Bad Cartoons and Businessmen

Cartoons 600 Cartoons, see them live and naked on stage (Okay, the last part I added). Still it sounds like a come-on for a 42nd Street Peep Show. Walmart has long had the mega box of public domain cartoons for sale starting at a box of 200 cartoons and slowly growing over the years to the current 600 cartoon, 12 disk set .

In the mix are some lesser Puppettoons, some Harryhausen fairytales, lots of Clutch Cargo, a Space Angel, far too many Colonel Bleep cartoons, lots of Tree Stooges cartoons, tons of Mel-O-Toons (gods help us) and the normal run of the public domain toons all for $10. That works out to 17 cents per cartoon. Too much for a lot of what is offered but a deal for some of the rare stuff.

Most of the cartoons are still utter dreck. I have multiple copies of most of the cartoons already in my collection. But I always stop and check the back of the box to see if they have anything I am missing. I guess when you mine the public domain deeply enough for this number of cartoons you are going to have to hit one or two rare toons eventually.

Calvin and the Colonel is typical mindless 50s cartoon drivel but it holds a special place in the history of animation. I have seen a number of them over the years but this is the first time I have seen them out in the stores and for sale. Calvin and the Colonel was created by one of the evilest men in animation, Shull Bonsall. Working along with Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the infamous Amos and Andy voice actors.

Calvin and the Colonel was the successful target of protest by the NAACP who ran it off the air. The demise of this show spelled the bankruptcy of Bonsall`s TV Spot. A fitting fate for the man whose 5 year legal full scale, take no prisoners, harassment almost killed Alex Anderson and did not do much for Jay Ward`s physical or mental health either now that we are talking about it. Alex never returned to TV animation after Bonsall`s physic rape. And the loss of what might have been is reason enough to hate Bonsall.

Bonsall was not a nice man. He went out of his way to screw up jobs for Lucille Bliss by threatening Hanna and Barbara with the same kind of legal harassment if they hired her to do voices for them. All because Lucille dared to refuse to work for him on his ill gotten Crusader Rabbit just because he was paying way less than union scale ($30 per episode). To this day Lucille sees blood if you mention bonsall`s name in her vicinity.

Martha Segall, the sweetest lady in animation, thinks poorly of Bonsall too because he stiffed a friend of hers who ran an ink and paint service. He took the cels and never paid leaving her to pay her employees for thousands of dollars of work.

But maybe there is some justice in this world. Bonsall lost everything with the Calvin and the Colonel debacle and ended his days working as the foreman on his son-in-law`s horse ranch.

There are 8 Calvin and the Colonel cartoons in the giant Walmart Box-O-Toons and fittingly enough 3 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons are also in the collection. Oswald is another, more famous, cartoon victim of behind the scenes dirty dealing.

By and large animation is one of the nicer branches of film but we did have our stinkers. Walmart offers you a chance to see the cartoons that ended the career of one of our all time classic bad guys. And at the same time you can watch a whole lot of bad animation, some hard to find oddities and a few classics.