Producer of Magick Dies

As you may know I love all things stop motion which means I love the Harryhausen movies. Charles H. Schneer, the man who made all those films possible has died after a long illness. Schneer came up with a business model that really made stop motion practical during the dark ages of animation.

Willis O`Brian, Harryhausen`s mentor and the father of Hollywood Stop Motion, never really made Stop Motion work on a business level and his career suffered because of this fact. O`Brain`s 1933 King Kong saved RKO from bankruptcy and was one of the first blockbusters if not the first. (But what have you done for the studio lately?) When Mighty Joe Young didn`t make the same kind of money at the box office the suites blamed Stop Motion and O`Brian and his career was never the same again.

Schneer hit of the plan. He made a cheap drive-in movie crafted around brilliant stop motion effects and critters by a master and made a profit that no B movie could hope to make. There was a time that I blamed Schneer for the non actors that peopled his movies. But the movies never would have been possible with another business model.

Charles H. Schneer, I salute you as the facilitator of my childhood dreams. I forgive you for the poor actors in your films even the female lead in 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Hey, maybe some day they can remake all the Harryhausen movies keeping all of his stop motion models and replacing just the cut rate actors. I can always dream. I bid you Genie to appear!

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.

Back to Work

Here I am in the South Campus Break Room at Laguna College of Art & Design waiting for my classroom to open up so that I can set up for my first History of Animation class. Later today is my first official meeting with the student I am mentoring in monster suit building. Lots of ground to cover on both fronts today.

History of Animation is one of my favorite classes to teach and I haven`t built a monster suit in 30 years so I am looking forward to getting my hands back in the old latex.

Good or Good Enough

Good TV animation is the exception. It is great to have Avatar or Samurai Jack or Reboot or even early Simpsons but for every top rate TV animation there are hundreds of miss fires. Why? Why?



It has been that way since the beginning of TV animation. Jerry Beck has made a second career out of 50s, 60s and 70s bad Saturday morn cartoons with his Worst Cartoons Ever panels at Comic Con and other events. I have looked at the screen credits of quite a lot of those worst cartoons and some of these dogs have some top notch people working on them. So why do these cartoons suck?



The short and simple answer is that they don`t have to be good to sell to the kids markets. And American studios just can not see that animation is any but just for kids, silly rabbit.

I love the Super Six, still, even after I have seen it with mature filmmaker`s eyes and know that it is bad formula storytelling. Corny Cole, who worked on the project early in his career, thought I was putting him on when I told him I liked the Super Six.



The truth is that I love it because I loved it when I was a kid. And I still love it now even though I know it is bad animation. It was aimed at kids and nothing more. And that is all it had to be. The producers were doing just what they had to, to get the job done, and never one bit more.

They forget that the trick to animation is shelve-life, the resale, the new market with every generation. Good animation is forever and will always have a new audience. Saturday morning crap that does not try to be more than crap is here today and then gone forever and only the kids that grew up with it think highly enough to watch it again.

Videogame Console Wars: Atari Blows the Big Deal

Let`s start with a little history of Atari before we get to the deal that would have changed the face of gaming history. The deal that never was.

In 1961 a MIT student named Steve Russell creates the first interactive computer game, Spacewar. In 1962 Nolan Bushnell enters engineering school at the University of Utah. Steve Russell Spacewar game shows up on school mainframes across the country. Russell programmed Spaceship shooter with Sun with gravity. Other students add star backgroun, etc. to the game.

In 1964 Nolan Bushnell stills as an Engineer student at University of Utah sees Spacewar. He works the summer as a manager at Amusement park. He gets the idea for video arcade games.


Nolan Bushnell

In 1965 Ralph Baer begins researching interactive television games at Sanders Associates. Then in 1968 Ralph Baer takes out patent on the 1st video game for Sanders Company.


Ralph Baer

In 1970 Magnavox licenses Ralph Baer’s television game from Sanders Associates. Nolan Bushnell starts work at Ampex where he meets Ted Dabney. Bushnell begins work on an arcade version of Spacewar called Computer Space.

By March of 1971 Bushnell quits Ampex alone with Ted Dabney and brings his Spacewar like game to Netting Ass. Nutting Associates Purchases Computer Space from Nolan Bushnell and hires him to help manufacture it.

Nutting begins shipping 500 units of Computer Space, the first arcade video game machine and the first video game failure. .

1972 Magnavox begins demonstrating Odyssey in Private showings. Bushnell attends a demonstration of the console on May 24, in Burlingame, California. Bushnell Leaves Nutting and starts Syzygy with partner Ted Dabney. Finding that the name Syzygy is already taken by a roofimg company, they rename their company Atari. (june 27th) Atari engineer Al Alcorn creates Pong.

Magnavox releases Odyssey and Magnavox sues Atari on grounds that Pong infringes on Ralph Baer's patents. (Some books say Nolan Bushnell decides to settle out of court others that the judge found for Magnavox) The outcome is that videogame companies have to pay royalty to Magnavox/Sanders. (in 10 years they take in $100 million. They keep this fact from Ralph Baer)

Atari’s Trademark on Pong does not come in quickly enough to stop copycat Pong games. 25 competing companies using the name take giant profits. Atari only get 10% on 90,000 Pong unit market. Dabney panics and sells out to Bushnell.

1973 Atari`s Gran Track racing game comes out. Bushnell forms exclusive contracts with distributors but then forms Kee Games (headed by Joe Keenan) to sell to the distributors locked out by exclusive contract. Autonomous company but bringing out same games under other names. Atari makes a big deal out of bad mouthing Kee Games as pirates and blackguards. When Tank becomes giant hit for Kee Games Atari distributors want to change contract. Kee “merged” with Atari.

Bob Brown pushes for home Pong system. Unit has only one game but is color and lower price. In 1975 Atari Creates prototypical Home Pong unit and sells idea to Sears Roebuck.

In 1976 Bushnell sells Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million. Stays on as Chairman, Joe Keenan is president. The market is down so he can`t go public to raise money. The money saves Atari from the fate of other gaming companies in the first gaming market crash.

Corporate stuffed suites block Bushnell from taking an active part in Research & Development (how major dumb it that?). Bushnell uses a young programmer (Steve Jobs) as a spy to keep him in the loop with R & D.

1977 Atari releases the Video Computer System, also known as the 26oo. B/W / Color switch, Handicap switch, 27 variation games switch, joystick controllers. Rotating colors when not in use avoid TV burn in.

Warners Communications want to take Atari into the computer market. Have no respect for Videogames and not aware of what is happening in computers. Bushnell is opposed to such a move because of his inside information about Apple Computer from his old corporate spy, Steve Jobs.

In 1978 Bushnell is forced out of Atari and buys the rights to Pizza Time Theatre (Chuck E. Cheese). Ray Kassar becomes the CEO of Atari.

In 1979 Atari game designer Warren Robinett introduces concept of "Easter Eggs" to video games by hiding a room with his name in it in a 26oo game called Adventure.


Warren Robinett

1980 Atari releases Space Invaders for the Video Computer System. The practice of selling home versions of arcade hits is started. After Ray Kassar refuses to give programmers/game designers credit or profit sharing calling them no more important to the company than workers on the assembly line. Renegade programmers flee Atari and create Activision, the first third-party game publisher. Ray Kassar holds a grudge, Atari sues Actionvision every 6 months in a vendetta that lasts as long as Kassar`s time as CEO at Atari.

1983 Nintendo is all ready to sign a deal with Atari to bring out their Famicom (NES) through Atari. A deal that would have propped up a company that was in real trouble at the time (nobody outside the company knew about the ill health of the once mighty gaming giant).

A booth jockey at Winter CES puts Donkey Kong on as a display for the New Coleco Adam Computer. Ray Kassar sees it and goes ballistic. Atari held the computer license for Donkey Kong while Coleco had the home console license. Kassar gets rabid with Nintendo and Coleco, starts foaming at the mouth and threating legal action against everybody. The papers on the Famicom deal with Atari never get signed.

Right after Winter CES Warner Communications announces that Atari sales have not met predictions, Warner stock drops 32 percent. Atari CEO Ray Kassar has just sold 5,000 shares of Warner Communications stock 23 minutes before the announcements of record losses at Atari. Atari announces that they will be developing software for other consoles (The death song of all gaming hardware companies) Atari eliminates 600 jobs sends Sunnyvale production to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nintendo decides that they do not need Atari and decides to go it alone.

James Morgan, Philip Morris executive who claimed that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears, becomes CEO of Atari and so messes up the company in his one year that Atari never get on their feet again.

1984 Warner Communications sells Atari Corporation to Commodore Computers founder Jack Tamiel but retains the arcade division as Atari Games.

If Kasser was not such an ass about Donkey Kong at the Winter CES then Atari would still be with us today and maybe would even make it to the days of Blade Runner and all those Atari signs in the future street scenes. The whole face of videogame would have been different. The Japanese would have had a lesser roll. Nintendo would not have taken over and Atari would not have tried to sue Nintendo for $160 million for taking over 80% of the gaming market. (Another sad chapter in the downward spiral of the once great Atari)

Space Barton

I have doing some prep work of my up coming History of Animation class at Laguna College of Art & Design. I have been editing some rare made for TV cartoons from 1950. Here is an episode of Space Barton from NBC Tele-Comics by Dick Moores and Jack Boyd.

Mark Kausler calls Tele-Comics illustrated radio and I see his point. There is a real question if this should be called animation at all. But they could meet the insanely low per episode costs dictated by early TV so they had a show.

Most people will not remember this show because it was off the air way before most people got their first TV sets. I remember Dwight Eisenhower and the convention getting in the way of my kid`s shows and that would mean our first TV was 1952. A big ugly model with a record player in the base of the cabinet that would shock you every time you touched the little metal fold out handle.

The voice work is all first class radio talent and the artwork is mostly Dick Moores. Dick went on to be the assistant to Frank King on Gasoline Alley. A stripe he took over after King died. A stripe that has not been the same since Moores passed away. Anyway, enjoy.

Videogame Console Wars: the 70s & 80s

The history of Videogames in strewn with failed home videogame console companies. One of the strangest is Coleco. Strange in that they went so far with so little. It was like the company lived on luck.

In 1932 The Connecticut Leather Company is established by a Russian immigrant named Maurice Greenberg to distribute leather products to shoemakers.

In the late 50s they branch into injection model toys as an easy money making sideline. And then in 1968 Connecticut Leather Company buys Eagle Toys and starts using the acronym Coleco. Coleco first makes its mark in toys by marketing a home pinball games.

Big moment in time, drum roll please! 1970 Magnavox licenses Ralph Baer`s television game technology from Sanders Associates. The first home videogame console, The Odyssey, is born.

1973 the Odyssey market crumbles due to dumb marketing by Magnavox. The Odyssey is sold only in Magnavox stores, where sales people on commission create the myth that you have to have a Magnavox TV to run Odyssey so that they can make money on TV sales. The sales people are untrained and do no push the light rifle and extra game boards.

Here is were luck enters into the Coleco business plan in a major way. In 1975 General Instruments introduces $5 chip with 4 paddle and 2 shooter games burned into the chip. In short, the chip is the core of any number of videogames all for $5. Coleco is the first company to order and order heavy. They are the only company to get their full order filled as demand out strips supply to the tune of a 60% industry-wide order shortfall.

Then in 1976 the Connecticut Leather Company, now known as Coleco, releases Telstar, a television tennis game with a price of $50. They sell 1 million units before Father’s day. Lets do a little math. $5 for the chip and on the high side let us say $5 for the other components, packaging and handling for a total unit price, again on the high side, of $10 per unit for a profit of 40 million 1976 dollars. From a small company just at the edge of the toy industry to a good solid second tier toy maker in the game industry over night.

Hoping to build on their windfall Coleco release Telstar programmable console in 1977. They also hire Michael Katz from Mattel Hand Held Unit. Coleco creates and releases a sports game called Head to Head with 2 players competing head to head.

By 1982 Coleco is a major player in the home videogame market. They release Colecovision, a second generation home videogame console.

Luck as a component of the Coleco business plan plays its part again in 1982 when Xavier Roberts sells mass-production rights to Cabbage Patch Dolls to Coleco.

The great videogame crash of 1983 comes about because so many companies have jumped on the videogame bandwagon. Inferior third party games (mostly for the Atari 2600 but a fair number for Colecovision) flood the market place as failing companies or their creditors sell off stock at a loss. This diverts market dollars for more stable gaming companies undermining their cash flow and driving most out of business.

Having weathered the videogame shakeout by pure dumb luck that the management at Coleco may have thought of as good planning, Coleco begins marketing the Adam Computer in 1984.

In 1985 TSR (the makers of Dungeons and Dragons) has losses of $1.5 Million due to embezzlement and a fight for control of TSR. TSR lays off 75%. of their work force. Many leave to work with Coleco`s video game division.

After years of bungled release dates and unfulfilled promises the Adam Computer drives Coleco to file for bankruptcy in 1988.

Was Colecovision a good console? Yes, it had some of the best graphics of its day. How about the games? Not bad at all. Coleco`s luck just ran out. A company can not run on luck alone. The great Computer Platform Wars killed this company and thir console (Okay, along with some major composition from Nintendo`s NES).

In a major irony, the Adam Computer plays a small but important roll in Nindendo`s early success. Nintendo was all set to sign with Atari to release their Famicom in the North American market through Atari when a low level booth jockey at a trade show puts Donkey Kong on a display model of the Adam Computer. Coleco had the home console license for Donkey Kong but Atari had the Computer license for Donkey Kong. In my next Console Wars post I will cover how this simple action changed the face of home videogames forever.

Dreamcast the Father of Xbox

One of the cool things about teaching a new subject is all the stuff the teacher learns. Students seem to think we teachers just have all the info handed to us with the syllabus. Neither thing happens, we learn the subject then we write the syllabus.

I have been looking over my notes from my first semester of teaching History of Videogames. The amount of research in prepping a new history class is insane but you always end up with the neatest facts for seeming knowledgeable in later conversations.

Dreamcast, Sega`s last gasp attempt at owning a piece of the game console business ran of the Windows operating system. As such Dreamcast is the father or at least uncle of Xbox since working on Dreamcast got Bill Gates thinking about the gaming market.



The prototype Xbox system first showed was cased in a clear plastic “X” shaped case. The “X” in Xbox comes from ActiveX. The system was first called ActiveX Box after Microsoft`s video graphic language of the same name.

The original Xbox had 600 MHz Intel Pentiun III processor, 8 GB Hard drive for pre-loading Audio and Video files, 64 MB of memory shared between the CPU and Graphic Processor, could display 150 Million polygons per second and had a tendency to overheat, a number of them even burst into flames in consumers` homes.

Dreamcast really was an amazing system even if Sega has retreated into software, the way of all failed gaming console companies, the spirit of their last great console lives on. Videogame consoles don`t fail because of the hardware, they fail because of the software or lack there of. It all comes down to the games.

I will leave you with one more of those little facts. The Sega logo did not appear on the Dreamcast system because the Sega brand name had a bad rep with the gaming community. When your own marketing department tells you not to use your logo on your new product you know you are in trouble.

Senior Project

It has been a good 30 years since I build my first latex costume, a lizard. This coming semester I am mentoring a student in her senior project constructing, what else, a lizard costume. Here is some of her pre-production work.





This should be so much fun. I will keep you informed as the project goes on.

Revenge Drawings Requested

I left a blank square on the back on my History of Videogames final that was labeled “This space is provided to you so that you can do a rude caricature of your teacher in revenge for all of his factoids”.

I the past somes students have done such caricatures on their own but not that often. Thus the prompting. A lot of the images run to Santa which makes sense because I was wearing a Santa hat and had whited my beard in prep for a gig that night playing playing the Big Red One. Which is something I do every year.









There were a lot of factoids to remember and most of them about one videogame company suing another. EXAMPLE: Atari sued Nintendo for $160 million because Nintendo took over 80% of the market. They lost of course but by this time they had lots of practice at losing.

Len Janson and Chuck Menville Gulf Commercial

Back in the late 60s Len Janson and Chuck Menville did a number of commercials in the style of their classic Stop, Look and Listen. Here from 1968 is their Gulf Commercial. Big thanks to my friend Christ Padilla for this link.

Season greetings, Larry! At long last: 1968 Gulf Commercial - No-nox Gas

Happy Holidays,

Chris Padilla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yth2gwDWf0

This is what happens when a group of Cal Arts Students are exposed to Norman McLaren`s Neighbours. I talked to Len a couple of years ago when I put on the Stop Mo Expo.

One of the featured films was his Stop, Look and Listen which I had not seen in 40 years. He said that all their films where inspired by the McLaren films they were exposed to at Cal Arts. Film study is so important to the future of filmmaking.