Earliest color package films?

[Osi Osgood]

So, what were the earliest color, small guage films? Of course, super 8 didn't come along until the 1960's, so we will be speaking of standard 8mm film prints. From what I understand, the earliest color prints for the collector, were largely cartoons. Hollywood Films, for instance, released color Disney cartoon shorts, on anscochrome film stock, and those still retains they're color today. The Ub Iwerks cartoon series were released by Castle Films, as part of they're "Castle Color" series, and these were on Cinecolor film stock, and these have retained brilliant color to this day, though they are highly grainey, as Cinecolor was high in grain, which was made worse when the 16mm Cinecolor film stock was split down for two standard 8mm prints. Quite odd that the earliest color film stocks, even after 80 years, still look better than most stocks from the 70's on up? I know that the color stocks were largely limited to travelogues, but when were other topics or features, first printed on color stock on Standard 8mm for the home movie market?

[Paul Adsett]

Quite odd that the earliest color film stocks, even after 80 years, still look better than most stocks from the 70's on up?

Not only odd Osi, but very sad indeed. It breaks my heart when I look at my once gorgeous Ken and U8 digests from the 70's, now all completely pink. What a collection I would have now if not for that damn Kodak film stock!

[Osi Osgood]

...or at least the "Eastman" line of Kodak! Another earlier standard 8mm color release was ruined by Eastman film stock, but at least had to have dated from early to mid 50's, those little 100ft Looney tunes, in the blue boxes. Nearly all of them today, are completely red, but amazingly, the color releases, released in the U.K., were printed on low fade stock and still look great. The ONLY way to differentiate between the US and UK edition, is on the side of the blue box, the US version says "color", while the UK version states, "colour" and is slightly italicized.

[Osi Osgood]

Anybody? Any information? I know this forum is a treasure trove of info.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

http://www.pathefilm.uk/95flmcat/95flmcatpsiln.htm
1957 - some cartoons

http://www.pathefilm.uk/95flmcat/95flmcatfsiln.htm
1923 - MISS FLUTTER
(Most likely a b&w film with colors added in post via some stamps.)

[Joerg Polzfusz]

A Castle film release from 1960 in color:
https://archive.org/details/67704-ca...e-a-star-vwr-1

You might find earlier samples on archive.org:
https://archive.org/search?query=%28...ware%29&page=4

[Douglas Meltzer]

In 1955, Castle Films released Arabian Nights in color, followed by Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in 1956. Both starred Maria Montez and Jon Hall. They withdrew these in 1959 in favor of B&W versions. They did not put out any other color cutdowns of features until 1976.

Source: Scott MacGillivray's book Castle Films.

[Osi Osgood]

Are those digests or features, Doug. They must be fairly rare. I wonder what film stock thes e are on, as Eastman had already reared its fading head.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Those two titles are digests. Since the color versions were only out for less than 4 years I imagine they are rare. They could be on Eastman, but there were probably some Kodachrome and Ansco prints of these.

[Osi Osgood]

Those would certainly be worth finding! Shorty, or others who already have these two titles, how has the color held up? What film stock are these on?