Studio: Ub Iwerks Studio (ComiColor Cartoons)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Ub Iwerks
Short Synopsis
In Balloon Land everyone and everything is made of balloons: the people, the animals, the houses, with caricatures of Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin among the citizens. A balloon man at an inflating machine blows up a boy and a girl and warns them of the Pincushion Man, who lives in the woods and pops anyone he catches. The boy laughs off the warning and goes into the forest; the girl follows. In the dark wood they meet the Pincushion Man himself, a tall, cackling figure bristling with pins, who chases them back to town and lays siege to it, popping balloon citizens left and right while the townsfolk fight back with a cannon that fires air and tacks. The children's trick with a balloon dog brings him down, and he is driven off, deflated.
Why It Matters
- The Pincushion Man is one of the great cartoon villains, a nightmare figure whose weapon is the one thing a balloon fears, and Billy Bletcher's cackle makes him worse; the sight of balloon people being popped, one after another, is funnier and more frightening than it should be. The Cinecolor pastels suit a world made of rubber.
- Balloon Land is the best-known ComiColor and the one most often cited by animators who grew up on public-domain television packages; it influenced the Nightmare Before Christmas generation and turns up in lists of the scariest children's cartoons. Its copyright was never renewed, which is why it has been so widely seen.
Notes and Trivia
- The film is also known as The Pincushion Man, the title under which many public-domain prints circulate.
- Billy Bletcher was the voice of the Big Bad Wolf for Disney and Peg-Leg Pete.
- See also: Jack and the Beanstalk (1933), The Headless Horseman (1934), The Sunshine Makers (1935).
