NoBrainerBargains Blog: Product Review: Lassie's Rescue Rangers Hand-Painted Animation Cels NoBrainerBargains

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Product Review: Lassie's Rescue Rangers Hand-Painted Animation Cels

When you were 9 years old, on a Saturday morning you would turn on the television in your home and flip through the dial until you found a cartoon to watch. If it was 1973, you might have found this:

If you liked dogs, this would have been a wonderful show to watch, especially if you liked the most famous American canine, Lassie.

When Lassie's Rescue Rangers aired, Lassie was already part of the vernicular of American culture to mean loyalty, friendship, helpfulness and a best friend for any boy or girl growing up.

From 1954 to March of 1973, the television show Lassie touched viewers across generations until it was taken off the air. In 1972, the ABC network aired the Filmation movie The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie: Lassie and the Spirit of Thunder Mountain. In 1973, Lassie's Rescue Rangers followed as a spin-off from this movie.

Each episode depicted the Turner family (Ben, Laura, Jackie, Susan and Ben Jr, the youngest) and Lassie saving Thunder Mountain park and its visitors with their Rescue 1 helicopter. Helping the Turner family and Lassie were the Rescue Rangers, they were a group of eight animals, including Groucho the Owl, Old Toothless the Mountain Lion, Musty the skunk, and Robbie the Raccoon. Also of great value to the Forest Force was Gene Fox, a Native American, who was Ben Jr.’s friend. Gene knew the Thunder Mountain National Park better than even most of the animals, making him a strong ally for the Turner family as they struggled to protect the environment and save lives.

While supply lasts, No Brainer Bargains is featuring more than 50 animation cels from this television show depicting a scene involving the main characters in action. Each comes with an accompanying background production page that was used in the making of the cartoon.

An animation cel (short for celluloid) is a transparent sheet in which characters or objects are drawn or painted to make a cartoon. The character is hand-painted on the sheet and placed over a scene or background. Usually a painted cel is just one of thousands that are used to make a cartoon. This process was modus operandus in animation studios until computers assisted in the process starting in the 1990s.

Each of the cels we have available for sale are 10.5 x 12 inches and the background page that accompanies each cel is approximately 11 x 17. Each purchase includes the background page with the cel. Each background page and cel remain joined together as they had been thirty-five years ago by scotch tape during production of the cartoon.

For some of the cels that have close-ups of the character or show a character in motion, there are three cels that look like one, the finished product. These layers show how a character was created in production- one for the body, one for the character's facial outline and hair and one for the facial features.

Each cel has its own certificate of authenticity in the form of a sticker that is on the cel itself. Your purchase will be shipped in a sturdy flat envelope first class.

We hope you will agree that these animation cels will make a great addition to you or a Lassie fan you know and will bring that person back, if not ephemerally, to when they were 9 years old again.

Labels: Product Review