Disney has licensed several of their characters for use as USB Flash Memory Drives. Buffalo Technology will put these devices on sale next month, but only as a limited edition of 5000. The tech blog Engadget reports:

With just 512MB of capacity, it’s fairly clear that these are aimed squarely at Disney fanboys (and girls) who just can’t let the opportunity to own a “limited edition” Disney item pass them by.

Call me a “fanboy”. The Steamboat Willie one looks pretty cool.(Thanks to Bill Robinson for the heads up)

Between the years he directed Popeye, Superman and Stone Age cartoons for Fleischer & Famous Studios in the early 40s, and his story and direction for Hanna Barbera in the late 50s and 60s, (where he was a chief architect of The Flintstones) animator Dan Gordon made a living as a prolific comic book artist. One of his most beloved creations was SUPERKATT who graced the pages (and covers) of GIGGLE COMICS for over 10 years (1944-1955).John K. writes about Gordon’s comic books here. Also Asifa Hollywood’s Animation Archive and Kent Butterworth have posted various pages for your enjoyment.In the mid-40s, a desperate Columbia Pictures licensed Gordon’s SUPERKATT comic strip for its Screen Gems animation studio. Why? It’s still a mystery. Was SUPERKATT that popular with the public to make a movie star of him? I doubt it. Did Dave Fleischer, while he was head of the studio several years earlier, make a deal with his ‘ol buddy Gordon? Maybe. Regardless, the cartoon - Leave Us Chase It (1947), produced in low budget two-color Technicolor - made no impression on anyone back in the day. The only promotion we can find is hidden in this puzzle in GIGGLE COMICS #31 (July 1946, almost a year before the film’s release). It’s been practically forgotten (as has the rest of the Screen Gems cartoon library) for six decades. In honor of 60th anniversary of Superkatt’s screen debut, we’ve posted the first three minutes of this curio You Tube for your enjoyment.We invite you to join the cult.

(Thanks to William Sobieck for the puzzle page scan)

Last week’s episode of FAMILY GUY included this enjoyable interlude of Stewie dancing with Gene Kelly. Wouldn’t it be something special if a modern TV series regularly afforded this much thought to its animation and choreography? The original clip of Jerry the Mouse dancing with Kelly can be seen here.

UPDATE: Steve Worth of ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Archive wrote in with some comments about this sequence:

How much “thought to animation and choreography” does it take to rotoscope someone else’s animation and slap your own character over the top of it? If this was a parody, it would have added some sort of comment through additional humor. If it was a tribute, they would have had the respect not to obliterate the great animation by Ken Muse and Ray Patterson by pasting their own poorly traced drawings over the top of it. To my eyes, this looks like the Family Guy crew took the hard work of these legendary artists and copped it for themselves without adding a single thing to it. They can get away with it, because the viewers probably have never heard of Gene Kelly, much less have seen the clip of him dancing with Jerry Mouse.

How eager are you to see Bugs Bunny cartoons with new videogame characters rotoscoped over the top of them? Maybe they could take Fantasia and roto a CGI Mickey Mouse over the top of Sorcerer’s Apprentice… That’s the sort of thing “great ideas” like this lead to. I’ve never understood why people feel the need to paint mustaches on the Mona Lisa and then have the gall to pat themselves on the back for their great work.

Family Guy deserves no praise for this. A ripoff is a ripoff.