Oswald Rub-A-Pencil Book (Lantz, 1968)

Welcome back. Hopefully this will pre-sage a series of cartoon Oswald posts.


So here we have a Rub-A-Pencil book (signed by Walter Lantz; the seller had several other Lantz Rub-A-Pencil books signed by him, plus additional Lantz materials, mostly unsigned production materials and those ugly limited cels). Like a coloring book, but half the pages require you to rub a pencil on them to expose the underlying image, and you are not told to color those pages. I mean, I guess; I'm not going to actually try it. I'm assuming the slightly raised invisible ink will repel graphite so it will be a negative line. But maybe it super catches it. The blue pages below are inverted to show the lines. Sorry they're not clearer, the images on the other side of the page, and even on other pages, are clearer than the rub ink.




So, while by 1968, Lantz cartoons looked like crap, the cover art on this is great. Of course, Oswald hadn't appeared in a cartoon in 25 years at this point, but he'd had a longer life in print. Even the black and white images outclass Lantz '68 by a long shot.

So, yeah... a rabbit in a seal costume with a bird tail riding a broom over three quarters moon. One of Saturn's, apparently.


This is Saalfield 5092.

Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933)

Harman-Ising



A big problem with many cartoons is that they seem to think having a theme and moving around is enough to make a cartoon. They're probably right; it's just that it's not enough to make a GOOD cartoon. Even with some little good things to point to, being incredibly boring overall can ruin a cartoon.



LOVE



Monkey's around the tree. They are repetitive and moving too fast, but they ARE monkeys.



Cool background homes.



Seusseian reindeer.



Santa's prison windows. German expressionist/Caligari style windows, even.





The many toys. That all move in rhythmic little cycles, but there's a lot of them and they don't do anything stupid like keep them going for 46 seconds...



Windup sambo jazz band. Sweet. That's the place to use the folk instrumentation, not as a stand in for the church organ...



Doll going "mama" falls into coal bin, comes out in black face, says "mammy", and a mammy type says "Sonny Boy" (Al Jolson ref)



Tulip wall.



DNA ball guy. Stretch your self to kick some shmo.



Little girl blows up a balloon, uses it to blow herself up into a big fat woman, then sings "Good Night Harvest Moon"; Scotty dogs say "are you listening?"; a reference to Sophie Tucker, possibly; it is at least clearly a reference.



Switching to bagpipe music when using bagpipe to put out tree fire is inventive.


HATE

The music starts nicely with bells and an orchestra; then it switches to ugly folk instrumentation (accordian) to represent the church of all things; then it goes back to the orchestra. Is it a subtle commentary on the nature of religion? I think maybe it's just general crappiness...



There are good looking stocking and fireplace and house details; but it's all over on the side, leaving huge amounts of useless empty space in the shot. The shot, incidentally, lasts for 46 seconds! You see the protagonist approach from outside, enter the house, go to the fireplace, stomp to the chair, cry on the chair, see Santa Claus approach, say Santy Clause, wait for Santy, Santy enters, and only then does the shot end. All with this big boring background.

The lame sad sack of a protagonist. He's boring, ugly, and irritating. Super.



Rhythmic bending at the knee and rhythmic lock step fist (pumping? As good a word as any I suppose).

The cartoon just ends. Santa made a cameo, took the protagonist to the shanty, then disappears. A fire starts and gets put out, everyone cheers, and it's over. Maybe they wanted everyone to really like the feature, which would look better in comparison to a craptacular short.

CONCLUSION

Don't mistake the many individual good things about the cartoon as an endorsement of the entire cartoon. It's lame.

Do or Diet (1953)

Also on the Harveytoons box set is this Casper cartoon. It is much much better than Voice of the Turkey, altho watching the two of them, the later project owes a lot to the earlier (of course, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a much larger group of cartoons made in a formulaic manner of which these are but two examples). I wonder if Harvey itself just got better, or if they just had their A-team working on the Casper franchise. It appears in the same listed episode of the TV show as Voice of the Turkey and the Toon Take involving the pilgrims, so I'm thinking it was shown around Thanksgiving. The cartoon between Do or Diet and Voice of the Turkey is just about overeating, so it's not appearing here in this series of seasonal posts. Did I mention the box set has a pleasingly strong cover? Because it does, even if it's a bit short on information on the packaging...

LOVE


There is a formulaic reaction to Casper, but it comes from pilgrims in a calendar picture, which is different. Said picture is a tasty painting as well. (Did they have page a day calendars in the '50s? If not, Harvey may have invented something great.)


Donkey shoes running sans donkey. It sounds lame, but looks surprisingly ok.


Casper demonstrating thinner. It's actually visually appealing; Casper's blue outline, transparency, and impossible thinness end up looking really good; especially as his stupid eyelashes are gone for the shot.



"Pepper, salt, mustard, cider; skipping rope will make you lighter." Now that's a lyric.


Thin turkey via corset. Thin gags work in this cartoon...

The sound effects of the corset popping off are well done.


Moron tongue take. Not much better than the eye take in Voice of the Turkey, yet it works much better; better timed, better sound effects, better framing maybe. Then he runs into his house and runs away with it, but his chimney has to run by itself. So much better than the last cartoon...


"Do or Diet" also ends with the turkey eating corn like a typewriter, but Casper catches him and ties him up, WHICH IS WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN WHENEVER ANYONE TRIES TO DO THAT LAME GAG!

HATE

Casper's lame niceness. Lisa Simpson may find it sad, but what can I say; he's a little Milktoast (there is a cartoon on this set where he wails on the ghostly trio pretty well, tho; it sure isn't this cartoon). It's hard to relate to him, and he's the company's star. Such a bad sign...

Weird gurgly whining sounds of Timothy Turkey. I think this was hate. I can't actually tell from my notes...


Recycling the moron sharpening the axe. He's got a different accent, but my pain from "Voice of the Turkey" remains, and the cheating of it all is offensive...