Sometimes true treasures come along to remind us that we haven’t seen everything. The latest are a stunning cache of George Pal’s Puppetoon shorts that have just been unearthed. Acclaimed by critics, the public and some of the biggest stars over 70 years ago, many of them vanished, as if forever. Even the ones with images of Bugs Bunny and Superman.

The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 is finally here because almost two dozen wildly imaginative, surreal and comedic stop-motion short films–most considered thought lost, incomplete or hopelessly damaged–have been found and restored since the first set of classics were presented by producer Arnold Leibovit in 1987 as The Puppetoon Movie.

The original process for making Puppetoons earned an Oscar for producer/director George Pal, who continued to use the technique and its properties for groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy films like The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Destination Moon and tom thumb (which is featured this week on our sister site, Cartoon Research). This technique, “replacement animation”, is still in use today at Laika Studios on films like Coraline and Kubo and The Two Strings. Pal’s designs, storytelling and innovations are acknowledged as inspiration for everything from Star Trek and Star Wars, to Spielberg and Disney. Walt himself was a close friend of George Pal.

“I believe too that the notion of Audio-Animatronics, in Walt’s mind, got started somehow through George Pal,” said Roy E. Disney to Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 producer Arnold Leibovit in 1985. “The evolution of Disneyland was a very slow, gradual ‘feeling one’s way’ kind of a thing in this studio, and I think Walt and George must have been conferring in those early years a good deal on how to do certain things because the notion of Disneyland was really somewhere between cartoons and Puppetoons, but on a grand scale… at Disneyland, certainly you see ‘it’s a small world,’’ which is really a collection of Puppetoons, or Puppetoon characters rather.”

Pal’s low-key manner, reputation for integrity and unique approach to animation endeared him to several giants of animation’s golden age, including Walter Lantz and Leon Schlesinger, who allowed Pal to use Bugs Bunny—animated by Bob McKimson–for a Puppetoon included in this new compilation.

Walt lent out master Mickey Mouse animator and character designer Freddy Moore for several Puppetoons, including one of the outstanding shorts on this set, A Hatful of Dreams starring two classically “Moore-like” characters, Punchy and Judy (Judy is on the Blu-ray and DVD set cover). The premise finds townspeople taking on new personalities as various hats land on their heads, nine years before Elmer and Bugs experience a similar phenomenon in Bugs’ Bonnets. At one point, Superman’s iconic logo and imagery are part of the cartoon, with the blessings of DC Comics.

There are too many moments in too many films to list, but among the startling elements to look for are the use of unusual media by Pal and his collaborators, who at various times included such legends as Ray Harryhausen, Wah Chang, Gene Warren and music greats like Peggy Lee and André Kostalanetz.

One film that makes its HD debut on this set for the first time was done mostly in glass. Pal’s advertising client, Philips electronics, gave him the use of their glass factory for animation. One result was the dazzling, dreamlike Ship of the Ether. Movie puppeteer Bob Baker, who founded the landmark Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, was an animator on the film.

“Bob Baker told me about working with glass,” Leibovit said. “It was a nightmare for the animators. When they shot in glass, the reflection of the light was a major problem because of the position of the camera and the lighting. They had to be careful there was no dust or marks on the objects and no reflections of the animators.

“George was always stretching the boundaries like that, using new materials. He had these wonderful European craftspeople, artists from all over the world working on Puppetoons. There were many languages spoken in the studio. Woodworkers, dealmakers, sculptors—they would all handcraft every minute detail.

Two other fascinating Philips films in the Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 are Pal’s hand drawn Radio Valve Revolution, one of Pal’s earliest films, and In Lamp Light Land, offering an opportunity for viewers to see how a three-dimensional Puppetoon compares onscreen to its earlier cel-animated counterpart.

“Philips gave him a lot of flexibility,” said Leibovit. “They were commercials shown in movie theaters. But the commercial portion was only one part of the film. He expanded it so there was a story going on for several minutes before. You’d have the product at the very end. They let George do what he wanted to do. And they were so popular, Philips kept asking for more.”

For Arnold Leibovit, one of the greatest treasures of The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 is Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from 1935. “In fact, that’s how Volume Two came together,’ he said. “A lot of these films were not available. No one knew where they were, but then they started turning up. I found Ali Baba at the British Film Institute.”

Someone like Roy E. Disney did not use the word “genius” lightly. “I think one of the perhaps marks of genius is that I don’t think that anyone has ever done it better, in all the years that have gone by,” he said. “You can find those influences of the kinds of things he was doing today… that’s rather remarkable.”

Consumer Notice: Some of the films in this collection, particularly the Jasper titles, depict some ethnic stereotypes and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. These examples are a product of their time and have not been censored because editing them would be the same as denying the stereotypes ever existed.