MIPTV Thoughts

So MIPTV is going on now in Cannes. For those that don't know:

MIPTV Media Market is an event which takes place annually in Cannes, using the facilities and infrastructure which the town has developed over the years to host other important events such as the Cannes Film Festival amongst other events.

It is essentially a content market for co-producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment content. It provides the people involved in the TV, film, digital and audiovisual content, production and distribution industry a market conference and networking forum to discover future trends and trade content rights on a global level.

Full disclosure: that explanation is taken directly from Wikipedia because, quite frankly, I didn't feel like coming up with my own explanation for what it is.

Appearing at MIPTV with many other media is animation. Most of the time the shows appearing are stuff I have never heard of before. So, I present to you my:

Top Ten Favorite Animated Series at MIPTV Based on Title Only:

10) Galactik Football 3 - Great, now I have to try to find the first two seasons on Netflix.

9) Monkey Business - (Crossing fingers and closing eyes.) Please be about a monkey with an office job! Please be about a monkey with an office job!

8) The Small Giant - You mean..."the person?"

7) The ABC Monsters - The picture in the MIP Guide is of monsters literally shaped like letters of the alphabet. Little on the nose, aren't we?

6) Iconicles - What?

5) Rocket Monkeys - 'Nuff said. Sold!

4) The Adventures of Compass and Alarm Clock - Yes, it is exactly what you're thinking.

3) Justin Time - Get out.

2) Kung Fu Chicken - Nothing not to like about those three words together.

1) Animation Hotline - Uh...It can't be just me who thinks that sounds inappropriate, right?

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We'll Be Right Back Part 5 (Voice Actor Vridays Edition)

In all this talk of cartoon commercial spokespeople, breakfast cereal cartoon commercials, and the like, there is a certain character who (whom?), I'm sure to you, has been conspicuously left off. The character I am referring to is Cap'n Crunch. Well, the truth is I have been specifically saving the Cap'n for today so I could spotlight him as a part of the new weekly segment Voice Actor Vridays: The Great Segment with the Stupid Name. (That's the new tag line I'm using.)

Cap'n Horatio Magellan Crunch first appeared in 1963 as a breakfast cereal, and Jay Ward Productions, who you may remember as the creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, was hired to create an animate the mascot for the cereal. From 1963 through the present Cap'n Crunch has been getting into thirty to sixty second adventures in animated commercials, whether it was fighting "the Soggies" or matching blades with the pirate Jean LaFoote, voiced by Bill Scott (voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose). Cap'n Crunch's adventures also regularly appeared in comic book adventures that were available in the cereal box.



Cap'n Crunch is a really fun and truly iconic character of cartoon advertising, but one of the things that makes him special is that he was voiced by the legendary Daws Butler, and Daws is the spotlight of today's Voice Actor Vriday: The Great Segment with a Stupid Name.

If Mel Blanc is the name that is immediately synonymous with voice acting outside of the industry, Daws Butler is that name inside the industry. Daws Butler is the voice actor's voice actor. I respect the hell out of Mel Blanc, but Daws, along with Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Frees, was who I wanted to be like when I decided I wanted to go into this business. In seventh grade I had pictures of all three of them pinned to my wall--only seventh grader ever who did that, I imagine, but--they were who I wanted to be like.

Daws Butler was the voice of most of the characters in the Hanan-Barbera catalog: Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Yogi Bear, Jinx the Cat, Quick Draw McGraw, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Elroy Jetson, Cogswell Cogs, Loopy De Loop, Peter Potamus, among many others. He also provided the voice of several characters in Jay Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop and Son, although due to his contract with Hanna-Barbera, he received no screen credit for those roles.

In the 1980's Daws Butler began a voice acting workshop in Hollywood, CA, after many people suggested that he share his secrets of the business with young people wishing to get started in voice acting. That workshop has become legendary, and many of the top voice actors of today like Corey Burton (Captain Hook and Count Dooku), Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson), and Bob Bergen (Porky Pig) got their start in Daws' class.

One other thing that makes Daws pretty special is that he is universally described by those who knew him as one of the kindest people you could ever meet. I was going to write an extensive biography of Daws here in the blog, but there are many great places to learn about him. Here's a nice bio written by one of his sons, and here are several articles written by his friends.

And finally, this video was a part of the recent release of the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show. It has a lot of great insight into Daws and his life and career by those who knew him. So here is this week's spotlight Voice Actor: The Legendary, The One and Only Daws Butler.



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We'll Be Right Back Part 4

So we have covered some of the great cartoon advertisements of the 50's through 80's so far here in this week's discussion, but it would seem that cartoon advertisements on on the way down. While there certainly has been a decline over the years in animated spokespeople, I certainly don't think that they are in danger of disappearing. Not only are many of the animated characters from the past still around like Tony, Toucan Sam, Mr. Clean, etc., but companies continue to create new animated characters to sell their products.

Just look at ads for insurance:





And several pharmaceutical companies have animated characters in their ads:







While the trend seems to be a switch to computer animated characters over traditionally animated characters--sound familiar--I feel like the animated spokesman is not going anywhere any time soon. They could be used for this or this or this or this or...

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We'll Be Right Back Part 3

While breakfast cereal reigns supreme in the realm of cartoon advertisements, there are many products that feature popular cartoon spokesmen. Today we'll look at some of the most memorable and interesting characters from vintage television commercials.

Bucky Beaver
Though Bucky Beaver is iconic on his own--one of those characters who is synonymous with the product he advertised: Ipana Toothpaste--he is interesting to me for another reason. Many people, especially those who grew up when he was on the air, remember Bucky, and in the musical Grease they even parody his famous "brusha, brusha, brusha" song, but many people don't realize that Bucky Beaver is actually a Disney character.

Long forgotten by most, the Disney company had its own commercial production division back in the 1950's. One of the chief designers there was Tom Oreb, who designed Bucky and is most known at Disney--and in the animation community--as one of the people responsible for the "cartoon modern" style of animation popular in the 1950's. Most memorable from the cartoons of UPA, the style was implemented at Disney in 101 Dalmatians; Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom; and even a strange looking Mickey Mouse:

Bucky Beaver, voiced by Jimmie Dodd (who also wrote that famous jingle), helped to make Ipana the most popular toothpaste in America, through the 1960's, although you wouldn't know it today.



Charlie Tuna
Like Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna was created by the Leo Burnett Co., and gave way to a slogan that has become a part of the American vernacular. Starkist Tuna's "Sorry Charlie" has been referenced in countless TV shows and movies. Charlie is also a remarkably fun character, kind of an early hipster in his fishing hat and horn-rimed glasses. Charlie was voiced by popular stage actor Herschel Bernardi and animated by DePatie -Freleng, who you may remember as creating the Pink Panther and animating some Looney Tunes and Dr. Seuss specials.



Mr. Clean
Proctor and Gamble's Mr. Clean character first appeared in 1958 and has become an icon in advertising over the years. I really only mention him because in recent appearances, the use of CG animation has made him look weird.



Also, I'm pretty sure he's gay, and I don't have anyone on this list that is yet, so I thought I'd diversify.

These are some of my favorites because they have interesting animators, histories, or sexual preferences, but if these aren't enough for you, you may want to revisit the Keebler Elves or the Jolly Green Giant. (Also all gay.)

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We'll Be Right Back Part 2

Today in our look into the world of cartoon commercials we are gong to cover the market that started it all: Breakfast Cereal, specifically, breakfast cereal aimed at children. "Can't get enuffa that Golden Crisp...," "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," "Follow your nose," "Theeeeey're GRRREAT!" The slogans for these products are an advertiser's dream. Not only are they memorable, they have etched themselves in the stone of pop culture, but how did it all get started?

Most companies were sponsors of radio programs throughout the thirties and forties, but as the medium of television grew in popularity, advertisers decided to follow the market. When they made this switch, they decided that animated forms of advertising would reach children best because children were already watching cartoons. Post Sugar Crisp cereal spent a great deal of money to have Bill Tytla create an ad for them in 1949. You might remember Bill Tytla from his work on this or this or this. The ad quickly became a phenomenon with children repeating the slogan and talking about the ad featuring the three bears on playgrounds all over America. And the landscape of Saturday morning television would never be the same.

Let us visit now some of the greatest animated cereal spokesmen past and present.

Franken Berry and Count Chocula
A part of General Mills "monster breakfast cereal" line, these guys first appeared in 1971, and were later followed by Boo Berry and Fruit Brute.


Snap, Crackle, and Pop
These guys started out as radio characters and are supposed to be old gnomes of some kind. When they became animated children's characters, they were aged down of course. Here's an old ad featuring these guys:


Sugar Bear
First appeared in the sixties to advertise Post Sugar Crisp Cereal, which later became Golden Crisp. His voice was originally an impression of Dean Martin, and into the nineties he became even more of a hipster, what with his ironic love of cereal.


Sonny the Cuckoo Bird
Originally created in 1964, this manic bird is constantly trying to do things that with take his attention off his addiction to Cocoa Puffs. Here's one such instance from the early eighties.


Trix Rabbit
For the love of Christ, it's been 57 years since this guy first appeared to advertise Trix, can we please let this guys have some cereal?


Toucan Sam
What a terrific character. I remember begging my mom to buy me the cereal with a cut-out of Sam's nose on the back. All you had to supply was your own rubber band to tie to it, and you could "Follow your nose" just like Sam. Originally voiced by Mel Blanc when he appeared in 1963, he was later replaced by Paul Frees to give him a high class English accent. Currently he is voiced by Maurice LaMarche.

Mel Blanc


Paul Frees


Maurice LaMarche


Tony the Tiger
In 1952 an ad man at the Leo Burnett Co. named Eugene Kolkey, was set with the task of creating a new character to advertise a new cereal from the Kellogg's account called Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes. What he created was possibly the best known and most beloved cartoon spokesman of all time: Tony the Tiger. Full disclosure, I may be a bit biased, as Tony was voiced for 5 decades by Thurl Ravenscroft--a man who inspired me and is one of the reasons I wanted to be a voice actor. I have a little Tony toy sitting on my desk right now. Although Thurl's depiction of Tony s the most recognizable, Thurl wasn'tthe original voice of Tony. He was originally voiced by brilliant character actor Dallas McKennon, who is known for many things--not the least of which is his safety spiel on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney Theme Parks. When Thurl passed away in 2005, he was replaced by veteran announcer Lee Marshall.

Tony is still going strong today, although over the years he has changed in appearance from a simple cartoony tiger, to a more brawny, extreme sports athlete. He's appeared with many celebs in commercials--both animated and live action alike. Here's a little retrospective on Tony's career that I think is pretty good.

Good? It's GGGGRRRRREEEEAAAT!















There are far too many cereal spokespeople to cover in just one post, But Tony, Sam, Sonny and the rest are stand-outs. But just in case you haven't had enough, maybe you remember Lucky the Leprechaun, Buzz Bee, Dig 'Em Frog, etc., etc., etc.

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We'll Be Right Back Part 1

This week’s Cartoon Guru is sponsored by...Commercials! I am one of the few fans of cartoons who really enjoys the cartoon spokesmen of commercials. Now of course there are famous cartoon characters who also did commercials, but I am talking about those members of Cartoondom whose entire source of fame is commercials. Characters like Tony the Tiger, Charlie Tuna, Toucan Sam, and others.

I was speaking with the head of the ASIFA Hollywood’s Animation Archive Steve Worth a couple of weeks ago, and he has a huge collection of animation artwork from commercials because he happens to like them a lot as well. And back when he was collecting them people thought he was crazy. While other people were paying top dollar for artwork from the Disney features or Looney Tunes, he was purchasing Cap’n Crunch, the Jolly Green Giant, and more. I thought that was so neat because I thought I was the only one with an affinity for these characters.

The first image ever broadcast was Felix the Cat, so television and cartoons have always had a special relationship, but cartoon commercials reigned supreme as the most iconic advertising spokespeople for many years. The first cartoon commercial was broadcast in September 1941, when barely 5000 TV sets were in homes. The cartoon character The Botany Lamb was produced to promote Botany Mills ties. Though seven spots were produced for this original campaign, the character its self lasted through 1948.

As television caught on across the country more companies and advertisers went the way of cartoon advertising. Unlike with radio, images could be used to sell products, and these cartoon shorts were not only visually stimulating, but they could also allow spokespeople to do anything that could be imagined. Though the work was not theatrical quality animation, many of these ads had budgets ranging from $3,000 to $5,000. This was top money for the time and was used to attract top talents like Jay Ward and even Disney, and voiced by the greatest in the business like Paul Frees and June Foray. Art Babbitt, who created Goofy, and Grim Natwick, who created Betty Boop and is widely respected as one of the greatest animators of all time, both animated the Ajax Elves:

Over the years, the number of advertisers who used cartoon characters to sell products expanded astoundingly. Coke, Sprite, Plymouth, De Soto, Tide, Alka Seltzer, Skippy Peanut Butter, and all manner of breakfast cereals were just a few of the most popular advertisements. Recently, however, the trend has been to move away from animated characters focusing on live-action comedy or special effects.

But these animated commercial characters have become an indelible part of the collective consciousness. Ask anyone you know, and everyone will know where the Keebler Elves live or what you go for Cocoa Puffs. Part of the reason that these characters are so etched in our brains is the nature of the medium of advertising. Cartoons used for advertising are unique because they appear onscreen for a minute or two at the most. Because of this small window of time, they have to be as packed with entertainment and information as they can. The massive volume of commercials that you see also plays a part, as each needs to be as unique and captivating as possible. Also, you often see the same commercial many times before it is replaced with another spot.

And it isn’t just the information, it's also the way in which the information is presented to you. Cartoons utilize sight and sound, but in a way that is different from watching a TV show or an animated feature or short at the movies. In these little snippets, you are not meant to just react to what you see, but participate. These lovable characters ask you to go out and buy their products and then use (eat, play with, clean with, etc.) what you bought. They encourage you to be a full player in their world. This complete “sensory inclusion” makes cartoon commercials an unforgettable part of a television experience, and seeing them as a child adds an element of nostalgia as well.

Though some of the cartoon advertisements no longer fit in to what society finds acceptable to be on television, like animated Kool Cigarettes ads or Hamm’s Beer ads featuring the Beer Bear, most of these cartoon characters are funny, charming, or have otherwise won their way into our hearts. So this week on the Cartoon Guru, I am going to pay tribute to some of these great characters. We’ll get back to your regularly scheduled Cartoon Guru after these messages.

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A New Segment

I have decided to institute a new segment on the blog spotlighting voice actors. Not only am I a voice actor myself, but of the many blogs out there about cartoons and animation, few of them pay tribute to the great voice actors in animation. So I am creating a segment that I'm calling: Voice Actor Vridays. (I know it's dumb, but when you have your own animation blog, you can name segments whatever you want.)

To kick off the segment I think it is only appropriate that I showcase possibly the most famous and most respected voice actor of all time. This is a man whose resume reads like a who's who of the most beloved cartoon characters of all time; a man whose name is synonymous with cartoon voices. I'm speaking, of course, of Mel Blanc. So well known is he, in fact, that when I tell people outside of the industry that I do voice over, the first response is usually, "Oh, you mean like Mel Blanc?" The voice of characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Barney Rubble, Mr. Spacely, Heathcliff, Woody Woodpecker, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, and Private Snafu to name a few, it's hard to find a cartoon from animation's golden age without Mel Blanc's voice in it somewhere.

Mel Blanc was born in 1908, San Francisco, California. From an early age, Mel was interested in music and taught himself to play the sousaphone, the violin and the bass. He parlayed this into a career as a radio musician, and while working on a radio program called The Hoot Owls, he began making regular appearances as various characters on the program. Then in 1933 he was given the opportunity to host his own radio show in Portland called the Cobweb and Nuts Show. The budget for the show was so limited that he had to provide the voices for most of the characters himself, and it was here that he began perfecting the skills that would make him famous.

Throughout the thirties, Mel freelanced on radio programs all over Los Angeles. He became very popular on the Jack Benny program, and one of his most famous characters was a shy Mexican character named Sy. Here is a version of that routine recreated for the Jack Benny television Show:

In 1937, Leon Schlessinger hired Mel to provide voices for the Warner Bros. cartoons. This was to be the beginning of a very long and fruitful relationship. Being well known for his hiccupping drunk character, he was to provide the voice of a drunken bull in the cartoon Picador Porky. Then he took over as the voice of Porky and originated Daffy Duck in Porky’s Duck Hunt.

Blanc continued working with Warner Bros for the next fifty years, and also with Universal and Hanna-Barbera. He even did a voice for Disney in Pinocchio as Gideon the cat, which Walt later decided would be funnier as a mute character, so all that remains of that performance are the drunken hiccups. People have speculated over the years that this caused a rift with Disney, and that Mel refused to do any voices for Disney after that, which is not true. Blanc was a regular on the Disney radio program and can be heard as Uncle Orville and the pet bird on the Carousel of Progress attraction at Walt Disney World.

Despite his many characterizations over the years, no character was more beloved or more endearing than a quick-witted, carrot-chomping gray rabbit named Bugs Bunny. That was never more evident than in 1961, when Mel was in a terrible car accident that nearly killed him and put him in a coma for three weeks. Thousands of get-well cards poured in from saddened fans from all over the world, many of which were addressed only to “Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA,” according to Mel’s autobiography. Though things looked bleak, one doctor had a bit of inspiration. The doctor walked to Mel’s bedside and asked, “How are you today, Bugs Bunny?” Eyes still closed, Blanc answered feebly in Bugs’ voice, “Okay, Doc.” Blanc thus credited Bugs with saving his life.

Mel Blanc died in 1989 leaving a legacy of characters that millions of people have enjoyed over the years. His tombstone in Hollywood Forever Cemetery appropriately reads, “That’s All Folks.”

And here I leave you with a clip of Mel on Johnny Carson describing how he creates some of his characters:

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