George Pal not George’s Pal defeats the Screwball Army

The growth of information available on the Internet continues to amaze me. A few years ago I don’t think I could find this little factoid. Now there are numerous references to it. This is what I was looking for:

In the late 1950’s I would go home from school for lunch. I had an hour, a real “lunch hour.” It was long enough to grab a bite to eat and watch Topeka’s local kid’s afternoon TV show with the puppet “Charlie Horse.” It was mostly a stream of old cartoons introduced by Charlie. They were cartoons from the 30’s and 40’s like Bonzo, Felix the Cat and Betty Boop.

I recall an stop action cartoon in which an army of nuts and bolts goes on a rampage. I was perfectly aware that it represented the Nazis because the echos of WW II were still so close. A number of years ago I saw snippets of it again on some PBS program but until I typed in “stop action” and “cartoons” I had no clue how to find out about it. That’s changed. The cartoon had the improbably title: “Tulips shall bloom” because it was set in Holland. The nuts and bolts are the “Screwballs Army” but they lose when the rain falls. Sounds like the Eastern campaign.

I was hoping to find the animation imbedded somewhere but for the time being I could only find this page with pictures and a brief plot description of the toon.

For my money it sure beats some of the toons like the Smurffs and He Man from my children’s cartoon Era.

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