Today's Video Link

This is a 1963 sales film for Ideal Toys — something they threw together to show toy stores the products they'd be hawking in the coming year, I suppose. I don't think these are all final versions of the commercials for those toys but rather temporary versions thrown together for this presentation. There are two spots in here for Dick Tracy merchandise and they feature better animation than was then being done for the Dick Tracy cartoon series. (That's Everett Sloane as the voice of Dick Tracy, Benny Rubin as Joe Jitsu and Paul Frees as Go-Go Gomez. On the series, Señor Gomez was sometimes voiced by Frees, sometimes by Mel Blanc.)

What strikes me about all these commercials — this runs a little under eight minutes, by the way — is that I don't want any of these toys and didn't when I was 11, as I was when this film was made. The Mouse Trap Game looks like it might have been fun to play…once. Other than that, there's something kinda condescending about the toys and the way they're being sold…

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