Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
(Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2 discs)

Cartoons That Time Forgot: The Ub Iwerks Collection, Volumes 1 & 2
(Image Entertainment, 2 discs)

The three latest installments of the indispensible WALT DISNEY TREASURES maintain their impeccably high standards, but THE ADVENTURES OF OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT is of exceptional historical value even for this series.

Walt Disney's first cartoon star preceded Mickey Mouse by a couple of years, and the world's most famous and beloved animated character/theme park host/corporate symbol might never have come into being if it hadn't been for a bit of unscrupulousness on the part of Disney's former business partner, Charles Mintz of Universal, who stole Oswald -- and most of Walt's animating staff -- out from under him.  Subsequently Mickey was created out of financial and creative desperation, for which animation fans have been thanking the heavens ever since.  Now, after eight decades, Disney has obtained the rights to their long-eared bunny through an ingenious bit of legal finagling, trading ABC sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC-Universal, which still owned the rights to Oswald all these decades later.

Unfortunately, it seems that just half of the Oswald shorts (13 out of the 26 produced) survive today, but they're presented here in remarkably good condition, all things considered.  Leonard Maltin, whose brainchild the TREASURES series is (and to whom I therefore owe an eternal debt) and who serves as on-camera host for all 25 -- thus far -- volumes in the series, warns us that because of the age and condition of the shorts, the picture and sound are not up to the usual top-notch quality associated with the TREASURES releases.  I can understand his reasoning -- but watching the Oswald shorts, which I was thrilled to be able to do after a lifetime of Disney fandom, I had few if any complaints.

Six of the shorts include optional audio commentaries by animation historians Jerry Beck and Mark Kausler, each of whom are heard on three shorts, joined on one each by Maltin.  It's interesting to note how many elements from these Oswald shorts later resurfaced in the much more familiar Mickey cartoons.  Plane Crazy and Building A Building, for example, owe much of their content to their Oswald predecessors The Ocean Hop and Sky Scrappers.

Oswald Comes Home is a 14-minute featurette that explains how the Disney company managed to retrieve the rights to their long-lost character.  It follows the shorts on Disc 1, while the bulk of extras appear on Disc 2.  The main attraction for this viewer is Leslie Iwerks' outstanding documentary on her grandfather, THE HAND BEHIND THE MOUSE: THE UB IWERKS STORY.  I'd seen it screened only once, back in 1999 at the L.A. County Museum of Art as part of a Disney animation retrospective, and it was then made available only at the Disney theme parks and only on VHS.  Now it has come to DVD and it was definitely worth the wait.  The 90-minute, Kelsey Grammer-narrated film reveals just how invaluable Walt Disney's lifelong friend and animating partner really was, as his designing skills together with his remarkable ability to complete an astonishing 700 drawings per day saved the Disney studio from financial ruin following the Oswald-Mintz debacle.  Iwerks left Disney for much of the 1930s to establish his own animation studio, but that endeavor didn't last and he eventually returned to the Disney studios where he belonged, continuing to make advances in the art -- and technology -- of animation, and receiving a special Oscar in the process.  Alfred Hitchcock even borrowed Iwerks from Disney in 1963 to design the special effects for THE BIRDS.

Disc 2 also gives us a sampling of Iwerks' efforts with six of his pre- and post-Oswald Disney shorts, including the very first Mickey Plane Crazy, the first fully-synchronized sound cartoon Steamboat Willie, and the first entry in the Silly Symphonies series, The Skeleton Dance.  For Disney and/or animation fans, this set is a must-have.

Meanwhile, volumes 1 and 2 of CARTOONS THAT TIME FORGOT: THE UB IWERKS COLLECTION contain a total of 58 of the cartoons that were made independently by Iwerks in the years after he temporarily left Disney in the early-to-mid-1930s.

While they are interesting to see, and while I certainly can respect and appreciate Image's efforts to collect so many of them in one place, they do not hold up nearly as well as the classic Disney shorts (or, for that matter, the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies).  Several of these shorts contain scenes and characters that are blatant Disney rip-offs, while Iwerks' original characters -- such as Flip the Frog, Willie Whopper, etc. -- do not possess anywhere near the warmth or appeal of their Disney counterparts.  While many of the shorts showcase a number of Iwerks' impressive technical innovations, they just do not touch my heart.

Additionally, the back covers of both discs claim that these cartoons are "pristine new prints made from the original negatives"...and nothing could be further from the truth.  They are anything but pristine, and if indeed they are new prints then the original negatives must be in ghastly shape -- which wouldn't be surprising since nearly all of these shorts were considered lost for so many years.  Their quality ranges from pretty good to downright awful, which also hampers one's enjoyment.  What a shame.

WALT DISNEY TREASURES: THE ADVENTURES OF OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT -- Very highly recommended.
CARTOONS THAT TIME FORGOT: THE UB IWERKS COLLECTION -- Not recommended (unless you're an animation historian and feel you must own everything).