What you get as today's video link is a peek at another cheaply-produced animated show of the fifties. I was never particularly a fan of Colonel Bleep, a series of cartoons that Engineer Bill ran on Channel 9 here in L.A. when I was a kid. Other hosts in other cities also inflicted them on the young population.
There were 104 of these done in 1956 and 1957…reportedly the first made-for-TV cartoon series to be produced in color. It's probably not true, as industry legend has it, that they were made "in a garage in Miami" but they looked it…although I have to say that looking at them now, some of the graphics are surprisingly delightful. I remembered it looking much shoddier than the example below. I've seen worse looking shows produced by folks who probably had what, measured in constant dollars, would be five times the budget.
Can't say much for the storylines, though. Even when I was six or seven years old, I couldn't wrap my still-developing brain around the adventures of a frenetic little alien who hopped around, saving the galaxy with the help of his friends, a living-but-mute puppet and a numbskull caveman. At a time when we were periodically being scared at the prospect of nuclear annhilation in this country, some of the plots were a bit unsettling and the "all narration" style was a little distancing, as well.
They were done by a studio in Florida known as Soundac. The only thing I know about Soundac is that they primarily created commercial spots and that the operation came to an unglorious end around 1971. The company decided to move its offices to another location so they loaded the files, equipment and film library of their studio into a big van. Then, as the story is told, some stranger jumped behind the wheel, stole the van, and its contents — and therefore, Soundac — were never seen again. This is the tale that gets told when someone asks why many of the Colonel Bleep episodes no longer exist today…and I can't swear it's true. But it's so funny, you almost hope it's true.
Soundac also did a series of cartoons in the mid-sixties called The Mighty Mister Titan. I've never seen one and I'd be very surprised if you had, either.
You can buy an entire DVD of Colonel Bleep cartoons for eight bucks on this page. I'm betting you don't. In fact, I'd wager serious money that most of you don't watch the entire nine minutes of Bleep below — a four-minute intro and a five-minute adventure — even for free…
