Interviews and a Rotten Film with Ziggy Cashmere
Disclaimer: The following article was originally released on January 17, 2025 and has been transferred from GoDaddy to Mozello for preservation purposes.
Back in the summer, before I left Discord, I met a particular content creator and college student named Ziggy Cashmere (not in person, obviously). Ziggy is an author and filmmaker who has spent time uncovering lost media and documenting media with poor development, such as the infamous 2012 animated film Foodfight. He has also spent time preserving old media, such as film reels, and is the creator of his analysis channel Ok, so….
Unexpectedly, he gained interest in contributing to the search for restoring Colonel Bleep and sharing information about other forgotten works by Soundac. The research became more interesting when Ziggy interviewed Scott Schleh (sculptor and son of the co-creator, Jack Schleh) and Jerry Beck (one of the earliest pioneers in restoring Colonel Bleep). Later, on July 30, 2024, Ziggy created an article, Building Zero-Zero Island, which foretells the complicated history of Soundac and its productions. He soon adapted the article into a YouTube video titled Television's First (and Lost) Color Cartoon, which primarily discusses the making of the original Colonel Bleep series. Not only that, but he also scanned pictures of Soundac's promotional material and leftover artwork that remained visually fresh for decades. These images are available on Flickr and the Colonel Bleep Wiki on Fandom.
While
interviewing Scott Schleh, he eventually offered a film reel that
hadn't been projected in nearly seventy years. Ziggy eventually promoted
a campaign on Ko-Fi so that he could raise enough money to buy certain
chemicals to restore the film's quality. As time passed, the reel was
cleaned from the vinegar syndrome decay and scanned by a Twitter/X user
named Quazza, but the results didn't come as expected. Most of the
film's imagery has entirely faded, with only fifteen seconds left in the
reel to be well-polished.
According to his next video, Saving a Destroyed (and Personal) Cartoon,
the reel consisted of four unknown episodes and was made as a present
from Jack Schleh to a close friend named George Schwenk. Schwenk had two
children, Debbie and Kurt, who were most likely fans of the show. Based
on what was left on the reel, the introduction reveals the lost
cartoons dedicated to these children with love. While the results may
have been disappointing, restoring this forgotten reel did not fail, as
Ziggy was grateful to have been able to repair a film that hadn't been
preserved in such a long time. In the long run, Ziggy has done his best
by interviewing important people who could offer him the most crucial
information and resources possible. He will continue trying to retrieve
more reels owned by other archivists. For more accurate information,
please consider watching the following videos in the article. Don't
forget to read Ziggy's article documenting Soundac.