This is intriguing. MeTV's owner Weigel has filed for a trademark on "Toon TV".

https://www.trademarkia.com/toon-tv-97819254 

Woody Woodpecker and Friends has aired, Polar Pests aired fully restored, and Man's Best Friend aired an unreleased DVD master.

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Polar Pest (1958)

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Man's Best Friend (1941)

Unfortunately, my cable box was acting up and the channel was blacked out. However, it worked after I re-booted it and I caught most of the final cartoon, "The Loose Nut". I should've gotten out of bed at 7:30-ish when I first woke up today.

Here's the full images. I wasn't able to catch the block and haven't seen it. Can anyone else say which transfers were used for the other shorts (though I'm sure it was the highest resolution version of whatever they have on the short)

My best guess is that The Plumber of Seville was not a modern restoration, The Loose Nut certainly looked nice enough, I'd buy that as restored, but it's a little tough to tell here in the Atlanta area, where Directv can't carry the national HD MeTV feed because there's a local MeTV station that they already carry in SD. The Loose Nut is also a toughie as the background palette is so full of browns and dark greens, there aren't many spots with colors that 'pop' to help judge.

I would have to guess that the elements from the old Woody Woodpecker show, the opening, the interstitial with Woody and the film projector, and the clip of Walter Lantz were not restored. No big surprise there, and it's cool that MeTV included stuff like that anyway.

Fun stuff, glad to see MeTV freshening up their animated lineup with stuff that hasn't aired in such a long time. If they had to part with the DFE library, this looks like a nice acquisition to fill the gap with. And airing stuff like Sh-h-h-h-h-h, who doesn't want more Tex Avery on their Saturday mornings?!

THE LOOSE NUT was the same HD version seen on the Woody blu-ray. POLAR PESTS was also HD, so I guess there's a stash of Chilly Willy cartoons that were done around the same time as that small batch of Woodys that showed up on that BD (it looked considerably better than anything seen there).

As expected, mostly everything else was SD, a mix of various masters we're familiar with. But, the most welcome surprise is that they were all theatrical versions and completely uncensored instead of those awful syndicated copies that won't go away (the ones that populated the Columbia House set, which chopped off the titles and had censorship and dumb Gracie Lantz voiceovers).

THANK YOU, MeTV, Neal Sabin, Jerry, etc. al for going above and beyond bringing Walter's library back to the public eye. It isn't easy to get results this good.

Woody block was nicely done I think, and I'm glad the library is clearly not just limited to the DVD release material. We knew there were a few more restorations showing up overseas anyway.

I don't think I had ever seen "Man's Best Friend". I didn't know that Pinto Colvig did voicework for Walter Lantz. So it looks like he did voicework for almost all of the major studios except Terrytoons and Van Beuren, including the Puppetoon sequence in the Paramount feature Variety Girl.

To those who didn't watch from the beginning, the announcer said "A full hour of "Popeye & Pals" is next." I guess he didn't get the memo about the changes to MeTV's Saturday Morning Cartoons schedule. (And my cable TV box's guide hadn't been updated to include the addition of Woody Woodpecker to Saturday Morning Cartoons.)

I don't think I had ever seen "Man's Best Friend". I didn't know that Pinto Colvig did voicework for Walter Lantz. So it looks like he did voicework for almost all of the major studios except Terrytoons and Van Beuren, including the Puppetoon sequence in the Paramount feature Variety Girl.

Pinto actually worked at Lantz during the first few years of the studio. He even voiced Oswald in a couple early shorts.

Heads up, Science Friction is airing on Toon in with Me on Monday, marking Woody Woodpecker's debut on the show.

Judging by some of the promos,  it looks like Universal made HD transfers of some of the later Lantz Cartunes, I suppose just for this syndication package. I wish they would've done some of the earlier 40s and early 50s stuff, but time will tell I suppose

Judging by some of the promos,  it looks like Universal made HD transfers of some of the later Lantz Cartunes, I suppose just for this syndication package. I wish they would've done some of the earlier 40s and early 50s stuff, but time will tell I suppose

The Sleeping Princess (1939) aired restored today on Woody Woodpecker and Friends, as did The Case of the Red Eyed Ruby (1961), though a small bit of DVNR was noticed during the hillbilly dance sequence, noticeably, Yeggs Benedict's elbows.

All Hams on Deck (1970) aired a 90s master seen on CTC, but there was very little DVNR to notice there.

Niagara Fools (1956) had the Chinese gag cut, but the editing team somewhat made the transition somewhat seamless.*

Yesterday's TIWM debut (sort of) of Woody Woodpecker was 1962's Science Friction. Perhaps not a veritable classic, was directed by Sid Marcus and vocals featured the comic dialect humor of the inimitable Benny Rubin.

And today they showed "Sleepy Time Chimes" (1971), unfortunately directed by Paul J. Smith. Why do I have the feeling "Toon in With Me" will show more of the director's later work than any of the other Lantz shorts?

My theory for such is that the majority of Lantz's later work hasn't been restored to the public, so they're likely getting those out of the way before they really let us have the goods.

By the way, Woodpecker in the Rough is restored according to a MeTV article on Woody's Nuthouse Coaster.

Niagara Fools (1956) had the Chinese gag cut, but the editing team somewhat made the transition somewhat seamless.

So I suppose "Woodpecker From Mars" will be censored. ("Flying Egg Foo Yung!") At least the ending of "Knock Knock" wasn't cut off like the version posted on the official Woody Woodpecker channel on YouTube.

I had never seen 4 of the 7 cartoons that aired this past Saturday morning: "Dig That Dog", "The Sleeping Princess", "All Hams On Deck" and the Inspector Willoughby cartoon.

So Frank Nelson was doing cartoon voicework before The Flintstones and the 1960's TV Magoos.

This time I hadn't seen only 2 of the 7 cartoons that aired yesterday morning: "Flea For Two" and "The Dog That Cried Wolf".

Even though the Fatso Bear cartoons were made at a different studio with different animators, Fatso runs around in a panic EXACTLY the same way Humphrey does. He even makes some of the same sounds. (And some of the "chicken sounds" in "Eggnapper" sound like they were borrowed from Disney as well, maybe old recordings of Clara Cluck.)

I forgot to mention, did anyone else who watched "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" last Saturday morning notice that "Wet Blanket Policy" had a Universal logo tacked onto the beginning? (At least they used the correct logo for that era. The old re-release prints of the United Artists cartoons used the Universal logo that was first used in 1963, with no audio.)

Hop & Go aired restored today, though the ending was unsurprisingly censored

Expect they restored the poor unrestored foreign print with random music track muffing most of the dialog that was in "Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume Six".

Does anyone know why that was?

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This time the Chilly Willy cartoon was the only one I hadn't seen. The bit about "come over for a fish dinner, you bring the fish" was (sort of) swiped from J. Wellington Wimpy's "Come on up to the house for a duck dinner. You bring the ducks ." (A newspaper strip in which Wimpy encounters cannibals changed it to "Mr. Wimpy, we'd like you to come up to the house for a duck dinner. You be the duck!"

I forgot to mention, did anyone else who watched "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" last Saturday morning notice that "Wet Blanket Policy" had a Universal logo tacked onto the beginning? (At least they used the correct logo for that era. The old re-release prints of the United Artists cartoons used the Universal logo that was first used in 1963, with no audio.)

They did it again. Woody the Giant Killer had a Universal-International logo at the beginning instead of the "art deco" Universal logo that was first used in 1938 (And it was missing "If I had a gun, I'd shoot myself!". (Not surprisingly.))

I missed the first 2 cartoons of MeTV's September 30th broadcast of "Woody Woodpecker and Friends" and I only saw part of "The Pied Piper of Basin Street". Did I miss anything rare?

This time the only cartoon I hadn't seen before was "Punchy Pooch".

I wish that June Foray had done the voice of Maw in Lantz's "Maw and Paw" series. She did a good impersonation of Marjorie Main, heard in cartoons like "Let's Stick Together", "Quackodile Tears" and "Honey's Money". But Gracie Lantz did the voice of Maw, even though her husband occasionally used June Foray, mainly as the voices of Knothead and Splinter.

I can't remember how long it had been since I last watched "Convict Concerto". When I watched it this past Saturday morning, I noticed for the first time that Hugh Harman's name is mis-spelled in the credits. (And I checked Of Mice and Magic out of the library in the 1980's.)

I don't think cartoons would have been the same if Franz Liszt hadn't written the Hungarian Rhapsody. And not just cartoons:



(I'm old enough to have watched this commercial when it originally aired.)