Hooray for 1940s Noveltoons!

This is something that we were all sure that such of an outstanding cartoons compilation collection never would made the day on an official home video release, considering the hard challenges that destined them, but Cartoon Logic/ClassicFlix (Thad Komorowski's Home Video label) proudly announcing yesterday the Blu-Ray release of The Famous Studios Champion Collection for April 21th. A collection that is worthy to celebrate!

Despite great and strong talents that went involved to these films, the 1940's "lesser" known shorts were at the mercy of any neglects from Paramount losing the ownership of its animated library to obscured the studio's existence to be shown in rather pedestrian Red-ish faded prints that were in circulation since the 1950s Television came.

Here, they are 18 underatted gems from the New York studio's department, by the cooperation with Paramount Pictures -- with 4K scans restored from the original studio prints -- showcasing an array of slapstick madcap, singings-and-music and gorgeous Technicolor spectacles. This is what always made me thrilled about this studio's era: Looking them on their original Technicolor nitrate print, they are among the most colorful with a sense of aesthetics that even Disney, Warner or MGM struggled to earning it.

It's also difficult to announcing this title without forgotten that nearly fifteen years on, Steve Stanchfield has released a batch of the 1940s Noveltoons on DVD, that otherwise are labelled at public domain, by be constantly in circulation on many cheap Video Cassettes and DVDs that flooded the retail stores shelves.

But looking to this release today, this is the first time ever that the Famous Studios artists would finally earn some deserved praises, after over 70 long years to wait!

P.S.: The release consists only of the mid-to-late-1940s cartoons producing in this studio and had none concerns with the 1950-62 library that are still own by Classic Media by be the direct property of Harvey Comics. Either them deserve for a longtime a proper restored treatment, even if one assume that these are not the studio's greatests unlike what Thad and company vaunted by this Blu-Ray release.