Cartoon Research presents "Jay Ward's Animated Cereal Capers." The origins, history and adventures of Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake, and King Vitaman, cartoon commercials produced by Jay Ward Productions from 1963 to 1983. Included inside are original sketches, animation cell art work and complete episode title listing. A fun book that's guaranteed to stay crunchy even in milk.

One animation empire was built on a mouse, another was built on a rabbit. This one was built on the unlikely combination of a moose and squirrel. It began in the late 1940's, when Jay Ward and his lifetime friend, Alex Anderson, joined forces to create a cartoon series for the fledgling medium of television with a budget that would make "shoestring" look generous. The result was Crusader Rabbit, which debuted on a local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles in mid-summer of 1950. The cheaply produced and minimally animated series became the inauspicious and unlikely beginning of a TV animation powerhouse with a defiantly innovative-and influential-brand of humor that shaped animated comedy for decades. As the 1950's drew to a close, Ward, with now-former partner Anderson's blessing, took two characters from an unsold series they had developed together, teamed with writer Bill Scott and a couple of freelance UPA artists, and created a short pilot film starring a flying squirrel and a hapless but hilarious moose. That pilot, Rocky The Flying Squirrel, launched an animation studio that turned out the funniest, hippest and most satirical cartoons on television and creating a comic vocabulary for generations of children and their parents. The shows produced at Jay Ward Productions featured the wittiest writing in the medium, some of the best character voice work, and ... some of the worst animation. Assembling a staff of first rate writers and artists, Jay Ward was undermined by the cheapest budgets in what was already a low-budget medium. And it showed. In one of the earliest examples of runaway production, Ward was forced to send the animation out of the country. But what was happening with the art off the screen revealed a fascinating dichotomy of the brilliant draftsmanship on the drawing boards and the crude but effective work that was aired. This behind-the-scenes artwork was never meant to be seen by the general public but was merely a means to an end. Now, for the first time anywhere, we are provided an in-depth look at the comic artistry of a talented group of designers, storytellers and directors who created such fondly remembered shows as Rocky and His Friends, Fractured Fairy Tales, Peabody's Improbable History, Dudley Do-right, George of the Jungle and Super Chicken.

A look at the origin and evolution of breakfast cereal advertising and its associated cartoon mascots.

"Thad Komorowski's book documents the entire story behind Nickelodeon's first cartoon hit, The Ren & Stimpy Show, utilizing extensive interviews with the program's key players, justifying the show's important role in the recent history of animation. A great read." - Jerry Beck

Your Cartoons Will Never Be the Same. The history of animation in America is full of colorful characters - and that includes the animators themselves! Jim Korkis shares hundreds of funny, odd, endearing stories about the major animation studios, including Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM, Hanna-Barbera, and many more.

Cartoon Research presents The Hare Raising Tales of Crusader Rabbit, the first made-for-television animated cartoon series, created by Alex Anderson. The book features the story behind the creation of the character, the series, and a complete episode guide of all 23 adventures. This includes series one, produced by Alex Anderson and Jay Ward's Television Arts Productions Inc. with Jerry Fairbanks, and series two, produced by Shull Bonsall and TV Spots, and how Bonsall acquired the character. The book also presents Anderson's creation of Rocky, Bullwinkle, and Dudley Do-Right. Original sketches, model sheets, and series snapshots.

In the fall of 1961, a new cartoon made its primetime network television debut, joining Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones and Top Cat series. Titled Calvin and the Colonel, it was the creation of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, and was produced by Kayro Productions in association with MCA TV/Revue Studios. The new cartoon was anything but new; it was the reincarnation of Gosden and Correll's Amos 'n' Andy radio program. Amos and Andy storywriters Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who wrote for the radio show, were brought onboard to repurpose their old scripts for the new cartoon series. While characters Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon and Calvin T. Burnside were animals, their voices, performed by Gosden and Correll, were identical to the radio's Andy Brown and George "Kingfish" Stevens characters. Explore this unique look at how Calvin and the Colonel became a cartoon, Gosden and Correll's previous 1934 animation venture, and all of the controversy that went with it.