Events this week has made this late, so let’s do a short one…and the only episode I could find. Rod Rocket may be the first official project by Filmation Associates, while The New Adventures Of Superman could be their first…what, solo gig? It was, according to Wikipedia, “originally produced by True Line, a small Los Angeles animation studio that subcontracted the newly formed Filmation Associates created by Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland in the early 1960s. Scheimer and Sutherland had met while working at Larry Harmon Productions on the made-for-TV Bozo the Clown and Popeye cartoons. SIB Productions, a Japan-based company with an American office in Chicago, co-produced the series in conjunction with the CBS Television Network.”
I took a quick look at Lou Scheimer’s autobiograpy, Creating The Filmation Generation, which I really need to finish. It seems SIB started the project and Lou & Hal were brought in to make it work. The series were 5 short episodes that would end up being a half-hour episode if put together. I was only able to find this lone episode, so it serves an example.
I had never heard of this show prior to looking up Sutherland’s work for this series and I wouldn’t mind seeing more. I don’t know if I’d be a fan at this point but it’s a forgotten part of Filmation history.
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