Think American TV animation is bad? What if you tried to sell a series about ticks with duck beaks, who catapult their way around the universe? Even Cartoon Network would reject that one.

Not so in Brazil. I don’t know what they are drinking down there, but the most ridiculous concept to emerge from last week’s MIPCOM (the annual international television marketplace in Cannes) is something called Duck-ticks and Catapults. Thirteen episodes are being produced by studio Zoom Elefante for AnimaTV (here’s the pilot in Portuguese). Almir Correia is the creator, writer and director.

Take Ward Kimball’s crazy space creatures from Mars and Beyond, add some computer animation, and voila, you get this fantastic trailer for Doomed, a new series by Pocoyo co-creator Guillermo García Carsí and his studio El Señor.

Boy, does this look fun! I love Guillermo’s approach to computer animation, which avoids the cacophonous visual overload of most computer animation by making clear and bold artistic choices. It’s what made Pocoyo such a refreshingly different series, and Doomed appears to be on the same track.

According to the site, they’ve just completed the pilot episode. Carsí calls it a biological cartoon that displays the failures of natural selection: “A set of strange creatures whose instincts, instead of focusing on survival, have doomed them to an absurd and comic extinction, in the presence of the astonished gaze of the narrator.”

(Thanks, Rohit Iyer)

The early television kids show, Winky Dink (CBS, 1953-57), was less an animated cartoon and more a two-dimensional puppet show (Mae Questel provides Winky’s voice live in the studio). A photoblog called Showbiz Imagery and Chicanery has just posted several great photographs taken on set of host Jack Barry and of kids demonstrating the draw-on-screen process that made the show so famous. It was a bit before my time, but no less interesting as a early interactive television experiment. These newly discovered photos are fascinating flashback to one of TV’s earliest kid’s shows.

For the record, Fred Calvert and Al Kouzel supervised a cheap, Tom Terrific-derivative, animated version in 1969, about which, the less said the better.

(Thanks, Devlin Thompson)

The first episode aired on ABC on September 30th 1960. Yup, The Flintstones turn the big five-o today. Everyone should sing Happy Anniversary to the tune of The William Tell Overture.

The image above was featured on Google all day. I really respect artist Mike Dutton but they should have gotten Scott Shaw, Pat Owsley, Marc Christiansen, John K… or quite frankly, anybody else to draw this tribute. Someone with some passion for the characters.

There have been many Flintstone articles posted on the web this week to commemorate this event – but the stupidest one I’ve seen was posted by The Christian Science Monitor: The Five Dumbest Moments on The Flintstones.

Here’s what they came up with:

5. The Flintstones Smoked – We know, we know. Everyone did back then.
4. The Great Gazoo – On the one hand I totally understand the hate for Gazoo, on the other hand he was a cool green space man who invented a doomsday machine!
3. Dinosaurs in The Flintstones – They are arguing science? It’s a cartoon!
2. The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show – I actually liked this spin-off. And Sally Struthers and Jay North seemed the right choice for the voices.
1. Sexism in The Flintstones – It was the 60s. The Madmen era. This show was portraying life in the Stone Age. Give me a break.

As usual, there’s the assumption on the writer’s part that cartoons are strictly kids stuff. What they really missed was the fact that The Flintstones was the first primetime animated sitcom, created to appeal adults and kids. And it’s done just that for exactly fifty years on the dot.

Congratulations, Fred and Barney… have a cold one on me:

(Thanks, Art Binninger)

I don’t know about where you live, but popping up all over L.A. are these scary billboards (see above) promoting The Hub, Hasbro and Discovery’s new cable channel. The Good News: it looks to be another 24-hour cartoon channel (remember those?). The Bad News: the cartoons seem to be based mainly on Hasbro branded toy lines (Pound Puppies, My Little Pony, The Transformers, etc.). Apparently, upon further research, there will be live action shows on the schedule (like Fraggle Rock) and several originals (Dan Vs.), but they aren’t advertising those yet… just these creepy looking bug-eyed buggers.

Nick and Disney have nothing to fear… but Cartoon Network better watch its back. The Hub begins broadcasting October 10th.

Starts tonight on Cartoon Network: Genndy Tartakovsky’s latest series (created with Bryan Andrews and Paul Rudish), Sym-Bionic Titan. Anything Genndy does is worth watching… but will it help revive Cartoon Network’s fortunes? Time will tell – in the meantime, what did you think?

In December 1992, employees of Film Roman received a special Christmas bonus. No, not cash, but a VHS of this video, Phil Roman’s Holiday Hello. Eighteen years later, it’s posted on You Tube revealing an interesting snapshot of a more optimistic time in the animation industry. Garfield, The Simpsons and the semi-educational caveman cartoon, Cro, were in production at the time. There are a few funny bits here, just as many lame in-jokes, and as for who’s-who – perhaps our readership can identify the folks on camera in our comments section, below.

(Thanks, John Mathot)

The first episode of the fifteen-minute series The Regular show premiered yesterday on the Cartoon Network. It can be seen below. Thoughts and opinions by those who have seen it are welcome.

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack ends its series run tonight on Cartoon Network after forty-six episodes. Chowder, which also ended its run earlier this year, lasted forty-nine episodes. The last eleven-minute episode of Flapjack titled “Fish Out of Water” will have live-action portions, and features an appearance by creator Thurop van Orman, and his son, Leif (pictured above), who portrays Flapjack.

(Thanks, Compn)

First look at Warner Animation’s new MAD cartoon series. It starts airing September 6th on Cartoon Network.

A two-and-a-half-minute preview of JG Quintel’s The Regular Show which debuts in September. I commend Cartoon Network’s bold decision to save all of the humor and entertainment for the actual show and ensure no traces of it appear beforehand.

Here’s the promo for the new Looney Tunes Show which ran this past weekend on Cartoon Network. It’s our first peek at the CG Road Runner and redesigned Bugs and Daffy.