Puppetoons is a series of animated puppetfilms made in Europe (1930s) and in the United States (1940s) byGeorge Pal. They were made using replacementanimation: using a series of different hand-carved woodenpuppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for eachframe in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as is the case with moststop motion puppet animation. They were particularly made from 1932-1948, in both Europe and the US.
The Puppetoons series of animated puppet films were made in Europe in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1940s. The series began whenGeorge Pal made an advertising film using "dancing"cigarettes in 1932, which led to a series of theatrical advertising shorts forPhilips Radio in the Netherlands. This was followed by a series forHorlicks Malted Milk in England. These shorts have anart deco design, often reducing characters to simple geometric shapes.
Pal arrived in the U.S. in 1940, and produced more than 40 Puppetoons forParamount Pictures between 1941 and 1947.[1]
The series ended due to rising production costs which had increased from US$18,000 per short in 1939 (equivalent to $416,627 in 2025) to almost US$50,000 followingWorld War II (equivalent to $825,512 in 2025).[citation needed]Paramount Pictures—Pal's distributor—objected to the cost. Per their suggestion, Pal went to produce sequences for feature films.[3] In 1956, the Puppetoons as well as most of Paramount's shorts, were sold to television distributorU.M. & M. TV Corporation.National Telefilm Associates bought out U.M. & M. and continued to syndicate them in the 1950s and 1960s as "Madcap Models".
Pal also used the Puppetoon name and the general Puppetoon technique for miniature puppet characters in some of his live-action feature films, includingThe Great Rupert (1949),Tom Thumb (1958), andThe Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963). In these films, the individual wooden figures were billed as The Puppetoons.
Puppetoon films used replacementanimation with puppets. Using a series of different hand-carved woodenpuppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet. A typical Puppetoon required 9,000 individually carved and machined wooden figures or parts.Puppetoon animation is a type of replacement animation, which is itself a type ofstop-motion animation. The puppets are rigid and static pieces; each is typically used in a single frame and then switched with a separate, near-duplicate puppet for the next frame. Thus puppetoon animation requires many separate figures. It is thus more analogous in a certain sense to cel animation than is traditional stop-motion: the characters are created from scratch for each frame (though in cel animation the creation process is simpler since the characters are drawn and painted, not sculpted).
Some controversy exists in modern times, as the black character, Jasper, star of several Puppetoons in the 1940s is considered a stereotype today. The Jasper series of shorts relied on a small, consistent cast. The titular character was a playfulpickaninny, his mother a protectivemammy, a Scarecrow who acted as a black scam artist, and the Blackbird serving as his fast-talking partner-in-crime.[4] He was initially voiced by child actor Glenn Leedy before he was replaced bySara Berner after the former went through puberty.[5] Pal described Jasper as theHuckleberry Finn ofAmerican folklore.[3]
Already in 1946, an article of theHollywood Quarterly protested that the Jasper shorts presented a "razor-totin', ghost-haunted, chicken-stealin' concept of the American Negro".[3] A 1947 article inEbony pointed out that George Pal was a European and not raised on racial prejudice: "To him there is nothing abusive about a Negro boy who likes to eat watermelons or gets scared when he goes past a haunted house". The article, though, pointed that this depiction touched on the stereotypes of Negroes being childish, eating nothing but molasses and watermelons, and being afraid of their own shadows.[3]
Jasper's full name is Jasper Jefferson Lincoln Washington Hawkins.[6]
In 1987, film producer-director-archivistArnold Leibovit, a friend of George Pal, collected several Puppetoons and released them theatrically and to video asThe Puppetoon Movie reintroducing them to contemporary audiences. A feature-length documentary on the life and films of George Pal followed,The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal. In 2020 and 2023,The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 andThe Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 was released on Blu-ray and DVD, featuring 17 shorts and over 30 shorts on the latter not included onThe Puppetoon Movie original film release.The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 is a Rondo Award Winner for Best Blu-ray Collection of 2024.[8][9]
TheAcademy Film Archive preserved several of the Puppetoons in 2009, includingJasper and the Beanstalk,John Henry and the Inky Poo, andRhythm In the Ranks.[10]
^"Hollywood Film Shop".Vidette-Messenger of Porter County. Valparaiso: United Press. 13 April 1944. p. 4. Archived fromthe original on 2021-08-18. (login needed)
