Mel-O-Toons: Cheap cartoons for weekday enjoyment

Follow along with me on this.

In my childhood years, there was a simple plan on who would take care of me. During the school year, I would stay with my mother and stepfather in whatever double-deep, double-wide trailer park they were located. And as soon as the school year ended, my Grandma Betty and my great-grandmother Anna Sharaf would drive from Boston, pick me up, and I would stay with them for the summer. 

And in the winter of 1973, because my home life was getting TOO toxic for a 9-year-old to handle, arrangements were made for Grandma Betty to pick me up and have me live at her place in West Roxbury during the school year. I would attend Patrick F. Lyndon Elementary, which was a short walk from her home. And after school, if I did all my schoolwork and was a good kid, I could go upstairs and watch cartoons on what were at the time Boston’s two independent television stations, WKBG-56 and WSBK-38. 

This was fun for me. There was nothing like a weekday cartoon cavalcade in Albany – we didn’t have cable TV at the time, and the lineup for the four local Albany TV stations were maybe some reruns of the Flintstones and a bunch of Mike Douglas / Merv Griffin talk shows. Yeah, and I could watch Sesame Street or The Electric Company if that worked for me.

But what I did discover on those Boston independent stations was a collection of some of the cheapest cartoons ever. We’re talking 6-minute cartoons with sloppy animation and audio that sounded like it was ported from phonograph records. 

And those cartoons included Mel-O-Toons. I would see three or four Mel-O-Toons each day, and their songs would get stuck in my head for what seemed like an eternity. 

Trust me … that was a helluva sea-change from The Mike Douglas Show. 

From what I was able to discern, Mel-O-Toons were produced in 1959 and syndicated nationwide. I mean, these things were still playing in Boston in 1973, so there’s definitely a ton of fandom for them. And yes, the soundtracks came from various children’s records. The video I posted above for “The Magic Clock” took its soundtrack from a Norman Rose-narrated “Young People’s Records” pressing. 

Today, many of the original Mel-O-Toons have fallen into the public domain, and you can purchase budget DVD’s of Mel-O-Toons on various websites. Trust me, you can enjoy the kitschiness of these cartoons … but for me, it’s just a reminder that at one point in my life, I was far away from a toxic homelife and trying to find myself in a whole new world. 

And that might be the best think I can personally take from this collection.