Talkartoons

Talkartoons is the name of a series of 42 animated cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures between 1929 and 1932. It is a sister series to the Fleischer's successful Screen Songs cartoons. Betty Boop got her start in this series, which quickly made her the star of them and, circa 1932, became Betty's own standalone series altogether.

A quick history of the series can be found on this article, courtesy of The Other Wiki.

Filmography

1929

Noah's Lark: October 25, 1929

1930

Marriage Wows: Jan 8, 1930
Radio Riot: Feb 13, 1930
Hot Dog: March 29: Debut of Bimbo the Dog.
Fire Bugs: May 9
Wise Flies: July 18
Dizzy Dishes: August 9, The first appearance of Betty Boop.
Barnacle Bill: Aug 31
Swing You Sinners! Sept 24
Grand Uproar Oct. 3
Sky Scraping Nov 1
Up to Mars Nov 20
Accordian Joe Dec 12
Mysterious Mose Dec 26.

1931

Ace of Spades Jan 16
Tree Saps Feb 3
Teacher's Pests Feb 7
The Cow's Husband March 13
The Bum Bandit: April 3
The Male Man April 24
Twenty Legs Under the Sea May 5
Silly Scandals: May 23
The Herring Murder Case June 26
Bimbo's Initiation: July 24
Bimbo's Express August 22
Minding the Baby Sept 26
In the Shade of the Old Apple Sauce October 16
Mask-A-Raid Nov 7
Jack and the Beanstalk Nov 21
Dizzy Red Riding Hood Dec 12

1932

Any Rags? Jan 2
Boop-Oop-a-Doop
The Robot Feb 5
Minnie the Moocher Feb 26
Swim or Sink (S.O.S.) March 11
Crazy Town March 25
The Dancing Fool April 8
Chess-Nuts April 13
A Hunting We Will Go April 29
Hide and Seek May 26
Admission Free June 10
The Betty Boop Limited

Tropes used in Talkartoons include:

Art Evolution: The earliest shorts had a stiff, paper cut-out like feeling to the animation, a holdover from the Fleischers work on their Out of the Inkwell cartoons. This was immediately done away with as soon as they got Grim Natwick on board the staff, who helped beef up the animation of the Fleischer cartoons considerably.
Animation Bump: Some parts of the shorts would feature backgrounds that were animated in perspective, a fairly challenging feat to do for an animator.
Carnivore Confusion: Humanlike spiders who want to eat the equally humanlike flies in "Wise Flies".
Construction Is Awesome: Demonstrated in "Sky Scraping".
Deranged Animation: Typical of the Fleischers work, some of these shorts are just plain nutty, especially compared to Disney's product from around the same time.
Expy: Bimbo is an expy of the earlier Max Fleischer cartoon dog Fitz, from Out of the Inkwell.
Follow the Leader: The series was obviously made to cash in the sound cartoon craze kicked off by Steamboat Willie and the Silly Symphonies shorts. Fortunately, the Fleischers still stuck to their surreal, newspaper cartoon-esque roots in these cartoons, unlike what came later down the road.
Mickey Mousing: Prevalent, as it was in early sound cartoons.