io9: tex avery

Mutant Monster Chickens Stalk “The Farm of Tomorrow” (1954)

Lynn Peril — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Modern machinery and any number of tasty hybrids populate “The Farm of Tomorrow,” the last (whew!) of Tex Avery’s “of Tomorrow” cartoon cycle. We’ve already got cloning and embryo transfer technology—it's only a matter of time until a giant-drumsticked chicken shows up on your dinner table.

“The T.V. of Tomorrow” Broadcasts From Mars in 1953

Lynn Peril — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Stuffed full of rapid-fire sight gags and visual puns like the others in the series (but no mother-in-law jokes), the whole of Tex Avery’s “The T.V. of Tomorrow” is definitely worth a watch. But the piece-de-resistance comes in the form of the world’s first television transmission from Mars. What strange form of life exists on the Red Planet? Watch and see.

Tex Avery Drives into the Future With “The Car of Tomorrow” (1951)

Lynn Peril — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:20:00 PDT

One quick sight gag follows another in Tex Avery’s “The Car of Tomorrow” (1951), his second foray into predicting our future (hint: parking problems solved!). Don’t miss his depiction of modern marketing’s annoying practice of “pink-wrapping” items to make them allegedly more appealing to women (on the other hand, the “fender panties” remind me of the frilly trim on 60s TV’s Batgirl’s motorbike).

Tex Avery Introduces “The House of Tomorrow” in 1949

Lynn Peril — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:20:00 PDT

An in-house tanning bed (complete with spatula-like flipper), self-adjusting chair, three-way TV set (anticipating the Food Network, Playboy Channel, and Nickelodeon, to boot), a disturbingly efficient electric razor, and some rusty mother-in-law jokes are all part of "The House of Tomorrow" envisioned by animation genius Tex Avery in 1949. "The House of Tomorrow" was the first of four cartoons showing various aspects of life in the future—keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

Who Cares About Blu-ray When You Have The Television Of Tomorrow?

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:30:33 PST

Sure, HD DVD has been slaughtered by Blu-ray, but will we really care when our television is an ingestible alpha-wave generator that'll just paint the pictures on the insides of our heads for us? Tex Avery's vision of the Television of Tomorrow in this MGM cartoon from 1953 might not have come true yet, but we're holding out hope that we could get a few of these innovations stuck into our next-gen televisions before the tubes vanish into our noggins. If you could flip open extra screens to see more of the subject, and attach your television directly to the garbage disposal, you wouldn't care what the delivery format was anymore.