Honolulu Nights

Honolulu Nights was a 1990 animated film by Diana Hansen-Young, a famous painter known for her paintings of Hawaiian women and children in the 80s and 90s, her children's series Mango Hill, and former political work in Hawaii. According to two available newspaper advertisements it aired on a Friday; November 29th at 8:00PM on KHON-TV, which is a television station in Honolulu, Hawaii.

From Hansen-Young's currently open and selling Etsy store, "I gathered five animators and we created an hour anime adventure entitled "Honolulu Nights," which aired on NBC Hawaii, sponsored by JC Penney. We were way ahead of our time (and I recall it as being an exciting, creative project), as the entire hour-length animation was created on Mac LC machines using scanned base drawings. There were many other corporate promotions, such as Jack-In-The-Box, who commissioned a series of mugs featuring women and children of Hawaii given away each week and have now become highly collectible." Mango Hill Hawaii, the site for her children's work under Mango Hill Productions, has further information. Hansen-Young wrote, "I again paired up with JC Penney to write, animate and produce HONOLULU NIGHTS, a one-hour animated mystery set in Honolulu in 1931 for grown-ups - a kind of early anime. It aired prime time, and despite newspaper warnings that it was not for children, JC Penney's switchboard lit up with complaints from parents that their children were upset when the bad guy bit off a gecko head."

Hansen-Young went on to write, "People still write to tell me they grew up with the Mango Hill stories and want to read and show them to their own children. Many of the books are out of print. The animated films, including HONOLULU NIGHTS, are unavailable."