Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950)

I've mixed views about this Oscar winning cartoon.On the script side, it's still worth while to watch, and so much more so, 50 years and as many big wars since WW2, as humankind is less human, less kind, and less able to understand the deep self of the people across the Ocean, or the street.Gerald is a mute boy, only able to pronounce boing-boing. When extraterrestrials from the planet Moo descend on his backyard, and take him in their flying-saucer, as a human specimen for study, they got the impression that all earthlings spoke like that. Being very clever, the extraterrestrials develop a language based on boing-boing intonations, and are still sending messages to Earth with the only sentence, "boing-boing".On the drawing, colors, and repetitiveness, and also stridency, of the "language" signs, I'm afraid I'm not with the majority here. Even when I saw this title in 1965, I found it too simplistic, and still do. I grant you that I was not the child this cartoon aims at, and today's manga and similar comics are 300% worse than this, but I would not accord this title an Oscar...(First posted September 19, 2003; re-posted after clarifying with IMDb that it belongs here, not with the 1956 longer version of this cartoon, similarly titled.)

MCBOING BOING is one of the cartoons that have stuck in my head over the years and finally decided to look into it as was pleasantly surprised and was also surprised on the people involved with the production. If I remember correctly we had to watch it on a UHF station and this meant using a converter in those days UHF not part of regular TV to tune in the local station to watch the cartoon a big deal in those days which made the show even more mysterious. I remember all the sound effects that Gerald used to talk. A great memory from 50+ years ago. I'll have to see what other memories might be hiding on the web. By the way I try to do computer animation thats where the johnl3d comes into the picture

This short, which won an Oscar, spawned two sequels and a TV cartoon show, has minimal animation but adelightful script (by Theodore Geisel aka Dr. Seuss) and aneven more memorable and enchanting main character. UPA pioneered a style of animation that even influenced Disney during the mid-1950s and produced some of the best animated shorts done in the late 1940s and the 1950s. This is on of their finest. God to have it in print. Highly recommended.

In my opinion, this is the best cartoon ever made. It has terrific animation and a charming story, it is witty and lively, and of course has a "moral" in that you don't have to be the same as everybody else to succeed as the title character ends up in a wonderful job, despite his "disability."