2,600 years ago, Aesop said…

Long before Paul Terry found success with Mighty Mouse, he spent the 1920s producing the Aesop’s Fables series starring his original character Farmer Al Falfa and an endless cast of violent, funny animals. Loosely connected to those ancient tales and bookended with a “sugar-coated pill of wisdom,” the cartoons were an all-encompassing umbrella of new dynamics and concepts.

In Aesop’s Fables – The 1920s, Volume 1, Cartoon Logic has meticulously assembled and restored 20 Paul Terry cartoons giving the animation pioneer his first high definition silent film collection, and showcasing why Walt Disney once said he had hoped to one day make animated shorts as good as Aesop’s Fables.

Sourced from the best surviving elements archived at Blackhawk Films, Volume 1 features cartoons ranging from the birth of the series in 1921, to 1928’s Dinner Time (the first theatrical cartoon with synchronized sound ever released). Each short comes with an optional commentary track by animation historians Thad Komorowski and Charlie Judkins teaming up to tell the full story of Paul Terry and Farmer Al. Charlie also lends his accomplished musical stylings with newly recorded original scores for each short.

Bonus cartoons include an alternate Commonwealth cut of Dinner Time and two Charlie Chaplin shorts by Paul’s older brother John Terry.

Included are: Mice in Council, The Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, The Fable of the Fox and Crow, The Spendthrift, The Fable of a Raisin and a Cake of Yeast, The Pearl Divers, Do Women Pay?, Herman the Great Mouse, Wine, Women and Song, The Ugly Duckling, Hungry Hounds, Her Ben, Anti-Fat, When the Snow Flies, Hard Cider, Subway Sally, Small Town Sheriff, The Spider’s Lair, Jungle Days and Dinner Time.