If you're sick of all that movement in your cartoon shows, have we got a DVD for you! In fact, we have two sets of them. Scheduled for release in late March are two DVD collections that, between them, will give you every damn episode of Clutch Cargo, plus a whole batch of extras and bonuses. Of special interest will be the features on the making of the syndicated 1959 "animated" series…and you'll notice that I put that word in quotes because, mouth action aside, these things moved about as much as the Breidamerkurjokull Glacier.
But hey, they had clever scripts and terrific graphic design and good voice work, and the weird "Synchro-Vox" process by which the lips of human actors were superimposed on the faces of the characters for dialogue purposes. That was just creepy enough to hold my interest when I was seven, and Sheriff John was showing these between Bosco commercials on Channel 11. Since the DVD sets are an incredible bargain (each set has eight or nine hours on three discs for under eleven bucks), I'm going to advance-order them here and here. You might want to do the same. That is, unless you're the kind of snob who expects animated characters to actually be animated.