Terrytoons, Inc. was an American animation studio headquartered in New Rochelle, New York, which was active from 1929 until its closure on December 29, 1972 (and returned between 1987 and 1996 for television in name only). Founded by Paul Terry, Frank Moser, and Joseph Coffman, it operated out of the "K" Building in downtown New Rochelle and later nearby at 38 Centre Avenue. The studio created many cartoon characters including Fanny Zilch, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Little Roquefort, the Terry Bears, Dimwit, and Luno; Terry's pre-existing character Farmer Al Falfa was also often featured in the series.
The "New Terrytoons" period of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s produced new characters such as Clint Clobber, Tom Terrific, Deputy Dawg, Hector Heathcote, Hashimoto-san, Sidney the Elephant, Possible Possum, James Hound, Astronut, Sad Cat, The Mighty Heroes, and Sally Sargent. Also during that time, Ralph Bakshi got his start as an animator, and eventually as a director, at Terrytoons.
Terrytoons shorts were originally released to theaters by 20th Century Fox from 1935 until 1973. After Terry retired in 1956, CBS bought the studio, then later obtained the library. The enactment of the FCC's Financial Interest and Syndication Rules resulted in CBS selling Terrytoons to Viacom, who would suspend the studio's operations. The Terrytoons distribution rights were transferred to Paramount Pictures in 1994 when they were purchased by Viacom, at the same time television syndication for the classic shorts ended until 2025. Viacom went on to purchase CBS in 2000 and claimed ownership until the start of 2006, when CBS claimed ownership again. Throughout these times, numerous attempts were made to reboot the characters, but none got the green light. As of 2019, Paramount has re-owned the rights to the studio and its library following the re-merger of CBS Corporation and Viacom that became known as ViacomCBS (which became Paramount Global in 2022, and then Skydance Corporation as of 2026).
History Pre-Terrytoons era
Terry first worked for Bray Studios in 1916, where he created the Farmer Al Falfa series. He then made a Farmer Al Falfa short for Edison Pictures, called "Farmer Al Falfa's Wayward Pup" (1917), and some later cartoons were made for Paramount Pictures.
Around 1921, Terry founded the Fables animation studio, named for its Aesop's Film Fables series, in conjunction with the studio of Amedee J. Van Beuren. Fables churned out a Fable cartoon every week for eight years in the 1920s. Terry's brother, John Terry, animated on the films from 1921 to 1922. John soon left the business for comics, later introducing Scorchy Smith in 1930. Other animators included Frank Moser, John Foster, Jerry Shields, Harry Bailey, Bill Tytla, and Mannie Davis (brother of Art Davis.). Silent Era Aesop’s Fables
In 1928, Van Beuren, anxious to compete with the new phenomenon of talking pictures, released Terry's Dinner Time (released October 1928). Van Beuren then urged Terry to start producing actual sound films, instead of postsynchronizing the cartoons. Terry refused, and Van Beuren fired him in 1929. Almost immediately, Terry and many of his staff started up the Terrytoons studio near his former studio. One staff member during that time was Art Babbitt, who went on to become a well-known Disney animator.
Peak era
Terrytoons' first distributor was Educational Pictures, specialists in short-subject comedies and novelties. Audio-Cinema in the early 1930s backed the production of Terrytoons and distributed the Educational library internationally, except in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where the library was distributed by Educational and Gaumont-British in partnership with the Ideal Film Company.
The Fox Film company then released Educational's shorts to theaters in the 1930s, giving the Terry cartoons wide exposure. Following the merger between Fox Film and 20th Century, the newly formed 20th Century Fox later withdrew its support from Educational Pictures in 1938 due to the latter's financial troubles, and afterwards, the company both backed and distributed Terrytoons. Farmer Al Falfa was Terry's most familiar character in the 1930s; Kiko the Kangaroo was spun off the Farmer Al Falfa series. Most of the other cartoons featured stock generic animal characters and designs, one of which was a scruffy dog with a black patch around one eye; Terry ultimately built a series around this character, now known as Puddy the Pup.
Paul Terry may have realized that Educational was in financial trouble because he found another lucrative outlet for his product. In 1938, he arranged to release his older cartoons through home-movie distributor Castle Films. Educational went out of business within the year, but 20th Century Fox continued to release Terrytoons to theaters for the next two decades. With a new emphasis on "star" characters, Terrytoons featured the adventures of Super Mouse (later renamed Mighty Mouse), the talking magpies Heckle and Jeckle, the silly and flamboyant Gandy Goose and his partner Sourpuss, the unusually unlucky Dinky Duck, the mischievous mouse Little Roquefort, and the Terry Bears.
Through much of its history, the studio was considered one of the lowest-quality houses in the field, to the point where Paul Terry noted, "Let Walt Disney be the Tiffany's of the business. I want to be the Woolworth's!" Terry's studio had the lowest budgets and was among the slowest to adapt to new technologies such as sound (in about 1930), Technicolor (in 1938), and complex animation techniques. While its graphic style remained remarkably static for decades, it actually followed the sound cartoon trend of the late 1920s and early 1930s very quickly. Background music was entrusted to one man, Philip Scheib, and Terry's refusal to pay royalties for popular songs forced Scheib to compose his own original scores.
Paul Terry took pride in producing a new cartoon every other week, regardless of the quality of the films. Until 1957, screen credits were very sparse, listing only the writer (until 1950, solely John Foster; then Tom Morrison thereafter), director (Terry's three main directors were Connie Rasinski, Eddie Donnelly, and Mannie Davis), and musician (musical director Philip A. Scheib).
Despite the artistic drawbacks imposed by Terry's inflexible business policies, Terrytoons was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film under his tenure: All Out for V in 1942, My Boy, Johnny in 1944, and Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life in 1945. Prior to 1957, the studio's output was considered to be varying in quality due to their highly formulaic nature and low budgets, though John Kricfalusi, who later worked on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, praised the studio's inconsistent but competently fluid animation.
Changing hands The studio was sold outright by the retiring Paul Terry to CBS in 1955, but 20th Century Fox continued distribution. The deal closed the following year, and it became a division of the CBS Films subsidiary. Later in 1957, CBS put it under the management of UPA alumnus Gene Deitch, who had to work with even lower budgets.
Deitch significantly shifted the studio's direction away from its roots and instead focused on a style more reminiscent of UPA's cartoons. His most notable work at the studio were the Tom Terrific cartoon segments for the Captain Kangaroo television show. He also discontinued the Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle cartoons to instead put focus on a number of new characters, such as Sidney the Elephant,Sidney the Elephant at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on January 20, 2015. Gaston Le Crayon,Gaston Le Crayon at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on April 16, 2012. John Doormat, and Clint Clobber.Clint Clobber at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on April 16, 2012. One of Deitch's Sidney cartoons, "Sidney's Family Tree", was nominated for an Academy Award in 1958 for Best Animated Short, only to lose to Warner Bros.'s Looney Tunes short "Knighty Knight Bugs".
Bill Weiss soon took complete control of the studio and fired Deitch in 1959. Under his supervision, Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse went back into production. Besides the three core directors of the Terry era who were still involved as animators and directors, two Famous Studios stalwarts joined the crew, Dave Tendlar and Martin Taras. Other new theatrical cartoon series included Hector Heathcote, Luno, and Hashimoto-san. The studio also began producing the Deputy Dawg series for television in 1959. Another television production for the Captain Kangaroo show was "The Adventures of Lariat Sam", which was written in part by Gene Wood, who later became the announcer for several TV gameshows, including Family Feud. Phil Scheib continued as the studio's musical director through the mid-1960s, when he was replaced by Jim Timmens and Elliott Lawrence.
The best-known talent at Terrytoons in the 1960s was animator/director/producer Ralph Bakshi, who started his career in Terrytoons in the 1950s as an opaquer, but climbed the ranks and eventually helmed the Mighty Heroes series, as well as a series of cartoons starring his creation Sad Cat. Bakshi left Terrytoons in 1967 for Paramount's own cartoon studio, which closed its cartoon unit later that year. He went on to produce Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures for television in 1987, which was also produced by future The Ren & Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi.
Closure After Bakshi's departure, the studio petered out and finally closed in 1973. As a result of the FCC banning TV networks from owning cable television and syndication of television programs, CBS created Viacom Enterprises to handle all network programs beyond TV production and network broadcasting.
On July 4, 1971, Viacom Enterprises spun off from CBS; neither Viacom Enterprises nor CBS had any interest in Terrytoons. The Terrytoons film library was still regularly re-released to theaters by Fox. The studio's final short was an unsold TV pilot called Sally Sargent, about a 16-year-old girl who is a secret agent. Soon after Sally Sargent was completed, Viacom International ended their relationship with Fox and re-releases ceased. Terrytoons’ existence soon came to an end.
Art Bartsch, who kept the studio running after Bakshi left, soon died, as did Connie Rasinski and Bob Kuwahara, reducing the studio to a ghost studio with executive producer Bill Weiss and story supervisor Tom Morrison; Viacom kept the studio open until 1972. Weiss retired in September of that year, but was retained by Viacom as a studio consultant. By November 1972, Viacom International announced that Terrytoons would shutter its New Rochelle facility and relocate to Viacom International's office in New York City. By December 29, Viacom sold the now-abandoned New Rochelle studio.
Post-history and Legacy In two January 1973 interviews with Weiss and Morrison, Weiss believed that computer animation would be the destined future for animation, saying, "They’re now working on a way to produce animated work by computer", a notion that Morrison was vehemently against. Weiss also said that if the Terrytoons studio were to continue, it would have to open a new facility on the West Coast. No new studio ever opened, though, and any new cartoons were outsourced to other studios, instead.
In the late 1970s, Filmation Associates licensed the rights to make the new Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle series from Viacom International. The series The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle aired from 1979 to 1980 on CBS.