Calling all Baby-Boomers! Your past is catching up with you!
Warner Archives is releasing Vol. 1 of Popeye: The 1960’s Animated Classics Collection (1960). These are not the Fleischer classics from the 1930s (Thankfully those were released years ago – and still available on three must-have volumes). These are the TV cartoons rushed out by King Features to cash in on the popularity of the old cartoons being re-run (to tremendous ratings) back in the late 50s/early 60s.
According to the Warner Archive press release:
King Features commissioned a new series of Sailor Man shorts under the aegis of executive producer Al Brodax. The TV incarnation of Popeye made up for its scaled-back animation with a broadened narrative scope and scale while still staying true to the source, thanks to the continued use of voice actors Jack Mercer (Popeye), Mae Questel (Olive) and Jackson Beck (now called Brutus) as well as the use of veteran Popeye animation talents then working at Paramount Cartoon Studios. Adding to the “I yam what I yam” authenticity is the addition of a number of Thimble Theater comic strip characters making their cartoon debuts – including King Blozo, Toar and Sea Hag!
King Features hired several studios, in several countries, to create 210 five-minute episodes in record time. This disc collects specifically the 63 cartoons produced by the original animation artists of Fleischer and Famous, then employed by Paramount’s in-house studio (titles listed below). The set is filled out with a bonus group of TV Popeye cartoons produced by Jay Ward animator Gerald Ray. Future volumes will collect the cartoons from the satellite studios (by Gene Deitch, Halas and Batchelor, Jack Kinney, Larry Harmon). This first collection will be available directly through Warner Archives online, on May 7th for $29.95.
All 72 titles included in Vol. 1 are:
Disc 1
Hits and Missiles
The Ghost Host
Strikes, Spares An’
Spinach
Jeep Is Jeep
The Spinach Scholar
Psychiatricks
Rags to Riches to Rags
Hair Cut-ups
Poppa Popeye
Quick Change Ollie
The Valley of the Goons
Me Quest for Poopdeck
Pappy
Mopey Hick
Mirror Magic
It Only Hurts When They
Laughs
Wimpy the Moocher
Voo-Doo to You Too
Popeye Goes Sale-ing
Popeye’s Travel
Incident at Missile City
Dog Catcher Popeye
What’s News
Spinach Greetings
The Baby Contest
Oil’s Well That Ends Well
Motor Knocks
Abusement Park
Duel to the Finish
Gem Jam
Bathing Beasts
The Rain Breaker
Messin’ Up the Mississippi
Love Birds
Sea Serpent
Boardering on Trouble
Aladdin’s Lamp
Disc 2
Butler Up
The Leprechaun
County Fair
Hamburgers Aweigh
Popeye’s Double Trouble
Kiddie Kapers
The Mark of Zero
Myskery Melody
Scairdy Cat
Operation Ice-Tickle
The Cure
William Won’t Tell
Pop Goes the Whistle
Autographically Yours
A Poil for Olive Oyl
My Fair Olive
Giddy Gold
Strange Things Are
Happening
The Medicine Man
A Mite of Trouble
Who’s Kiddin’ Zoo
Robot Popeye
Sneaking Peeking
Seer-Ring Is Believering
The Wiffle Bird’s Revenge
Going…Boing…Gone
Popeye Thumb
Where There’s a Will
Take It Easel
I Bin Sculped
Fleas a Crowd
Popeye’s Junior Headache
The Big Sneeze
The Last Resort
Jeopardy Sheriff
Baby
Phase
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