More Great Old Cartoons Can Be Yours

Steve Stanchfield has done a great service for old cartoon fans through his Thunderbean Animation, finding the best prints of public domain obscurities and working technical magic to make them available on DVD to fans. The Snafu series his company released a few years ago is stunningly restored and historically important. His Van Beuren collections are appreciated by New York C-list studio fans everywhere and look pretty good, too.

Steve’s latest release features the work of Walter Lantz, both commercial and theatrical.

I’m a sucker for late ‘20s/early ‘30s shorts with characters that stretch all over the place, exchange body parts, turn into musical instruments and don’t have an awful lot of story to get in the way of the strangeness. The few early Lantz sound cartoons I’ve seen are a lot of fun. Steve’s managed to corral some of them and put them on DVD, along with some of Lantz’ silent efforts (Walter Lantz began his career in animation as a cel washer in 1916) and some of the commercials his studio made in the ‘50s.

Thunderbean has worked with Del Walker’s Retroflections on this over the last six years.

If you want to learn more, check out Steve’s post at the IAD Forum.

No, I am not Steve’s agent. I pass on the news simply as a fan of old cartoons and Thunderbean’s high-quality work.