Stay Tooned

Copying some old episodes of Rolf's Cartoon Club from tape to DVD recently, it dawned on us how much more educational and valid Tony Robinson's approach was. It's absolutely true that not only was Rolf tracing his "freehand" drawings, but his segments were just filler between cartoons.

Robinson provided necessary information for those watching, putting the cartoons in historical context. There were a couple of occasions were he had to explain that a certain animation was from an age were social values were different, including the use of the racist term "s*mbo".

There are probably very few people in possession of copies of this show, and with copyright being what it is, we'll never see it again, and this is a damn shame. Sure, you can buy sets of cartoons on DVD, but they only come from individual studios, and you have to put up with people like Leonard Maltin dripping smarm as he recounts their history.

You'll never see a finer showcase than this one.

When "Rolf Harris' Cartoon Time" came to an end because Mr Tie-me-Kangaroo-Down-Sport moved to ITV to do a similar show, the BBC needed to find something similar quickly to fill that early Saturday night time slot. Luckily for them, Tony Robinson was available to introduce classic Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons in prime time for at least another five years. Each episode featured 3 cartoons, and whereas Harris had spend his introductory time drawing an iconic scene from each of the featured films saying "Can you see what it's going to be yet?" (actualy you could, if you looked hard enough, for he was tracing a drawing he prepared earlier on a blank piece of paper), Tony took time to explain something about the 'Toon at hand or the period it was made in.

The credit sequence saw Robinson interacting with Bugs, Droopy and Tom & Jerry, while ducking for explosives and falling Acme anvils and each episode featured shorts that were connected by a common theme ("Wonderfull Warners", "The Forties", etc). I have no doubt Tony researched and wrote most if not all of the background information himself, based on the animated material available to him. During it's run, only once was the show replaced by a "Making of Toy Story" programme, also presented by Tony. Today Warner and MGM classics are still shown on Auntie Beeb each weekend, only now they are just filler between the before breakfast early morning programming.

To be honest, even though I enjoyed watching 'Stay Tooned' at the time, I had just about totally forgotten it before finding the title listed on IMDb. Now if only I had a stack of old Radio Times back issues in order to add all the air dates and each of the featured cartoons as movie connections...

8 out of 10