After years of waiting, the Flip The Frog Complete Series Blu-Ray discs from Thunderbean Animation Shop have finally been released and I just received my copy, as a Christmas present from me to myself!
WIKIPEDIA describes Flip the Frog as follows:
Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American animator Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933. The series had many recurring characters besides Flip, including Flip's dog, the mule Orace, and a dizzy neighborhood spinster.
Ub Iwerks was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios and a personal friend of Walt Disney in 1930. After a series of disputes between the two, Iwerks left Disney and went on to accept an offer from Pat Powers to open a cartoon studio of his own, Iwerks Studio, and receive a salary of $300 a week, an offer that Disney was unable to match at the time.
Iwerks was to produce new cartoons under Powers' Celebrity Pictures auspices and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first series he was to produce was to feature a character called Tony the Frog, but Iwerks disliked the name and was subsequently changed to Flip.
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The character eventually wore out his welcome at MGM. His final short was Soda Squirt, released in August 1933. Subsequently, Iwerks replaced the series with a new one starring an imaginative liar named Willie Whopper.
Flip became largely forgotten by the public in the ensuing years, but the character would make a small comeback when animation enthusiasts and historians began digging up the old Iwerks shorts. And finally, now in 2023, the complete Flip The Frog cartoons are available on Blu-Ray discs and ready to be enjoyed by all of us who remember them fondly.
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