Noveltoons
animated short film series produced by Famous Studios

Noveltoons is a series of animated cartoon short films produced by Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series originated characters such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey, all of whom later became stars of Harvey Comics, which purchased the characters in 1959. The series was the successor to the series Color Classics produced by Famous’ predecessor Fleischer Studios. Several Noveltoons feature characters which originated in Color Classics, like Spunky or Raggedy Ann. This series was also similar to the two series from Warner Bros., Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in that it features several recurring characters with one general title.
In 1956, Paramount sold all of the pre-October 1950 Noveltoons (ending with Saved by the Bell) to television distributor U.M. & M. TV Corporation. Shortly afterward, U.M. & M.'s assets were acquired by National Telefilm Associates. In the 1980s, NTA changed its name to Republic Pictures, and after a brief period of ownership by Spelling Entertainment in 1994, was acquired by Paramount's parent company Viacom, which placed the cartoons back in Paramount's control (Republic Pictures has been renamed to Melange Pictures since 2006, which in turn was placed in the revived Republic Pictures subsidiary).
In 1959, and again in late 1962, Paramount sold the post-October 1950 to pre-March 1962 Noveltoons (beginning with The Voice of the Turkey and ending with T.V. or No T.V.) to Harvey Films, which in turn was purchased by Classic Media in 2001. Classic Media was purchased by DreamWorks Animation in 2012 (and briefly renamed it DreamWorks Classics), which was purchased by Comcast's NBCUniversal in 2016 and currently distributed by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios.
“Noveltoons” enters the record as animated short film series produced by Famous Studios. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Noveltoons, animated and short can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7064587. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1967, 1959 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Noveltoons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.