Trivia / Terry Toons

• Colbert Bump: After falling into semi-obscurity over the past decades (outside of animation history buffs) the profile of the entire studio was rather decisively elevated back into the public consciousness in late 2017 when the "SOMEBODY TOUCH-A MY SPAGHETT!" line from The Three Bears went massively viral.
• Executive Meddling: A GOOD example of this trope—Paul Terry made only the barest effort put into his cartoons' production values until the late 1930's, when 20th Century Fox forced him to beef up the quality of his cartoons (namely upgrading some of his shorts to color and slightly improving the animation to be more in line with that of the west coast studios) or get the axe. But even then, Terry hampered his films with his refusal to take artistic risks and a rigid release schedule that allowed no extra time for refinements or necessary corrections.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Very few of the actual cartoons are commercially available for viewing aside from some public domain bootlegs or TV recordings, which has not helped their reputation as being dismissed as the Golden Age's bottom of the barrel without people watching them. The closest thing to an authentic release would be the redubbed prints aired on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, as well as the three unaltered bonus cartoons included on the DVD of "New Adventures." And considering how large the Terrytoons library is (on account of how quickly they were produced in addition to the long length of the studio's life), this combined with the total lack of demand for re-releases would make it unfeasible to compile them all onto a single DVD collection. Fortunately, Jerry Beck has much of the studio's output ready and available to be pressed onto DVDs for animators wanting to watch them for research, via his Cartoon Research Garage Sale website. Jerry Beck has tried for years to get a DVD release of the Terrytoons in the works, but nothing has resulted of it as of yet.
• Money, Dear Boy: Paul Terry was a total cheapskate and believed animation should be all business and no art. And how long an employee stayed at the studio depended on whether they could rush to meet their quota. On a side note, back at Van Beuren, Paul was known for having his cartoons cranked out at breakneck speed, with a new cartoon finished and shipped to theaters once a week for eight uninterrupted years. And he had no qualms about selling off his studio to CBS in 1955 when he retired.
• Recycled Script: A lot of the shorts.
• What Could Have Been: After the runaway success of Disney's Snow White, Paul Terry planned to make his own animated feature, but backed out as soon as he saw Disney's Pinocchio a few years later.
  • Two shorts were finished with alterations following Gene Deitch's departure.
    • The 1960 short Hearts a Glowers was originally developed as a Clint Clobber short, but was replaced with a different character.
    • The 1959 short The Leaky Faucet was originally developed as a Foofle short, but was replaced with Dimwit.
  • Nickelodeon (which was owned by Viacom, who of course had the rights to the franchise at this point) attempted a revival of the franchise in 1999 as Curbside, with Heckle & Jeckle as the main stars; for whatever reason, it didn't get picked up.
  • In 1964, Terrytoons had "The Colossal Show," an unsold pilot from Total Television, farmed out to them.

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