Colonel Bleep (partially lost 1957-1960 color cartoon)

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Colonel Bleep DVD cover

Colonel Bleep's ARRIVAL ON EARTH

An episode from Colonel Bleep

Colonel Bleep was an animated series by Soundac that ran from 1957 to 1960. It was the first animated television series to be produced in color. It had 100 episodes.

Colonel Bleep aired in syndication, appearing on affiliates of the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), as well as independent stations, throughout the U.S. One known exception was KBYU-TV in Utah, an affiliate of NET/PBS until it became independent on July 2, 2018, which aired the series in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its last known airing on television was on September 11, 1971 on WNBC in New York City.

In the early 1970s, when the original prints were being put onto a van, it was stolen by car thieves, and the contents have never turned up since then. Although this claim has not been fully confirmed.

Only 45 episodes are currently available, having been discovered in the vault of a Southwestern TV station that once aired the series.

Some of the surviving episodes were released on VHS in the early 1990s by Streamline Pictures; one of them, "The Treacherous Pirate", was released as part of The Speed Racer Show (aka Speed Racer: The Movie). More would be released on DVD in 2005 by Alpha Video, and again on YouTube in 2019 by Toontracker. The series is in the public domain.

20 episode titles are known from television listings for KBYU-TV, which is owned by Brigham Young University. BYU's student newspaper, The Daily Universe (now The Universe), sometimes listed Colonel Bleep episode titles and numbers.

On September 11, 2018, Jerry Beck uploaded The Colonel Bleep Show to YouTube. The video contained the wraparound segments of an episode of a series featuring Colonel Bleep that aired on the Buffalo, New York station WGR-TV (now WGRZ).

A kinescope displaying a children's show called Engineer Bill/Cartoon Express (hosted by Bill Stula) featured a title card for a lost episode, Squeak and the Black Knight.

A rediscovered episode "The Malicious Mailman" was uploaded to the streaming service The Archive on August 23, 2023.

Episode List

Episodes listed in alphabetical order. Available numbers from The Daily Universe are provided.

Rediscovered Episodes

Each episode includes the year of re-release.

1. A Windy Knight, #18 (2019)
2. Ball of Fire (2019)
3. Building an Island Base, #4 (2005)
4. Col. Bleep's Arrival on Earth (1991)
5. Danger Below, #25 (2005)
6. Dangerous Holiday, #29 (2005)
7. Exposed (2005)
8. Fire Water (1991)
9. Ice Demons Attack (2019)
10. Knight of Death (1991)
11. Man Hunt on the Moon, #8 (2005)
12. Nightmare, #27 (2005)
13. Satellite of Death (2005)
14. Scratch and His Feathered Friend, #9 (1991)
15. Scratch and the Sea Serpent (2005)
16. Shadows of Suspicion, #10 (2005)
17. Space Station X-1, #37 (2019)
18. Squeak and the Terrible Termite (2005)
19. Test of Friendship, #38 (2005)
20. The Bat and the Bottle (1991)
21. The Earth from Outer Space, #3 (2005)
22. The Evil Eye (1991)
23. The Falling Star (2019)
24. The Firebomb (1991)
25. The Ghastly Ghost, #33 (2005)
26. The Greedy Gorilla, #76 (2005)
27. The Hypnotic Helmets (1991)
28. The Ingenious Invention (2005)
29. The Invisible Gorilla, #31 (2005)
30. The Killer Whale (1991)
31. The Lunar Luger (1991)
32. The Magnetic Menace (2019)
33. The Malicious Mailman (2023)
34. The Pirate Plot (1991)
35. The Prehistoric Present, #11 (2005)
36. The Relentless Rain, #24 (2019)
37. The Runaway Rocket, #7 (2005)
38. The Rusty Robots, #70 (2019)
39. The Treacherous Pirate, #32 (1993)
40. The Treacherous Trio (1991)
41. The Uncharted Island (2005)
42. The Wicked Web (1991)
43. Tunnel in Space (1991)
44. War in Robotland, #26 (2005)
45. Winner Take All (2019)

Known Lost Episodes

The Magnetic Moon and The Martian Mine are listed in the Soundac entry for the 9th Annual Production Review of Business Screen Magazine in 1959. All other episodes are sourced from television listings for KBYU-TV in issues of The Daily Universe from 1969 to 1970.

"The Big Thunder" and "The Terrible Sleep" are not described as Colonel Bleep, but did air in the series' then-usual slot.

1. Battle of the Aces, #100
2. In Days of Knights, #73
3. Scratch and the Sputnik, #15
4. Squeak and the Black Knight, #14 (title card only)
5. Terror That Ticks, #74
6. The Big Picture, #98
7. The Big Thunder
8. The Double Disguise, #97
9. The Incredible Iceman, #12
10. The Magic Lamp, #77
11. The Magnetic Moon
12. The Martian Mine
13. The Mechanical Twin, #13
14. The Missile and the Moonmites, #17
15. The Sinister Shortcut, #99
16. The Sinister Statue, #96
17. The Spell of Doom, #95
18. The Terrible Sleep
19. The War Game
20. Traffic Jam in Space, #16

Gallery

Trivia

• The episodes "Ice Demons Attack" and "Test of Friendship" feature footage of an episode with the Ice Demon characters.
• "Test of Friendship" also features footage of Squeak getting a wooden horse and using it to fight The Black Knight of Pluto.
• Around the same time Colonel Bleep was produced, Soundac also produced Weather Man.
• Eight of the nine episodes uploaded in 2019 were previously listed as missing episodes on a number of websites. Also listed was "The Martian Mice", which is likely supposed to be "The Martian Mine" (see Business Screen source); no episodes under either title have been released as of 2021.
  • "Winner Take All", released later than the other eight episodes, was not previously known since 1991. This is the same case with "The Malicious Mailman."
• The February 14, 1969 KBYU-TV schedule on The Daily Universe lists "The Uncharted Earth". This is most likely supposed to be "The Uncharted Island".

External links

• Colonel Bleep Wiki
• The Colonel Bleep Show on Cartoon Research