Introduction

Welcome to Tralfaz. Fans of The Jetsons know that Tralfaz was the original name of Astro. Whenever he heard it, he’d say “Ralfaz? Yuchh!”

It’s hoped that’s not the reaction to this blog.

For some time, I’ve been posting cartoon screen-shots, old newspaper articles about the Golden Age of Radio, and print ads for ancient movies on the web or social networking sites. For something to do, I’ve decided to post them here.

The word “Tralfaz” transcends the Jetsons’ Hanna-Barbera studio. It was found in a few Warner Bros. animated shorts before Astro was even invented and could very well have germinated in the mind of John P. Medbury. He was a writer for the Burns and Allen radio show in the early ‘40s. You can read the background on the word at my early Hanna-Barbera site. I picked Tralfaz for the name of this site because the word regularly gets hits on the other site. And I think it’s a cool word. Oh, and Blogger said it was available, though I was surprised to accidentally find out afterwards it was used by a blog that’s now defunct.

Unlike the Yowp site, I don’t expect to do commentary on cartoons and will probably post screen grabs with only a minimal caption. But blogs tend to evolve and I suspect this one will, too, before inevitably joining the internet graveyard. The Yowp site has twice weekly posts when that was far from the original intention, so I won’t predict how often you’ll see posts here. Or how much will interest you. But feel free to comment if there’s an item you’d like to say something about.

Thanks very much for stopping by.