Back in December, I wrote about the original art for the 1930s Yippy pinback button that was part of an excellent set of such buttons given away at movie theaters. Well, Heritage Auctions recently sold two more Scrappy-related pieces of art from the series. And even though they didn’t end up in the Scrappyland collection, I’m pleased to know they still exist and have found a home.
Here’s Scrappy himself—one of the best drawings I’ve seen of him, although I wasn’t aware until now that he has buck teeth.
And here’s Vontzy—better known as Oopy. In fact, this is the only example of him being identified as Vontzy for a merchandising project that I know about off the top of my head, although that was what Dick Huemer originally called him. (Oopy was a more dignified stage name, I guess.)
As far as I know, the set included five Mintz buttons: Scrappy, Vontzy, Yippy, Krazy Kat, and Krazy’s canine girlfriend Kitty. I own the art for Yippy and Kitty, but there were variants of the Yippy button, at least, with different drawings, so one Yippy is still at large. Krazy is also still missing. Here’s hoping they remain extant and in good hands.
Do you discuss Dick Huemer’s work in Fleischer’s cartoons on your site?
Mostly, we cover Scrappy and the Mintz studio. But if there’s any area where we’re inclined to go off-topic, it’s stuff relating to Dick Huemer. We’ve done so on a few occasions.
I love Dick Huemer’s drawing style, and the wonderful cartoons he made for the Fleischers are among my favorites. I particularly like the very personal style he adopted in the early Screen Song films he animated, for example in La Paloma (1930), and it’s a real shame that Huemer ended up abandoning animation altogether in favor of writing stories.
If you’ve written anything about Dick Huemer’s work at the Fleischer studio, please feel free to post it here – I’d be grateful.
I love his drawing style and way with a pen, as seen in Fleischer cartoons and the Scrappys he did. I’m pleased to own an illustration he did of Scrappy, seemingly for a book I’ve never seen, and own a few more that -might- be by him.
Dick was involved with some good projects as a writer, too, but I agree it would have been nice to see him continue to draw for publication more. Have you seen the pieces he did in the 1970s for his Funnyworld column?
No, I don’t know about these articles Huemer wrote for Funnyworld.
Can they be viewed on the web?
It seems that you have to buy the book to be able to read Huemer’s articles. Since I don’t live in the USA, I unfortunately can’t afford to buy it because of customs duties.
Will you be able to publish an extract from Huemer’s articles?