Ah, good ol’ Clutch Cargo with his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot. Spinner of course being his young ward and Paddlefoot his pet dog. The thing about Clutch Cargo cartoons was that human actors mouths were superimposed over a static drawing of the character who was talking. Really bizarre if you look at it today. They did this to save animation costs, but it looked kinda spooky to have a hand drawn character with real lips. Clutch Cargo is one of those cartoons that’s so bad its good. Apparently this method of shooting human lips over a static cartoon inspired the opening for SpongeBob, so you can thank my generation for that!
Oh, and before anyone notices, I know that the plane Clutch used could not make the trip from Chicago to Latvia, but hey, this is a cartoon, man! 🙂
Of course today’s title is one of two things for you: One, a Fifth Dimension song, or two, what Superman used to say as he leapt into the sky. The 1960’s Filmation cartoons of “The New Adventures of Superman” actually had him saying “Down!” as Superman decided to fly back to Earth. Such a riot!
I think original Superman couldn’t fly either, he just jumped really far, Hulk-style. And picking up a car was about the extent of his strength.
I never saw the Clutch Cargo cartoons, but I think I’ll zip over to YouTube and see if they have any.
Also look up the other title they did; Space Angel. Same technique, just as creepy.
Superman could originally jump 1/8 of a mile.
Okay, YouTube does have them… and they are sincerely weird.
I remember Clutch Cargo, and Space Angel (used the same animation technique). I still remember Clutch’s theme song … actually pretty cool.
There would have been no point in mentioning that he could leap tall buildings in a single bound if he could just fly over them. He pretty much kept jumping farther and farther until he forgot to land. Who says being absent-minded is a bad thing? Not the Buddhists, certainly!
I was reading you comments on the animation of clutch cargo and it got me thinking of this phenomenon in Quebec thats been going on for the past 2 years, its a bunch of skit animations with play-dough and human mouth superimposition. if you liked clutch cargo, you might like this. Note that there is now a brand new english section http://tac.tv/
“Oh, and before anyone notices, I know that the plane Clutch used could not make the trip from Chicago to Latvia, but hey, this is a cartoon, man!”
LoL Well, maybe they could! There would just be whacking great load of stops on the way! 🙂
I didnt think anyone remembered ol’ Clutch; I haven’t thought of him in years.
hey Byron
I finally got around to registering here :p
hehe.
ive been toying around with a voice for jeff but
nothing usable has presented itself to me as of yet.
blarg
“There would have been no point in mentioning that he could leap tall buildings in a single bound if he could just fly over them.”
I can’t believe I never thought of that. Hah!
Oh no…I’ve caught up.
Now I’ll have to wait for the next chapter!
Heheheh.
Hey, it’s the first time Lorraine’s breasts actually seem larger than Robyn’s ones!
Tell me: were the girls this pretty back in those days?
I wonder if this animation technique also inspired the design of the “790” robot-head in the TV-series “LEXX”…?
Hi from Latvia! :)))
It was really big surprise see name of Latvia 😀
The single engine airplane looks like an American Bellanca C 27 not Ukraine/Russian Antonov AN 2 bi plane. Well at least now the Baltic sea will be warm enough to swim in it is brackish not too salty like the normal sea. The only question how they’d get passports and visas to even go to Lativa it was soviet territory in 1977 tourist rarely if ever visited Lativa. Don’t piss off the local KGB Vladimir Putin was employed as a KGB in 1977.