Flip the Frog was Iwerks' first creation. He made his debut appearance in "Fiddlesticks." In this cartoon, Iwerks supplied Flip with a bow tie and buttons, but there is no mistaking that Flip is a frog. When he first appears in "Fiddlesticks," Flip hops on all fours from one lily pad to the next as he crosses a pond. And he doesn't talk. He croaks. Powers was disappointed when he saw "Fiddlesticks." He immediately requested that Iwerks give Flip more human characteristics. Powers was likely responding to one of the crucial failings of many early '30s cartoon characters: lack of personality. Iwerks heeded Powers' request. The next time out, Flip wore shoes, gloves, and pants, and he walked upright. He still didn't talk much. In fact, Flip would never become a big talker in his subsequent cartoons. In "The Village Barber," for example, he sings as part of a barbershop quartet, but he doesn't sing words. He sounds like a tuba instead. Iwerks would continue to modify his creation until Flip looked more like a little boy than a frog.

Whereas most Hollywood fodder of the '30s was designed to make the audience forget about the depression, Flip the Frog constantly ran into money problems. In "The Room Runners," he tries to sneak out of a hotel without paying his bill. In "What a Life," he panhandles on the street. And when he does have a job, as in "Laughing Gas" where he's a dentist, his office walls are badly cracked. In these cartoons, Flip becomes a resourceful, plucky character who frequently must struggle to survive.

The Flip the Frog series contains some of the best looking cartoons of the early '30s. The animation is clean and smooth, with nice shadings and watercolor-like effects. However, weak story construction hampers most of the cartoons. Cartoons that get off to good starts frequently lack adequate build ups. Gags are loosely strung together without a strong sense of direction. In "The Cuckoo Murder Case," Flip encounters Death leafing through a ledger. When he flips the next page, Death reveals a picture of Flip. Apparently Flip is next on Death's list. But the cartoon is only seconds from its end at this point. Disappointingly, there is little time left for anything to happen with Flip and Death. Or "Techno-Cracked" offers a promising situation: Flip builds a "mechanical man" to do the chores around the house, but Flip quickly discovers he has little control over the robot. Unfortunately, all the story's imagination went into the premise (which prefigures Disney's "Sorcerer's Apprentice") with little left for the ensuing scenes.

The best Flip the Frog cartoons frequently contain surprisingly ribald comedy. In "The Room Runners," a policeman chases Flip until his quarry stops and peeks through a keyhole. As the policeman and Flip trade time at the keyhole, a point-of-view perspective shows us the object of their attention: a naked woman toweling off after a bath. And in "The Milkman," a sleepy Flip walks into a barn to milk the cow; however, he walks into the bull's stall by mistake. We can't see what happens, but we can hear it: "Ouch!" yells the bull. "Let go!"

By 1933, audiences had grown bored with Flip, so Iwerks retired him for a new character, Willie Whopper. The Willie Whopper cartoons are some of the most underrated cartoons of the 1930s. Whereas lack of imagination frequently bedeviled the Flip the Frog cartoons, the Willie Whopper cartoons are all about imagination. These cartoons take the form of whopping yarns told by a mischievous boy named Willie: "Did I ever tell you how I won the national air race?" says Willie at the beginning of "The Air Race." "Hey did I ever tell you this one?" he says at the beginning of "Stratos Fear."

The best Willie Whopper cartoons contain the most outrageous stories. "The Good Scout," for example, begins innocently enough with some simple good deeds--such as when Willie helps an old lady across the street--but when Willie learns about a kidnapping, he comes to the aid of the victim by riding on a stream of water from a fire hydrant. It lifts him to the top of a skyscraper. But this is nothing compared to "Stratos Fear," where an overdose of gas at the dentist's office causes Willie to float like a balloon. He floats out of the office, through the stratosphere, and into outer space. There, he meets an alien scientist who has created a ray gun that will immediately process pigs and cows into cuts of meat. Will he next turn the ray gun on Willie? And what selection of meat might result? "Stratos Fear" is a wild, nightmarish journey comparable to some of the more outlandish Max Fleischer cartoons (such as "Snow White").

While creating the Willie Whopper series, Ub Iwerks began work on another series--ComiColor Cartoons. These are the best looking cartoons produced by Iwerks. While these cartoons are frequently pleasant but bland, the series contains a few gems. "Humpty Dumpty" begins like a musical with two young lovers--Humpty Dumpty, Jr. and the Easter Egg--singing "Spooning in a Spoon" while a chorus of dancing eggs kick up their legs in the background. Our hero and heroine are menaced by the Bad Egg, who pushes Easter into a pot of boiling water. Humpty rescues her but now she's hardboiled: "Aww, scram," she tells the boy egg. In "Jack Frost," a bear cub runs away from home and meets a scarecrow who provides a scat vocal reminiscent of Cab Calloway. And in "Balloonland," we get a classic bit of fantasy--a world made entirely of balloons is menaced by the Pin Cushion Man. After he weasels his way inside the gates of the balloon city, he starts flinging pins left and right.

The ComiColor cartoons utilized the Cinecolor process. This was a two-color system that emphasized red and blue at the expense of green. So the cartoons don't contain a complete spectrum of colors, but the animation is meticulous. Iwerks also occasionally utilized a multi-plane camera--which reportedly he made from spare Chevy parts. This process allowed for impressive depth-of-field effects. But disappointingly, all these sequences in Iwerks' cartoons are throwaways. They occur without drawing much attention and they're over before you know it.

Music plays an important role in the Ub Iwerks cartoons. Every step by Flip the Frog is typically accompanied by a whack on a wood block while a jazzy beat sets the tempo. But whereas Max Fleischer brought in Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, the Mills Brothers, and other major musical performers, the Ub Iwerks cartoons receive less distinctive accompaniment. However, frequently the music is closely tied to the action in imaginative ways. In "The Village Barber," a spider dances on a piano keyboard. The keys he hits reflect his mood. When he spies a fly and begins creeping up on his prey, the keys that he strikes build in intensity. In contrast, the ComiColor Cartoons were typically designed as mini-operettas. In many cases, the characters sing their lines, as in "The Brementown Musicians," where a quartet of barnyard animals try to make a living by singing house to house. And in "Summertime," an orchestra sets the mood--as in Fantasia (which was still five years away)--while a woodland comes to life. A satyr struggles from his sleep, flowers dance, and turtles play tic-tac-toe.

While the Ub Iwerks cartoons occasionally contain inspired moments, few of the cartoons are consistently distinctive and imaginative. In Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin says, "The ten years away from Disney were the least rewarding and productive he [Iwerks] spent in the motion picture field." Iwerks true love was to conquer technical challenges. Story construction, editing, and characters didn't interest him. He was more interested in perfecting optical printing processes and matte work. Yet, his cartoons are still fascinating to watch, both for their limitations as well as their modest successes.

This two-disc DVD set is essentially the same as Kino International's 1994 five-volume VHS release--with the addition of six additional Flip the Frog cartoons that weren't available on VHS. The sequencing of the five-volume VHS set has been maintained on the DVD set even though the sequencing isn't always helpful in the new context. For example, if you want to trace how Flip the Frog developed through his numerous face lifts, you'll need to make your own chronological list and then shuffle the DVDs in and out of your player.