Boy Meets Dog

Genre: Educational

Year Published: 1938

Creator: Castle

Format: 16mm

Sound: sound

Complete Record:

Presents a story about the boy who can't be a regular fellow because his dad won't let him. "GUM MASSAGE –BAH!" Classic dental propaganda rapidly turns to hallucinogenic revenge fantasy in this classic Walter Lantz cartoon industrial starring cartoonist Gene Byrne’s REGULAR FELLERS comic strip characters! See Dad tortured by an angry Pixie tribunal who come off the family wall paper to stress dental health in rhythm & song before extracting a sadistic punishment! Also features vocal caricatures of popular 1930s radio personalities Fred Allen, Joe Penner and Ed Wynn. Easily one of Lantz’s strangest-and best! A commercial short made for the Bristol-Myers Co. (plugging their toothpaste) that features the characters from the "Reg'lar Fellers" syndicated newspaper comic strip by Gene Byrnes. The plot concerns a boy who has an old grouch for a daddy, runs off, meets a dog and joins a gang of kids. Meanwhile,the old man has a nightmare,where he sees himself as an old sour puss because he doesn't take care of his teeth and gums. He sees an electric sign for Bristol-Myers toothpaste, and that sets him on a more positive course. (The few-seconds of film showing the sign represents the only commercial intrusion in this short).BOY MEETS DOG (1938, sound, 10 min, color, 35mm)SPONSOR: Bristol-Myers Co. PRODUCTION CO.: Caravel Films. DIRECTOR: Walter Lantz. MUSIC: Frank Churchill.RESOURCES: Copyright not registered; “This Animating Business,” Bus Scrn 1, no. 1 (1938): 24; “Reaching the Consumer with Films,” Pr Ink Mon 37 (July 1938): 71. HOLDINGS: LC.Animated short promoting Bristol-Myers’s Ipana toothpaste. The cartoon uses characters from Gene Byrne’s comic strip, Reg’lar Fellers. NOTE: Produced in Technicolor, Boy Meets Dog was said to have been one of the most expensive commercials ever made for theatrical distribution as an “added attraction.” For more about Caravel Films, see Arthur Edwin Krows, “Motion Pictures—Not for Theatres,” Ed Scrn 18 (Dec. 1939): 363.