Bucky and Pepito in "THE WANDERING ELEPHANT" and "CRAZY OVER PANCAKES" in Colour

Описание: This cine film is from a commercial Super 8 cartoon reel containing two cartoons, presented in a colourised version. The original black and white version is also available in another of my videos.

It was part of a collection of camera equipment originally belonging to my grandfather Harry Garrett (on my mother's side) that I inherited after my Dad died.

These cartoons and their theme music originate between 1958 and 1960. Cartoons from this time period are usually still under copyright, but it was possible to have these ones digitized because they are in the public domain as the copyright owner did not renew the copyright. Wikipedia says "Bucky and Pepito is a Western-themed American animated television series produced by Sam Singer... The series is about two young boys. Bucky is an imaginative American child who wears a cowboy hat, and his Mexican friend Pepito is an inventor".

Don Markstein's Toonopedia says "Both of the boys' voices were done by Dal McKennon, most of whose earlier career was spent with the Walter Lantz Studio".

I am aware from another copy of "THE WANDERING ELEPHANT" online that the version in this double cartoon reel had scenes cut from the beginning and end, probably to fit them in to a limited reel length, and similar cuts were probably also made to "CRAZY OVER PANCAKES" although it appears at the time of writing that a longer version is not available and may be lost.

The Lost Media Wiki says "It is best known among cartoon historians as being among the worst animated shows of all time for its poor animation and racist stereotyping [I fully understand if you'd rather not watch it because of this], as Pepito (voiced by a white actor) was considered an offensive portrayal of Mexicans. The series was generally syndicated to local television stations to be played alongside other shorts during blocks in early children’s programming. The series was not well preserved, and only a handful of the original episodes are available for purchase or online. The cartoons available online include “The Coyote Catcher”, “The Vexin’ Texan”, and “The Lone Pine Tree.” The latter two episodes are available on a DVD called “The Worst Cartoons Ever!” "

My copy was silent - I have added a sound track with music, sound effects and dialogue to match what the characters are saying as best I can by attempting to match the mouth movements, and guessing what might be appropriate to the action.

It has to be said that the colour rendering achieved using the best of 3 different types of software that were tried leaves room for improvement, but then the AI models used for this purpose are mostly trained on photographic images of real scenes, not cartoons, and especially not rarities like this, so until someone puts the effort into training a colourising model on cartoon images, I would expect this to be about the best that can be expected for November 2025.