The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961)

Remember when these DIY kits were all the rage. They could turn you into Picasso or Michelangelo or Sir Christopher Wren so long as you sent away for your “free” pack enclosing fifty quid and some Sugar Puff tokens. This one will turn you into Walt Disney, or even Bob Godfrey. Taking a swipe at just about every marketing gimmick from the 1950s, this spoofs not just the whole industry but the gullible public who really believe in these quick fix kits too. It’s a quickly paced feature that uses some, admittedly very basic, animation to ridicule using wrongly attributed stock footage and artwork to sell products that could never deliver on their ambitious advertising claims. It’s good fun and you can see, quite clearly, how this might have inspired some future artistes.