America has had a long love affair with cartoons and that romance seems to be getting even hotter. According to Video Magazine, the appearance of cartoons on laserdisc has fanned the fires.
Last year, voyaging into new territory, George Feltenstein, MGM-United Artists senior vice president and general manager, decided to reissue old "Looney Tunes" cartoons in a deluxe $100 laserdisc collection. Most people thought he was plain looney. The cartoons on laserdisc were a major success, with 14,000 five-disc sets sold, nearly five times the original sales forecast.Disney, of course, has known the potential of cartoons for a long time, beginning with Mickey Mouse's first on-screen appearance in "Steamboat Willie" and the earliest full-length animated feature, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Since then, the company has continued to thrive on the success of cartoons, especially by using a clever marketing strategy. The tactic involves heavily promoting tapes and discs of movie favorites, then removing them from store shelves after brief selling periods, thereby increasing demand among consumers.
Aside from familiar cartoon personalities such as Pinocchio and Bugs Bunny, new animated releases are featuring a wide variety of innovative characters and plots that appeal to every age group. Environmental issues, anti-war sentiments, science-fiction comedy and even erotic images are being successfully brought to the screen by independent animators from around the world. For example, "The Legend of the Overfiend," a Japanese-made adult cartoon, set house records at one New York City theater this year, selling out 24 weekends in a row as a midnight movie.
Doug Ranney, publisher of Whole Toon Catalog, has a theory explaining the current overwhelming success of cartoons: "As the baby boomers progress demographically into a higher age group, the stuff they've always liked enters the mainstream," he said.