Color Classics are a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 as a competitor to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies.
[2] The first cartoon in the series, Poor Cinderella, featured Betty Boop (with red hair and turquoise eyes); future shorts usually did not have familiar or recurring characters.
Many of the Color Classics entries make prominent use of Max Fleischer's Stereoptical process, a device which allowed animation cels to be photographed against actual 3 dimensional background sets instead of the traditional paintings.
& M. altered the original beginning credits sequences for some of the shorts, to remove all references to the names "Paramount Pictures" and "Technicolor", and to add their own Copyright notices.
Instead of re-filming the openings, NTA obscured the references to the Paramount and Technicolor names by placing black bars over the original title cards and Copyright notices.
& M. and NTA), retained original theatrical copies of all of the shorts, which have periodically been shown in revival movie houses and by Cable Television.
[3] In 2021, after decades of being shown in altered, worn, and "beet-red" prints, the Fleischer estate (in co-operation with Paramount Pictures) launched an initiative to formally restore the entire classic animation library from the surviving original negatives, beginning with Somewhere In Dreamland, which has had its restored World Premiere on the MeTV network in December of said year as part of the Toon In With Me Christmas special, presented uncut with its original front-and-end Paramount titles.