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Cartoon Dump #5: Spunky and Tadpole

October 11, 2007 11:25 pm

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

11 commentsshare posted in BrewFilms

10/12/07 6:09am	uncle wayne says:
	Thank you! I love “Cartoon Dump!” “Spunky & Tadpole”!!!……..i had always heard of the duo….but never saw an inch of it!! Sorta makes Crusader & Rags look like Barney Bear & Droopy, eh?
10/12/07 7:06am	Daniel J. Drazen says:
	I REMEMBER this one! At least I vaguely remember it; nothing about it stood out, though I remember one or two lines of dialogue in a dream-state sort of way. Visually it never registered, which probably says a lot about why it found its way to the dump.
10/12/07 7:25am	Dagan says:
	good heavens, I’ve GOT to see this thing! ;)
10/12/07 8:50am	fishmorgjp says:
	Isn’t “Spunky & Tadpole” a great name for a series? Even if you were being satirical, you could hardly do better.
10/12/07 9:10am	Brett McCoy says:
	I just about lost my coffee all over the laptop when Moodsy started singing about dry heaves.
10/12/07 9:41am	Luke says:
	I remember this one. Even as a kid, I knew something was rotten in Florida, which turned out to be a toxic waste dump for film production, except for Disney. Or maybe not.
10/12/07 12:08pm	Christopher Cook says:
	I duly recalled Spunky & Tadpole as a child as well (Curse you, KHJ, now KCAL!). Of course I tuned in regularly because (a) it was serialized and I wanted to see what happened next, and (b) at five years old I was particularly undiscriminating. Its sole value to me today is that of harkening back to 1961 Riverside, California.
10/12/07 10:44pm	Charles Brubaker says:
	Joan Gardner was also active in voice acting. She was Tiny Tim in “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.” She was credited in some cartoons as Joan Janis. I believe she was married to Ed Janis, the producer for “Spunky and Tadpole” (can you confirm, Jerry?)
10/13/07 5:15pm	Luke says:
	Not to be confused with Spunky the donkey, or Spunky the dog from Rocko’s Modern Life, even though I think Guild Films had a UM&M connection.
10/14/07 10:48am	Doug Drown says:
	I had heard of this from time to time, but had never seen an episode till now. I don’t remember it from my childhood (and I think I would, because I seem to recall all the other dreck that was out there). No doubt about it: This is awful. But, you know, I think if “Spunky and Tadpole” had had the right people behind it, it could have been creative and charming. As noted by fishmorgjp above, the name of the series is clever, and so is the premise: a little boy whose teddy bear comes alive. What a great concept! UPA, in its early years, could have done wonders with this. Someone still could. Who holds the copyright now?
10/20/07 2:39am	Dave Mackey says:
	Change the teddy bear into a tiger and you’ve got Calvin and Hobbes.

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