Tijuana Toads

                          

TITLE-Tijuana Toads

SOURCE-Kino Lober Blu ray

As a kid sure I watched the various made for tv cartoons of that era,Scooby Doo and piles of stuff from Filmation,but I always prefered the cartoons that I later learned had been made to be shown  in theaters before movies. Stuff like Looney Tunes,Popeye and the Pink Panther.

Recently Kino Lober had a big sale for summer.I knew I had about 60 bucks I could spend,needed something around 6 bucks to hit the free shipping limit. Remembered I had a blu ray of Pink Panther cartoons that Kino Lober put out,so went looking thru all their animated Blu rays and DVDs to find something.

Almost grabbed another volume of the Pink Panther collection. Then saw Tijuana Toads. Why that title stood out to me I wasn't sure. Read the description and realized why I halfway remembered the title.

Made by the same animation studio that was doing the Pink Panther and Ant and Aardvark cartoons,Tijuana  Toads was series of 17 theatrical animated shorts. First one hitting theaters in 1969 and the last one came out in 1972.

By the time I was old enough to goto movies in a theater there was no cartoons played before the movie. But I was seeing most of them on tv. Usually on a UHF channel. And always early in the morning. 

After watching the documentaries and listening to all the commentaries on this Blu Ray set I learned that in the mid 70s when all the Pink Panther and other studio shorts started being aired on TV,Tijuana Toad got changed. Instead of El Toro and Pancho the toads are now named El Fatso and Banjo. They were called the Texas Toads. And all their dialogue got redubbed. To remove the very stereotypical Hispanic accents the Toads had.Seems until this Blu Ray the original versions of these shorts hadn't been seen since the early 70s.

Our two titular toads live in Tijuana Mexico and spends their days finding stuff to eat. One is skinny one is fat. And it feels like what if Laurel  and Hardy were toads.

In these 17 shorts the studio managed to spin off 2 more series of shorts. CrazyLegs Stork,who appears in a few episodes of the Toads. And the Blue Racer,who is a blue snake and got his own spinoff that is very Road Runner like.

The Blu ray is loaded with extras. We get 2 documentaries not only covering the Toads but also the Depattie/Freleng studio. Then at least half the episodes got commentaries from various animation historians,people like Jerry Beck. And for one cartoon you also got the alternate Texas Toads audio. 

The day I got this Blu Ray in I put it on planning on  watching 2 or 3 shorts then doing other stuff. I sat there and watched every short. Then watched some of them again with the commentary. 

If you enjoy old theatrical animated shorts this is a set to buy.