Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, Happy Harmonies… and it all came down to this: Sir Gee Whiz On The Other Side Of The Moon. Needless to say, the latter years of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were rough.

Breaking away from Disney (and Charles Mintz) in 1930, they struck gold by hooking up with Leon Schlesinger and establishing the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. In an effort to upgrade their product and compete with Disney, the duo left producer Leon Schlesinger in 1933 and, after sub-contracting a few Cubby Bear cartoons for Van Beuren, accepted an offer to provide Happy Harmonies color cartoons for MGM. It was their work at MGM that ultimately laid the foundation for the later success of Hanna and Barbera and Tom & Jerry.

Hugh and Rudy gave it up to support the effort during World War II, creating instructional animated films for the Armed Services. They spent the rest of their careers creating educational, industrial and commercial films, never achieving the public fame they once enjoyed during the 1930s. Not that they didn’t try. One of their efforts, long thought lost, was this 1960 pilot for Sir Gee Whiz.

Limited animation was not something Harman and Ising could grasp easily. This short shows just how badly Hugh and Rudy didn’t get it. The problems start with the premise: A little old gnome who who knocks out adults and takes little girls to his home — on the moon. Because it concerns the moon, the whole show has an unpleasant, dark, look. Rudy Ising’s vocal as Sir Gee Whiz sounds scary - like a perverted old uncle. And then there are characters like “Senor Ropo” (pictured, above right) and the “Terrible Kinker”…

Enough talk! Check out Sir Gee Whiz On The Other Side Of The Moon this week on Cartoon Dump, now up at CartoonBrewFilms.com. And if you think this is a hoot, come see Cartoon Dump Live next week, on Tuesday (Oct. 23rd) at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood!

A little boy and his brain challenged teddy bear.

Spunky and Tadpole was one of the worst cartoon shows ever made. Originally distributed in 1958 by Guild Films, the show was quickly outclassed in every department by Hanna-Barbera’s Huckleberry Hound and trounced by all other kiddie competition. Your tip off that this going to be awful is the cheesy title card touting “Beverly Hills Productions.” There is nothing Beverly Hills about this production!

On the plus side, it does feature Don Messick doing voices… however, the ugly artwork, minimal animation and shoddy production values justify its place in the Cartoon Dump. The fifth episode of our original live-action/animation podcast is now up on CartoonBrewFilms.com

Captain Fathom was the third and final cartoon series produced by Cambria Productions in their patented Synchro-Vox system. This was the technique where the studio spent as little money as possible on animation and super-imposed live action lips on the hand drawn characters. When I saw these as a kid, I thought it was very creepy.

It’s still creepy, and a perfect centerpiece to our latest Cartoon Dump podcast, which we’ve just posted on CartoonBrewFilms.com. Download all four podcasts (thus far) of Cartoon Dump: the worst cartoons—anytime you want them, everywhere you go!

Bucky and Pepito is considered by many to be one of the worst cartoons ever made. Harry McCracken once claimed the series “set a standard for awfulness that no contemporary TV cartoon has managed to surpass.”

That makes it a perfect candidate for our podcast Cartoon Dump. Episode #3 is now up at CartoonBrewFilms.com and we promise to post a new one each week for the next three weeks. Check it out - it’s free!

A new short (notably our first foreign one) launches this afternoon on CartoonBrewFilms: Carnivore Reflux directed by Eddie White and James Calvert of the People’s Republic of Animation, a young and quickly rising Australian animation studio. Stay tuned for many more terrific animated shorts, both international and domestic, set to debut on BrewFilms in the coming months.

Calling all animation haters! The second episode of our new web series Cartoon Dump is now up at CartoonBrewFilms.com. Somehow we are managing to keep up with our schedule to deliver a fresh episode once a week. This week, Compost Brite reads her fan mail!

The big news in Dumpster-ville is that we’ve arranged to perform Cartoon Dump live, one night every month, at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, California. We’ll be there every fourth Tuesday of each month starting August 28th. (Mark your calender for Sept. 25th, Oct. 23rd and Nov. 27th in 2007). If you are in town, or planning a trip to L.A., please come by and meet the cast and crew in person. We will be introducing new cartoons, new characters, and guest “famous name” comedians each month.

Combine the contents of my annual Worst Cartoons Ever! screenings with the warped comic mind of Frank Conniff (”TV’s Frank” from Mystery Science Theater 3000) and you have Cartoon Dump.

The first Cartoon Brew Films original production, Cartoon Dump is a new weekly podcast that exposes the seamy underbelly of cartoon history. Join us! Sing along with Mighty Mister Titan, Compost Brite and Moodsy, the Clinically Depressed Owl. Check it out. It’s funny, it’s flipped out and it’s free!

I’m still recovering from yesterday’s all-day shoot for CartoonBrewFilms first original podcast, Cartoon Dump. That’s comedianne Kathleen Roll, above seated, as Buff Badger (the rageaholic animation historian) awaiting her cues, while our director Scott Ingalls strategically places a garbage bag on the set. Last night we had a standing room only crowd at the Steve Allen Theatre for a public preview of the show. Reaction was very positive and we look forward to announcing the start of the series (which will be available online free) next month. Stay tuned…