Slowly but certainly, I have been working my way through Porky Pig 101, a great collection from The WB Archive Collection. Simply put, it gives you the first 101 cartoons featuring the lovable, orally-challenged porker known as Porky. These are cartoons most of you have not seen. I remember many of them from my childhood, back when the better/later Warner Brothers cartoons were rarely on television and these were all we had. I do not remember all of them — and of course, even the two that are in color (two-strip Technicolor, not the full-color version) were seen in black-and-white then on my family's black-and-white TV.
So much of this is new to me and even that which is not is more than welcome…and some of these are pretty darned good, even if their makers later did better cartoons. It's also a bargain — 101 cartoons (some with audio commentary) for, if you click the link below right now, $36.42. That's like 36¢ per Porky, a darn good value even if these are DVD-R discs, pressed on demand.
As is the case with a lot of classic animation that's released on home video these days, this set is about 98% perfect and there are a few loud complainers around the 'net wailing about the 2%. They're utterly unappreciative of the 98% and totally clueless about the technical, financial or source problems that brought about the 2%. Don't listen to these people. They just seem to want to be a problem for those who do their best to get this material released.
I'm real glad to have this set…which, by the way, runs fine on my PC. DVD-R discs are usually only guaranteed (to the extent anything like this can be guaranteed) to play on "play only" devices like DVD players. I'm watching these on my computer. If you're nervous they won't run on whatever device you have, don't worry. They probably will…and if they don't, well, Amazon is really good about exchanges. Which reminds me: Here's that link to order one on Amazon. I'd suggest not trying to watch them all in one or a few sittings. These were made to be seen one at a time. I'm enjoying them a lot in groups of 3-4 so it'll be a gift that keeps on giving for a while.