially figuring out that DVDs could run at 23.976 frames per second progressively, without fields— just like a film! Running the scans I had done 10 years earlier and more and recombining progressive frames was super exciting at the time— I remember writing about it back then on the “Golden Age Cartoons” forums. I felt like we were at least a little closer to film on video.

All these years later, the focus of the little company is shockingly similar— but the abilities have definitely improved with technology and really wanting to do a good job on these things. I’m still excited for the things coming up and being able to share things I’ve never seen before- and especially things I’ve always wanted to see and I never thought would show up.

As we’re wrapping up Mid Century Modern 3, we’ve decided to do a sneak preview disc of things from upcoming sets, including Buster the Bear, who didn’t quite Get a star on the walk of fame. It also includes some rare Felix cartoons and a Toby the Pup you’ve never seen. There’s 12 films on the set all together. It’s at the Thunderbean shop through Monday only, and will never be available again. Proceeds will help with scanning and production on the nearly done sets.

And.. onto the cartoon: Showing Off (1931)

Scrappy cartoons are clearly some of my favorites. Showing Off (1931) is a simple and sweet cartoon in some ways, except for Scrappy setting Margie on fire. Oh, yeah, and spending about half the film smoking. It’s one of my favorites of the series and reminds me of the live action ‘kid comedies’ like Our Gang and the Mickey McGuire shorts from the same period. Like those early sound live action shorts, Scrappy and Margie have a little world of their own, with Scrappy trying to impress Margie with his worldly adult ways of smoking and dancing. It’s an especially well animated short – and like the other Scrappys from this period it has a series of pre-code surreal little gags. When Scrappy calls for a fireman in the audience, one shows up without another word, promptly ending the cartoon. I’m left to wonder if there’s a scene missing from the end of the film since that seems likely.

I don’t remember if this one is from my own print or someone else’s, but we scanned it not too long back. I’m getting older for sure.

Have a good week everyone!