Wow, we kids were sure easy to please!
When I saw this DVD set, I just had to pick it up for nostalgia sake. One reviewer was a bit harsh but admitted that they did not see the show when originally aired in the 60's. What's the saying? Sometimes you "just had to be there" in order to find appeal in DVD releases of old TV shows such as this. As is often the case it is far more about simple nostalgia and fond recollections than perceived quality.
As a kid in the 60's, the "Dick Tracy Show" was a favorite and after popping in the first disc and seeing that high overhead street scene with the traffic parting and that music...a flood of memories came back. Of course looking at it now with my adult eye it was pretty cheesy stuff. I had totally forgotten that Dick Tracy doesn't really do anything other than hand off the assignments in the opening scene and check in at the end. I wonder why? Is it that Tracy was drawn too seriously and wasn't meant to be funny and therefore let his cartoon-like "crime-busting...
Crimestopper's Textbook
At last on DVD, here are all 130 UPA five minute cartoons. Hailing from 1961, this series was created with Dick Tracy creator, Chester Gould as consultant. However, it's a very light, slapstick-style cartoon with the modernistic, minimal look UPA was known for. In the late '50s- early '60s this was all the rage, as animators tried to find limited animation techniques to fit TV's limited budgets. At the same time, they had to compete with stock theatrical cartoons making their way to the small screen, which had lavish studio facilities and bottomless wallets.
Hanna-Barbera would be the winner in the TV sweeps, offsetting limited animation techniques like characters running past the same tree or barber pole again and again and reusing heads and bodies by animating in layers (cels), with sparkling dialogue, top notch voice actors, whimsical character design, bold graphic style and a new paintbox of bright colors.
UPA is better-known for Mr. Magoo, whom UPA...
Tracy's Animated Crew
Tracy's Animated Crew, September 3, 2006
Reviewer: Bennet Pomerantz "Bennet Pomerantz, AUDIOWORLD" (Seabrook, Maryland) - See all my reviews
Chet Gould's classic comic strip Dick Tracy got a make over in the 1961 animated cartoon series.
Dick Tracy was the point man of this cartoon series. He assigned cases to his junior detective/comic sidekicks Joe Jitsu (a karate Charlie Chan wannabe) and Go-go Gomez (a speedy quick Mexican detective). Both sidekicksa are voiced by Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny). These junior detectives combat cases with classic rogues' gallery of Tracy's villains like Flattop, Itchy, Mumbles, Prune face, etc.
These so-called sidekicks were so much stereotypes. However this was theideal of most 1960's animation and cartoons. The aninmated stereotypes were normal for TV at that time
The animation is good and crisply done for 1960 TV animation, unlike the 1960's Marvel moving pictures or filmation stuff with DC heroes...
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