I've been watching the Toon In With Me and Saturday Morning Cartoons blocks on MeTV, but just today, what I saw was an interesting surprise: they've just aired a made-for-TV 1960s Popeye cartoon ("Matinee Idol Popeye") as part of this Saturday's Popeye and Pals block.

I saw the schedule listing for Matinee Idol Popeye a few days ago and didn't think they would actually go through with airing it. Guess I was wrong. Anyway, here's some DVNR.


Not sure why we still have 4:3 pan-and-scan television broadcasts in the year 2021. If they're so insistent to air the CinemaScope cartoons cropped, Warner already made 16:9 pan-and-scan versions of these shorts back when they were restored. Those are the ones they should be using.

Cat Fishin' was the last cartoon they aired in today's block, mentioning it here since it wasn't listed on the schedule for some reason.

Stork Naked finally aired on TV again after all these years and in its (mostly) proper aspect ratio.

Unfortunately, cropped versions of the Cinemascope cartoons are mostly what WB has provided for broadcast and streaming. Why the problem still persists in the age of widescreen being default, I have no idea.

Was this one those KFS Popeye shorts that's PD as Jerry mentioned on "Stu's Show" or did Me-TV got the license from KFS?

upon doing some research i was surprised to see matinee idol has an invalid copyright date of 1940 (MCMXL). there are no renewal registrations within the renewal time frame (1967-68) so it may be safe to assume it's PD

JB said today that the KFS cartoons are owned by Warners and were part of the MeTV deal. While I don't mind seeing them once in a while (what's the fun of Saturday morning without random variety?) I truly hope they don't usurp the Fleischer classics, or see anything later than the '60s TV cartoons.

That KFS Popeye was some of the worst DVNR. At least it wasn't a good cartoon.

The Deitch T&J today is acoustically one of the worst, I just had to fast-forward through the screeching cacophony, couldn't take that crap.

Eager Beaver AND Big House Bunny are scheduled for the 15th, very nice.

I find the former interesting cause a few days ago I did something that makes it appear to be on the HBO Max intersystem of sorts, you can read about on the thread for that though

Guess which cartoons will have new rescans on March 15

Didn't see Cock a doodle dog. Very nice to know we'll get 3 cartoons in HD (even if one was on HBO Max and got removed). Least we're getting lost restorations

On the 17th Aviation Vacation will air, possibly they will cut out the blackface stereotypes but i have my doubts

They cut out those ethnic gags in his MGM cartoons, so no doubt that short will be edited too.

Stop That Noise aired as the transfer from the Olive Blu-rays.


Busybody Bear aired in HD today with a great looking restoration, though I suspect they cut corners on the audio as per usual. There was some kind of camera wiggle/zoom after the credits, though I'm not sure if that was a problem on Warner's end or MeTV's end.




Apparently MeTV received the initial new version of Rabbit's Kin from Warner instead of the fixed one, so now all of America can experience 'R8BERT McKIMSON' on national television.



The greatest cartoon ever made aired again today.

Fun lineup today - four Warners and a Betty Boop.

HD version of Baton Bunny finally resurfaced (unless it was already on Amazon or iTunes). Low-pitch problems are still present.

Hopefully this means the good removed cartoons (Hamateur Night, Ding Dog Daddy) resurface next. That said, Big House Bunny airs next week, which would be nice in HD

What do you mean by "good removed cartoons"?

The shorts removed off of HBO Max I think were the best of them

The Boop cartoon was Grampy's Indoor Outing..... with full U.M.& M. Tv Corp titles. I thought I was back in the 1960s again watching tv after school.

So Does an Automobile ended up not airing today. Tall Betty has been defeated (for now). Instead we got an encore presentation of Caballero Droopy's new 'we needed to get this out really quickly' transfer.

At the very least it looks like they sourced it pretty well. Those colors look very nice