Toon of the Day

Toon of the Day

@toonoftheday.bsky.social

Love cartoons? Yeah, we do to. Follow this account to reminisce about your favorites, discover ones you may not have heard of, or just have a laugh! Your admin: @jamesirish780.bsky.social

115 Followers 26 Following 159 Posts Joined Nov 2024
Posts Following
11 months ago

Taking a break for a week. Will hopefully be back Monday.

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11 months ago
Skeeter Valentine, a green-ish blue pre-teen with spiky hair, wearing an reddish-orange shirt with a yellow stylized lightening bolt and collar, as well as matching baggy pants and shoes. He looks a little surprised sitting on the sidewalk with his skateboard, implying he just tumbled off. Multi-talented voice performer Fred Newman provides Skeeter with his voice in both iterations of the series Doug. Fred also composed and performed the memorable theme song in the Nickelodeon version and voiced Doug's dog Porkchop. Everyman characters NEED good supporting characters to bounce off of, it's a comedy trope as old as theater itself. Doug Funnie's insecure nature and vivid imagination can carry his show pretty far, but runs the risk of becoming melancholy without some wackiness to punch the material up. Skeeter is great for this purpose, with his combination of upbeat attitude and eccentric sense of humor. It takes a certain sort of quirk to say he found a tooth in his best friend's mouth that looks like his aunt and it doesn't feel like such a line comes completely out of nowhere, after all!

Honk Honk! Skeeter Valentine is your Toon of the Day!

Jam out to Killer Tofu while you read the ALT text.

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11 months ago
Petunia Pig, a cartoon pig with black hair adorned with a purple bow, wearing a light orange collared shirt. She's sitting in a diner booth holding up a stick of purple gum with the logo for the movie The Day The Earth Blew Up superimposed over it. Petunia has gone through multitudes of actors and actresses. In her very first appearance, Shirley Reed did most of her lines, but when shouting Mel Blanc was subbed in for the appropriate bombast. Chiara Zanni performed her in Baby Looney Tunes, where she was part of the main cast. Over the years, luminaries such as June Foray, Grey DeLisle, Jodi Benson, Desiree Goyette, Eric Bauza and Alex Cazares have performed her. The appearance above, of course, is voiced by Candi Milo. Petunia is another of the characters who appeared in a scant few original Looney Tunes cartoons during the original run but continued to appear in comics, merchandising and elsewhere despite that. After Granny, she was the most recognizable female character in the franchise until Lola Bunny was introduced. Unlike Granny (and often Lola), nobody seemed to really know what to do with her to make her Looney. I think the new movie finally gave her something distinct; making women characters "the smart one" is an old trope, sure, but focusing it on the intersection of food and chemistry makes her stand out and creates avenues for gags that haven't been done to death. I really hope this version of Petunia sticks around and Candi gets more chances to perform her.

In honor of #TheDayTheEarthBlewUp, Petunia Pig is your Toon of the Day.

The ALT text is one ingredient short of the perfect flavor.

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1 year ago
Preview
Q*Bert (Part of the Saturday Supercade, Ruby-Spears, 1983-1984) | The Pemmy, Krissi & James Kinda-Sorta-Hopefully Funny Cartoon Podcast | Episode 90 The filthiest language ever on Saturday mornings! Q*Bert hopped out of the arcades and into a pastiche of Happy Days courtesy of Ruby Spears, for a cartoon that was... just kind of mostly there. Atari...

Here's the podcast, with special guest @atariarchive.org ! share.transistor.fm/s/4c755868

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1 year ago
Q*Bert, a furry orange... thing with an elongated snout, wearing a red letterman jacket with a Q emblazoned on it and white sneakers. He's sitting on a colorful disc, the same ones from his video game, with a smile on his face, all underneath his game's logo in green letters with red outlines. Billy Bowles performs the voice of Q*Bert on the show, in one of two reoccurring roles in a short career; the other being Pinky on Pink Panther & Sons. Q*Bert's appearances elsewhere are voiced by archival audio from the arcade game itself. Oh, what could have been! Buzz Dixon was part of the team that pitched a Q*Bert concept to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears for the Saturday Supercade show, and he described their idea as taking inspiration from the Road Runner. While I'm not sure how this would have been executed, the concept of chase is central to the original game, with Q*Bert being pursued by Coiley the Snake and the former tricking the latter to jump off the playfield for bonus points. So even if they didn't deliver gold with that premise, it would have at least had merit. Instead, Joe Ruby wanted a Happy Days pastiche. @!#?@!

Your Admin is severely rethinking using this account as a promotional tool for his podcast, because it means Q*Bert has to be Toon of the Day.

Swear in longhand with us in the ALT text.

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1 year ago
Geri, a Caucasian senior citizen with rounded spectacles, a dark grey suit jacket, off-white shirt and red necktie. What little hair is left on his head is grey with age, and a clever smirk is under his prominent nose. He sits in front of a chessboard outside a city park on a fall day. Pixar animator Bob Peterson did what dialogue the character has in here, mostly laughs and other audible noises. Character actor Jonathan Harris voices him in his Toy Story 2 cameo. Geri began life as a means to improve Pixar's process in animating fabric and designing convincing looking skin. Writer and director Jan Pinkava wanted a human character, but had to conceive the idea around that one individual. Drawing upon his older relatives' love of chess, he conceived Geri playing chess against himself, leading to a masterpiece of character animation in 5 minutes. It was the first short subject Pixar created since 1989's Tin Toy, and when it was paired with the 1998 release A Bug's Life, it began the tradition of pairing shorts with Pixar's feature films. Geri was unexpectedly drafted into Toy Story 2 when the story called for one more character but the time and budget wasn't available for it. Somebody suggested the existing Geri character model, and he was brought in, chess pieces and all.

Geri, one of the most memorable characters in a Pixar short, is your Toon of the Day.

The ALT text got squicked by the exchange of dentures.

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1 year ago
Emmitt Nervend, a Caucasian man of apparent middle age with his neck stuck out to a ridiculous angle, his hair standing up on end and his smile stuck in a wide, tooth-clenched smile. (?) He's wearing a brown sports coat, yellow shirt, skinny black tie and grey pants, and is standing against a blue backdrop. He is credited as being his own voice actor. This is to say, as a silent character he has none. He is also credited at varying times as "Our Mascot," "Weird Guy," "Giggling Fool," "Annie Award Winner," and "Raccoonnookkeeper!" He began life as a sketch in Mitch Schauer's office that Tom Ruegger saw, liked, and asked to use in Freakazoid, and that's the beginning and end of his character development! He's basically the ultimate inside joke for Freakazoid fans. This electrocuted-looking man just... shows up. Sometimes he's barely relevant to the plot, and sometimes he's just there. Explaining him would make the joke less funny. I think.

Emmitt Nervend is your Toon of the Day. When asked about it, he had no verbal response. He just handed me the ALT text then went back to cutting Dan Riba's hair.

Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else on Freakazoid!

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1 year ago
Beachcomber, a blue and white robot with a visor designed to look like sunglasses that's alight with analysis of the green parakeet on his shoulder. The scene takes place against a forest backdrop. Alan Oppenheimer, Skeletor himself, voiced this particular Transformer. To date, Oppenheimer is the only person to perform the character in English, with his appearances in Transformers Animated continually getting cut. Said appearances were to involve the character getting killed. Yeah, Beachcomber isn't precisely one of the best loved Transformer amongst the literally hundreds of them out there. He was intended to be a pacifist, disliking violence and preferring to study and enjoy the natural world. In an animated series where action and thrills were top priority to sell toys to impressionable kids, this made him a tough sell. So in it, Oppenheimer voiced him as a hippie, and his spotlight episode where his concern over the destruction of a peaceful forest didn't do him many favors with parts of the fandom. That included Derreck J. Wyatt, who was the art director and lead designer on Transformers Animated, hence the attempted "deactivation" of the character more than a few times. Personally I find this a shame, but Beachcomber has a new lease on life in the Energon Universe comics, which I need to make a point to read.

Beachcomber, from Transformers, is your groovy Toon of the Day.

A brief reflection on action cartoons and how they portrayed pacifistic characters is in the ALT text.

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1 year ago
Norbert Foster Beaver, older brother of Daggett Doofus Beaver by four minutes. He's a beaver (of course) with spiky light brown hair, a purple nose, buck teeth and white cartoon eyes. He's trying to get his brother in the foreground excited about something, I imagine. Nick Bakay is Norbert's VA, and he's best known as the voice of Salem the Cat in the ABC live action series Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, which he also served as a writer for. He's also notorious in pro wrestling circles for narrating Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets which gave the world "she's a stunt granny!" I enjoyed this cartoon a lot in college. The rapid back and forth dialogue between Bakay and Richard Horvitz was brilliant when both scripted and ad-libbed. Norbert isn't the best older brother, frequently condescending to the easily peeved and mixed-up Daggett, but just as frequently they're trying to get themselves unstuck from some bizarre situation and the personality clash just adds to the humor. It's a shame the show was just getting really good right when that yellow monolith in brown pants arrived and started overshadowing everything...

I wonder what has our Toon of the Day, Norbert of the Angry Beavers, so excited?

Today's ALT text was written from a bachelor pad in a river damn based in Wayouttatown, OR.

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1 year ago
Sypha Belnades, an adult Caucasian woman with dark blonde hair cut short, blue eyes and a serious expression on her face. Her hands are focused into a warding position, perhaps about to cast a spell. Standing behind her with his back to her is Trevor Belmont, and the two are in a gloomy interior typical of the Castlevania setting. Her English voice actress is Alejandra Reynoso, also known for Flora on Winx Club and multiple video game roles. In Japanese, she's performed by Ayaka Shimoyamada of Studio Ken. While I can understand people finding the Castlevania series on Netflix being a little too dark for their tastes, as someone who grew up with the games and played the living daylights out of the Metroidvania style games in the franchise, I was pretty pleased with how they distilled gameplay elements and enemies into the setting. Sypha was the most pleasant surprise for me, a character with tremendous agency, great wit and holds her own opposite the two male leads without dipping into "rote action girl" territory. The team hooked me with her introduction mirroring that of how you meet her in Castlevania 3 on the NES, and Alejandra's performance kept me on the line. God might hate her, but I simply ADORE her.

Sypha Belnades, co-protagonist from the Netflix Castlevania series, is your Toon of the Day.

The ALT text wasn't handed down from centuries of oral tradition, it was just written by a very bored person.

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1 year ago
Sleepy, a dwarf with a long grey beard, a green stocking cap, darkish grey shirt and brown pants with a belt. He's yawning in the Dwarf's cabin, right next to his bed. This is the other Dwarf that Pinto Colvig, along with Grumpy, voiced for the movie. Bill Farmer has performed the voice since 1994, with Hal Smith doing a quick appearance as him before that. Honestly I'm not sure how much there is to say about him and the other two Dwarfs I haven't written. He's exactly what he's named as: sleepy, and he mostly exists to nod off at funny times and fill out the ensemble of Dwarfs to match the number in the original story. But yet, despite being the drowsiest, he's the one who comes to the conclusion that the animals are trying to warn them that Snow White is in danger. Maybe the fact he's so relaxed helped him not panic and figure out what was wrong?

Sleepy of the Seven Dwarfs is your Toon of the Day.

Yawn... ALT text, you know the deal... zzz...

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1 year ago
Daisy, a young blonde Caucasian girl with big innocent eyes, a sweet smile and a small hand full of daisies. She's wearing a pink dress with white collar and gold button, and a blue ribbon in her hair. The flowers are for Tobias the Dragon, the titular Reluctant Dragon from Rankin Bass' 1970s output. Donna Miller provided the saccharine voice for this demure character, and it seems this was her only reoccurring series altogether. Daisy's kind of a flat character when you get down to it. She exists to bring the object that triggers Tobias' fire breath, daisies, to him when none are readily available. In the episode this screenshot was taken from, she appears via a subway train in a tunnel freshly dug by hapless antagonists Olaf and Irving where none existed just a moment ago, just so the duo could be roasted and their latest scheme be foiled. The joke becomes the sheer unlikeliness of how she gets down there in the first place, really.

Uh-oh, hide Tobias, because Daisy is the Toon of the Day.

Read the ALT text before the big guy sneezes fire on all of us!

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1 year ago
Sally Brown, in the pink version of her classic polka dot dress, seen dancing in the 2015 CGI feature The Peanuts Movie. She's a Caucasian first grade kid with blonde hair in a truly unique style, with a curly "poof" in front and doing something akin to Wolverine's look in the back. She's happily leaping while other kids look on in a grade school gym lit up like a dance hall. Cathy Steinberg originated the vocal interpretations of the character for A Charlie Brown Christmas, with a long line of kids jumping in as actresses inevitably age out of the role. Amongst these kids has been Linda Jenner in the 1970s, Stacie Ferguson (yes, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas) in the 1980s, and Mariel Sheets for the 2015 movie. Also, Kristen Chenowith performed the character on stage, linking her to the franchise in ways that would be revisited a few times since. We all love Snoopy, we all can relate to Charlie Brown, and we all know a Lucy, but seriously, is any character in the strip as consistently FUNNY as Sally is? Her new philosophies, which are usually such blase statements as "Who Cares?" or "How Should I Know?" are taken to silly extremes, she hates school but talks to the school building as if it were a person (and it has its own thoughts on the matter!!), and her misunderstandings of concepts like Forest Rangers into Forest Strangers made for great weekly fodder. And this isn't even getting into her crush on poor Linus! Sweet Baboo, indeed...

Sally Brown, one of the most unpredictable and funny characters in the Peanuts canon, is your Toon of the Day.

She tells me the ALT text is her new philosophy. Good grief...

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1 year ago
Mickey Mouse, as he was first introduced in the cartoons Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy on the left, and how he's typically depicted today on the right. Either version is a cartoon mouse with round black ears wearing shorts with two buttons on them. The modern Mickey's shorts are red and he's wearing white gloves which presumably are not present on the original's design like how they weren't in those two mentioned cartoons. No less than Walt Disney himself would be Mickey's first ever voice actor for short subject cartoons, with Jimmy MacDonald taking over barring a few spots here and there in 1947 until 1978. Wayne Allwine entered the picture just before then on television before inheriting the role full time until his passing in 2009, with Bret Iwan capably filling his shoes after that. And those are just the main performers! Seriously, is there anything left to say about this danged mouse?!? From a mischievous music maker to a wannabe sorcerer to a humble everyman to a corporate mascot and so many things in-between, the story of animation itself and American culture as a whole would look vastly different if Mickey Mouse wasn't the smash hit character that Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks wasn't the smash hit of the late 1920s. The only thing I can really add is to go back and watch shorts like The Brave Little Tailor, Clock Cleaners or Thru the Mirror. The real secret to Mickey's endurance is the genius of those original cartoons, which were nothing like anyone in the 1930s had seen before and only the Fleischers out in New York could truly rival at that time.

100 Toons, 100 entries. On this momentous occasion, we have a momentous toon who I suppose needs no introduction to anyone reading this. Hot dog!

A very brief history on the mouse that roared is in the ALT text.

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1 year ago
Space Ghost, intergalactic superhero and talk show host. He's a human Caucasian man in a white jumpsuit with red bracers on his wrists that are adorned with yellow buttons. The suit also has a black cowl and a yellow cape, with a red and black insignia where the cowl ends. He's sitting at a small semi-circular red desk while holding a small index card at the intergalactic set of his talk show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. In the 1960s and 1980s runs of the character's more seriously intended adventures, Gary Owens of Laugh-In fame lent his impressive baritone voice to the character. On Cartoon Network, where Space Ghost was revived as a much more intentionally comedic figure, George Lowe memorably gave him a unique brand of witless wit. And it's that duality that makes Space Ghost so fascinating. The authors of the book Saturday Morning Fever said they wished the CtC treatment was done with Birdman or one of the Galaxy Trio since they thought Space Ghost was too cool for it, and I can see their point; Alex Toth did some of his finest work designing this striking character and his rogue's gallery of utterly gonzo alien adversaries. The 60s cartoons were cheesy, but the characters' revival in the 1980s proved the premise at least had enough legs to endure an over-a-decade gap in production. Still, under the Williams Street crew's guidance, his second life on Cartoon Network really helped give the fledgling channel its identity and was part of the impetus for what would become Adult Swim, which makes Tad Ghostal here one of the most influential Hanna Barbera characters of all time.

In loving memory of George Lowe, Space Ghost is your Toon of the Day.

Please do not aim your battering ram ray at the ALT text, I just rebuilt it.

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1 year ago
Kevin, a pre-teen Caucasian kid with a few whisps of red hair peeking out of his red ball cap. He's shown wearing a green long sleeve shirt riding his bike through the suburban cul-de-sac the show Ed, Edd & Eddy takes place in. Kathleen Barr performs this abrasive fellow, as well as Marie Canker. Her other roles include Queen Chrysalis and The Great and Powerful Trixie on My Little Pony: FiM, Dot Matrix on ReBoot, and inherited the Rankin-Bass version of Rudolph for a pair of feature length productions. In a neighborhood of greedy con artists, loons who talk to 2x4s and... well, however you describe the Canker sisters, Kevin is ultimately one of the most typical kids in the cul-de-sac. In a sense, he stands out for not standing out by being over the top weird. He's the bog-standard jerk jock, but if we're being brutally honest you'd be at the end of your wits in a neighborhood like this, too, and develop your own not so great traits just as a coping mechanism. None of us were precisely perfect in our pre-teen days, after all.

Kevin, shown here in a rare state of not being annoyed by the Eds, is your Toon of the Day.

The ALT text isn't for dorks. I think. Is it?

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1 year ago
Bulbasaur, or Fushigidane in the original Japanese. It's a green amphibian with dark green patches, short claws on each limb, red eyes and a large plant bulb on its back. They've got a big grin on their face and are against a diagonally oriented background of various shades of green lines. Megumi Hayashibara, also the Japanese voice of Team Rocket's Jessie, provides the little fellow's voice in the original. For the English language dub, Tara Jayne Sands performed Bulbasaur and archival audio of her continued to serve as the voice until Michele Knotz, the current voice of several Pokémon breeds, took over. Bulbasaur, to some fans, seems the "odd Pokémon out" of the original Kanto starters, since a lot of kids either went for Charmander (which evolved into the dragon Charizard) or Squirtle (which grew into the tank turtle Blastoise). Bulbasaur's evolution wasn't nearly as extreme seeming as the other two. But seriously... look at their adorable face! The other two are cute, sure, but this Pokémon's countenance just seems like a friendly puppy, complete with "ears" to give scritches to. What's not to love about that? This really came through in their short but adorable part in the Detective Pikachu movie. Oh yeah, and so many iconic Grass moves in the series are mainstays of this Pokémon's arsenal.

Bulbasaur, #1 in the Pokedex and in many of our hearts, is your Toon of the Day.

The ALT Text was originally written on a stray Razor Leaf.

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1 year ago
Chapultepec, on the right, a Mexican chihuahua clad in sombrero, white shirt and brown pants, holding a guitar. He's next to his partner, Sam Bassett, Hound for Hire. They're in a gondola in Venice, at the start of their next case. Chapultepec has no voice actor, and the musician who plays his guitar sounds is uncredited to my knowledge. It's that guitar communication that makes him so different from the numerous "ethnic sidekicks" that were all over cartoons of the 1950s and 1960s. Chapultepec never so much as speaks a single word in the Sam Bassett cartoons, he communicates through strumming his guitar and Sam just understands it. Chihuahua's being Mexican dogs, there were all kinds of ways a sombrero-clad one could have gone proverbially south in the worst possible way, but we get no accent performed by someone with no business doing it, no tropes associated with laziness, and so on. He's just a little dog with a little guitar, adding yet more quirkiness to an extremely quirky run of 13 cartoons. This is no Speedy Gonzalez where you have to trim out some of the less great aspects to make him viable today, and he's certainly nothing like the embarrassing characters found in the Dick Tracy cartoons in the 1960s. And I think that's kind of cool.

Chapultepec, assistant to Sam Bassett, is your Toon of the Day.

We transcribed the ALT text from so much guitar music.

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1 year ago
Two Gremlins from the Kremlin, both purple. On the left is a tall one with a furry black bat and matching shoes and a comically long black moustache under his bulbous nose, singing dramatically. On the right, a tiny, child-like one with a couple whisps of blonde hair, innocently holding a hammer behind his back. Mel Blanc performs the voices of the assorted gremlins in the short. As much as they fit in with old folk monsters like trolls and goblins, gremlins are a 20th century creation of Scottish members of the Royal Air Force. It was their comical way of explaining aircraft mishaps, which spread to pilots of other parts of the UK, including author Roald Dahl. His book on the creatures caught the eye of Disney for an adaptation, one that never came to pass, but prevented this 1943 cartoon here from being called Gremlins from the Kremlin. Russian Rhapsody would just have to do for Bob Clampett. As masterfully made a cartoon as this is, its time was VERY much 1944. Defaming and humiliating Hitler while portraying Stalin as fearsome were on the mark, but the sheer topicality of how it all goes down makes for a tough sell to modern audiences. Not to mention any instance of being pro-Stalin is, to put it one way, putting yourself on the wrong side of history. Yes, at that moment in WWII he was our ally, but let's not forget his own atrocities. Hence, the cartoon with these otherwise fun and memorable caricatures of the boys from Termite Terrace is best served as a museum piece to learn from, not something to be part of a daily rotation of classic cartoons.

The Gremlins from the Kremlin are your Toons of the Day, from a point in history where the enemy of our enemy wasn't necessarily our friend, but sure gave that enemy headaches.

An brief exploration of 20th Century myth making and propaganda can be found in the ALT text.

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1 year ago
Preview
The Super Mario Bros Super Show (DiC, 1989-1990) | The Pemmy, Krissi & James Kinda-Sorta-Hopefully Funny Cartoon Podcast | Episode 63 Is there any more consistently enduring 80s icon than Mario, the mascot of Nintendo's platforming games? Well, whether you agree with that or not, Mario Bros Mania was indeed everywhere by the end of ...

Wow, this one took off faster than Cape Mario! Since you're here, check out the podcast @pembrokewkorgi.bsky.social, Krissi and I did on the Super Show's Mario cartoons! We're looking at doing the SMB3 cartoons next year, too! share.transistor.fm/s/1705d630

3 1 0 0
1 year ago
Mario, an Italian-American man with black hair and a black moustache wearing a red cap, a matching long sleeved shirt, and denim overalls. This is his depiction in the Saturday Supercade's Donkey Kong segments from Ruby Spears, where we see him standing next to a Pauline, an attractive blonde lady in a red dress. They're standing outside a wooden house with a lit window. Peter Cullen provided the plucky carpenter's voice (he wasn't yet a plumber when Ruby Spears picked up the license). Of course we know Mr. Cullen best as Optimus Prime, Ironhide and others on Transformers, and as one of the best known voices of Eeyore for Disney. This is the first cartoon production to feature Mario, arguably the single most successful video game character, well, ever. It's a humble begining, doing standard cartoon slapstick while chasing a gorilla that escaped from the circus. It was one of two cartoons, alongside Q*Bert, to survive to the second season of the series. Even then folks knew this Mario guy was sticking around... Here he is again in Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen! otherwise known in English as The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. Here he's looking at a map with his brother Luigi, depicted here as a thinner man with a different moustache from Mario's, a blue cap and overalls and a yellow shirt. Tōru Furuya performs our plucky plumber this time. His other famous roles include Gundam's Amuro Ray, Yamcha in the Dragon Ball franchise, Tuxedo Mask for Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya's Pegasus Seiya. To date, this movie has not been localized into English, and I'm pretty sure Nintendo won't see a need for it to happen, either. They likely don't want to compete with the feature films they're producing with Universal and Illumination. Of course, I could be wrong and have been before, but the Mario franchise has moved forward so much from this point that it feels like a funky relic more geared towards the audience it grew up with, just like... Hey, paisanos! It's the Super Mario Brothers Super Show! Yup, Mario again, as designed by DiC, at the helm of a spaceship. Captain Lou Albano performed Mario in animation and in live action for the syndicated series. This, to my knowledge, is Lou's only animated role. In subsequent DiC programs starring Mario on Saturday morning, the voice was picked up by Canadian actor Walker Boone. Despite the insane popularity of now two games here in the US, the Mario cartoons continue to be such odd beasts, this time dropping the brothers and their supporting casts into parodies of popular movies, fairy tales and even actual historical events on the Super Show. On Saturday mornings, things started to resemble the games a lot more; perhaps this was a Nintendo edict? Finally, Mario as we've seen him in the recent feature film from Illumination and Universal, here about to square off against Donkey Kong. In a sense we're full circle with where this mini-retrospective started. Of course, Chris Pratt performs Mario here, as he would perform Garfield shortly thereafter. Sadly we never got a proper cartoon with video game voice Charles Martinet as any of the four brothers, but he did get some supporting roles including as Mario's father. After so many adaptations that took wild diversions from the source material or were just plain goofy, we finally have a 1 to 1 conversion from video game to animated property, in fact arguably the most direct translation of a source material to date. From the blocks floating in mid-air to power ups granting powers just because they do, the movie embraces everything the games are about today wholeheartedly, even if some of it might fly over the heads of outsiders to the franchise in the process. Speaking of power ups, have a raccoon leaf. You've earned it after reading all this!

Mamma-Mia! It's the many cartoon faces of Mario! He's your Toon of the Day, woo-hoo!

Each ALT text has a corresponding description. Check each one, you might find a power-up!

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1 year ago
Red from assorted 1940s MGM cartoons directed by Tex Avery. Otherwise known as Miss Vavoom or Red Hot Riding Hood, she's a Caucasian adult woman with orange-red hair, an abbreviated shoulder less red dress, matching high heel shoes and earrings. She's calling out "Hey Pa!" in a rendition of the song Daddy as portrayed in her debut cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood. The character almost always needed two voice actresses in her original appearances, one for spoken lines and one for singing. Sarah Berner did the majority of her spoken lines with Colleen Collins picking up her final theatrical short in 1949, while singing was provided by Connie Russell, Imogene Lynn and Ann Pickard. More recent appearances of Red have been performed by Teresa Ganzell and Grey DeLisle/Griffin. This bombshell emerged out of an army instructional film Tex Avery was working on where a sergeant he was working under reacted much like the Wolf in her cartoons eventually did. Amazingly, the Hayes code left her alone but cut out a sequence where the Wolf and Red's Grandma had kids, due to implications of bestiality. Preston Blair's animation of this character is iconic and positively steamy for the period, making her for a time animation's sex symbol after the Fleischers had effectively retired Betty Boop after the Hayes Code had her toned down to a shadow of her former self. Numerous cartoon charmers followed in her wake, most notably Jessica Rabbit and Holli Would.

This one's in honor of birthday boy Tex Avery. Red, calling out to all the wolves in the audience, is your Toon of the Day.

We push the Hayes Code to the limit in the ALT text.

6 2 1 0
1 year ago
Boo-Boo Bear, a diminutive young bear with light brown fur, a black nose and a blue bow tie. He looks like he's not gotten enough sleep. This is one of the first massively prominent characters Don Messick gave a voice to, setting up a career that would include Scooby-Doo, Papa Smurf and Hampton J. Pig. After his passing, the role would pass to performers including Billy West, Jeff Bergman, Tom Kenny, Victor Yerrid and CH Greenblatt. In the live action/CGI hybrid movie, Justin Timberlake made many animation fans' jaws drop with his uncanny impression of the original voice. You'd think sidekicks are supposed to be helpful, but Boo-Boo (at least within the confines of Jellystone Park), but there are times you get the sense Boo-Boo just wants Yogi to leave well enough alone and just have some nuts and berries like other bears. But other times he's perfectly happy to enjoy the feast out of a pic-a-nic basket. There's an ambiguity to Boo-Boo in that sense, as well as an ambiguity to his age. Is he a kid, or a short grown-up? In Yogi's Ark Lark, he's amongst the other kid animals, but he's clearly an adult on the more modern Jellystone show. Some mysteries need more than a group of meddling kids to solve, I guess...

Ever skeptical, Boo-Boo Bear is your Toon of the Day.

There's an obvious joke to get folks to read the ALT text, but Mr. Ranger's not going to like it.

6 2 1 0
1 year ago
Sakura Taisen's Kohran Li, or Ri depending on how it's been Romanized, shown here dressed as Shonen Red, a pulp action hero with a red mask and gloves on a black uniform with yellow highlights. Her trademark purple hair, braided in the back, normally isn't modified for the part. Yuriko Fuchizaki provides Kohran's voice in the games and anime adaptations. Her other career highlights include Anthy in Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sig in the Puyo Puyo games, and Kaori in the landmark feature film Akira. Kohran's English dub voice actresses have included Bonnie Hester, Samantha Inoue-Harte and Dorothy Ellis-Fahn. She's not the most well-known pick for the first genki girl scientist type; gals like Washu from Tenchi Muyo come to mind for one if you want someone whose work comically blows up in their face with a good amount of airtime in both the US and Japan, for starters. Kohran stands out, though, for her acting talents. This role pictured here, Shonen Red, reoccurs several times in the games and anime, and lets Kohran show a more heroic side that would otherwise be mostly done from within her mecha (Koubu in the franchise). Here's a more typical depiction of Kohran, wearing her rounded glasses and a red cheongsam with yellow trim.

Shonen Red is here to stop evil wherever it's found! Or at least they are in the play our Toon of the Day, Kohran Ri, is starring in as that character.

She told me this ALT text won't explode... this time.

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1 year ago
Magica De Spell, a white-feathered duck with black hair and purple eyeshadow, wearing a black dress with red collars and a red amulet. Her appearance is inspired by actresses Sophia Loren and Gina Lollabridga Perched on her finger is her brother Poe, who was transformed into a raven. She's seen laughing against a picturesque Duckburg park backgrop. Magica's original performer is June Foray, who used a version of her Natasha Fatale voice to perform the sorceress. In the 2017 series, Catherine Tate gives her an English accent... ... and neither of those match the original text of the Carl Barks comics, where she's Italian. Indeed, Magica changes a lot from version to version. In the original comics, she's from the Mount Vesuvius region and wants to melt Scrooge's #1 Dime in its lava to forge the metal into an amulet which would give her the Midas Touch. This carries over into the 1987 cartoon, but in 2017... ... we get a very different Magica, with green feathers and a different shaped dress with purple accessories, hair highlights, and a big amethyst in her staff. This version's physical body is trapped in the dime, and Scrooge is accidentally responsible for Poe's raven transformation. Fitting for the more serialized 2017 series, Magica's arc spans several episodes of subterfuge and manipulation in the first season, and the danger she poses never truly ends, either.

The Number One Dime is never safe when the Toon of the Day, Magica De Spell, is on the loose!

Read the ALT Text with your best faux Eastern European accent, or Italian if you're more of a comics Magica fan.

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1 year ago
Preview
The Houndcats (DePatie-Freleng, 1972) | The Pemmy, Krissi & James Kinda-Sorta-Hopefully Funny Cartoon Podcast | Episode 10 Dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!!

And yes, we've got a podcast episode for these guys! share.transistor.fm/s/cf239c0f

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1 year ago
Mussel Mutt, an Old English Sheepdog with shaggy fur over his eyes, a yellow short, blue vest, blue pork pie hat, pants and a belt. He's in front of a mountain in an American Southwest setting. Aldo Ray, a veteran actor by the time he took this role, is your voice actor. His gravelly tough guy voice is perfect for the part, but his best known voice work by a large margin is Sullivan on Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH. The Houndcats was one the first DePatie-Freleng productions conceived by Scooby-Doo creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and it's their best of the bunch by a longshot, a topic we'll get into on a future post. Mussel Mutt here is an expression of the "ridiculous appetite" comedy the duo did with Shaggy and Scooby, including the sandwich concoction listed in the main post. Calling him the "dumb muscle" oversimplifies the character; he's not bright, but still quick enough on the uptake to keep up with the wildly complex missions and schemes the Houndcats get up to.

Mussel Mutt of the Houndcats is your Toon of the Day.

Enjoy the ALT Text with a sandwich topped with sardines, chopped liver, salami, pickles, sour cream, sauerkraut and chocolate syrup.

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1 year ago
Leo D. Sullivan (1940-2023) Beany and Cecil (Bob Clampett Productions, 1962), the first series Leo D. Sullivan worked on moving from cel polisher to artist to animator. He worked on dozens of series for various studios for 60 years, including Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, DIC, Marvel, and Warner Bros. Hey, Hey, Hey, it's Fat Albert (Vignette Films, 1969) Leo D. Sullivan co-founded Vignette Films in 1966, along with Floyd Norman, Richard Allen, and Norm Edelen. As the first Black-owned animation studio, Vignette worked on various projects including a series dedicated to Black history and an adaptation of comedian Bill Cosby's stories about his childhood and one football game involving a kid lovingly named Fat Albert. Mr. Sullivan would also work on 1972's Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids for Filmation. Soul Train (Don Cornelius Productions, 1971). The very first incarnation of the Soul Train was animated by Leo Sullivan. While not the familiar design most generations know (that was created by James Smith, who I'll talk about later), this incarnation of the Soul Train had character, power, and, of course, soul.

You ought to know Leo D. Sullivan, a pioneering animator who worked on iconic shows like Beany and Cecil, Fat Albert, The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Transformers, My Little Pony, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs and inspired & guided generations of animators. A great legacy.

#BlackHistoryMonth

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1 year ago
Janine Melnitz, an adult Caucasian woman with stylish red hair, a pink blouse, short blue skirt, angular glasses, long gold earrings and a similarly colored beaded necklace. She's sitting on a staircase looking up from the magazine with a skeptical expression. In the first two seasons of The Real Ghostbusters, Laura Summer voices the blunt secretary, but the switch was made to Kath Soucie for the third to soften her edges. When the franchise was revived as Extreme Ghostbusters, Pat Musick took up the role. The changes made to Janine were some of the most noticeable to the franchise as ABC-hired consultants Q5 sought to make the Real Ghostbusters more kid friendly. The story goes that her personality was found to be too abrasive and her pointy glasses were considered "too scary for kids." So around the third season (the second on ABC, but still third overall thanks to the syndicated episodes) her edges were figuratively and literally rounded and her role was more of a caregiver than previously. This gets addressed in the episode "Janine, You've Changed," but doesn't get reversed. By that point, Q5 had done so much damage to the show that reversing the changes would have merely been a silver lining in a grey cloud of severe kiddification.

"The mayor's on line two, First Bank of New York has what sounds like poltergeists, and you still haven't approved my vacation time, Peter. This Toon of the Day thing better come with a raise."

More about Janine Melnitz in the ALT text.

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1 year ago
Post image

Well, if you can safely remove them...

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