Puppetoons

George Pal's Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U.S. in the 1940s. They are memorable for their use of replacement animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as is the case with most stop motion puppet animation.

The series began when Pal made an advertising film using "dancing" cigarettes in 1932, which led to a series of theatrical advertising shorts for Philips Radio in the Netherlands. This was followed by a series for Horlicks Malted Milk in England. These shorts have an art deco design, often reducing characters to simple geometric shapes. A typical Puppetoon required 9,000 individually carved and machined wooden figures or parts.

Pal came to the U.S. in 1940, and produced dozens of Puppetoons for Paramount Pictures, several of which received Academy Award nominations, including "Tulips Shall Grow", "Jasper and the Beanstalk]", "Tubby the Tuba", and "John Henry and the Inky-Poo".

In 1956, the Puppetoons as well as most of Paramount's shorts, were sold to television distributor U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. National Telefilm Associates bought out U.M.&M. and continued to syndicate them in the 1950s and 1960s as "Madcap Models".

Pal also used the Puppetoon name, if not the technique, in several of his feature films, including The Great Rupert, Tom Thumb and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. In these films, the individual wooden figures were billed as The Puppetoons.