Super 300 Cartoon Collection (Mill Creek Entertainment)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Animated Shorts: B-
Our
legacy of animation deserves some more attention when it comes to its history
and how much restoration is needed of theatrical and television works,
especially at this time when digital animation is all the rage and non-feature
length hand drawn work is too easily dismissed.
Since the rise of VHS and Beta, every company big and small has issued
animated titles and the smaller companies issued and reissued as much public
domain work as possible. Mill Creek’s Super 300 Cartoon Collection may be a
DVD set (6 in all) but is in the “tradition” of those lesser sets, as well as
companies smart enough to put out key animation in any condition just for
people to see.
The box
set has two separate volumes that are not marked as volumes. Therefore, we’ll go by color. Both the blue
and green sets have a variety of materials
from movie theaters and TV, plus some interesting promo films. General Motors produced several animated
shorts. One from Oldsmobile that offers
a sing-a-long to the hit “Me In My Merry
Oldsmobile” plus several classic tales that happen to have Chevrolets turn
up in them like Cinderella. Both sets
also have assorted Christmas shorts, science shorts, Calvin & The Colonel, Hoppity
Hooper and Clutch Cargo shorts.
The green set also adds many Colonel Bleep shorts, The
New Three Stooges (which need some work; most episodes are here), George
Pal stop-motion animated Puppetoons
and even a classic Felix The Cat
entry. The blue
set has more Felix The Cat, a few
episodes of Space Angel, a Kellogg’s promo short with possibly the earliest
(color?) appearance of Snap, Crackle & Pop to promote Rice Krispies in “Breakfast Pals”, Aesop’s Fables, Blackie The
Lamb, Gumby, a 7-minute color Wizard Of Oz, Gumby, two Filmation TV series (Fraidy Cat, Wacky &
Packy), Walt Disney’s Alice
before he formed his studio, Herman The
Mouse and other assorted shorts they had and added such as Fleischer color
classics like Hold It! and the
result is an interesting pastiche of a great artform. If you are interested and can get it cheap,
it is worth looking through.
All have
1.33 X 1 aspect ratios, some in black and white, others in color as well as
some a few generations down where image is missing on all four sides. Also, many are TV prints with original
credits masked or replaced by other, later credits. Some prints look good, while others are from
video copies, a few generations off and even outright video copies with
aliasing errors. I even suspect some
black and white footage was originally color.
There are no extras in any set.
- Nicholas Sheffo
