I'm happy when I'm sad. No you're not! Eat molten bombs of sweet purification comrade!!! Ah the glorious cosmic incubator that is the mighty Sun, bringer of light, giver of life to all! Ahem, so..okay, there are such beautiful colours in this strange and wonderful short. I love the really old cartoons that feature merry gnome-like sprites, and I especially love the great animation gems of the 1930's, they're so unique in style and are so carefully and artistically constructed, there's a certain aesthetic to them that you just don't get from any other animations. And this one in particular has some very striking imagery and animated effects regarding the two polar opposite factions of gnome folk. I love all the crazy details in the machinery of the Smurf-like residents of..let's call it Sunnyville, as they harness and prepare the rays of the sun into an elixir to be delivered like so many bottles of milk! And all the richly Gothic gloom of the decrepit hamlet of the dark gnomes is just as well done and appealing in its own very different way. The shadows are terrifically done and are paid great attention to in the story. And I love the beautiful effect of the sunshine arrows that make sunlight appear wherever they hit, I think it looks downright amazing to say that this short is so very old! This really is one of the special old cartoons, I think it's all beautiful. I love the sky, the lighting, everything, this is just wonderful to look at. "Sunshine, sushiiine!" Oh, that song will stick in your ears for hours! But on the other hand the scene is so hilarious where the bad gnomes are singing(?) about how happy they are being sad! Apparently they were just begging for a hostile together and thorough brainwashing by the clan of the sun worshippers! There's something a little whoa and off about about the whole militarisation of sunlight in the story, the way the gnomes launch the sunshine artillery and drop the sunlight bombs, smiling all the while, and completely disregarding the choices of their grumpy downbeat cousins until they're completely *forced* to convert! That was so unfair! True they did attack first, but the majority of them appeared to be minding their own business, and I do think the happy-go-lucky guys went a little too far, I mean it was only one person who attacked, and they went all word war three and bombed them with sunshine till their grim landscape was absolutely no more and they were all happy-happy-happy!!! What a lesson to teach little kids - if someone disagrees with you, hurt them until they do! Positivety cannot be force-fed, and can a person be too happy? I would freaking-well say so! It's a little sickly-sweet in places, but what a great show, I loved it. I thought it had some pretty cool and scary ideas! It's a beautiful day as I write this, everything's so much nicer when the sun's out. Hey sun, you should come out more often, things are so much better when you're around!

As now, I had a voracious appetite for movies and television and a memory that doesn't quit even after 61 years. As a kid growing up in northern NJ, I had access to the NY/NJ television broadcast market from my youngest years. The first time I saw The Sunshine Makers it made a deep impression on a 3 to 4 year old that I carried through the years. It was broadcast on Newark's Channel 13 and was shown as a "cartoon" along with "Farmer Gray" and the mostly middling fare of which I discerned even then. I had even visited the NJ studio and sat in what is now considered the "peanut gallery" of the old Uncle Fred's Junior Frolics several times. Unfortunately, The Sunshine Makers weren't shown during my presence or I would have had my Aunt and cousin to remember or discuss it with. Now I glad I hadn't seen it in person and hadn't discussed it with them because their opinions, in hindsight, may have dismissed it.It was like no other cartoon that I saw in those early days of television. While I couldn't express terms like theme, plot, character, etc., I tried to convey to my parents and friends what I saw and the impression it made on me. To this day I had never encountered another person who had seen it until I read the comments on this media. The movie was only 15-16 years old when I saw it! While I won't describe what I saw (mainly because it would be repetitive to Raymond's, cc...'s, & HippieRockChick's description) the good vs evil theme affected me in a primitive way. But the biggest impression was the song/refrain "I'm only happy when I'm sad" in the bass tones came back to me more than a few times during my disaffected 'yute' (as Vinny Gambini might say) or when I had the blues.Where can I get a copy of it?

I remember seeing this cartoon on TV (Channel 13, an early 50's incarnation of PBS) here in NYC. I was four or five years old, and I thought it was totally cool.That channel also deserves the glory of running the Farmer Gray cartoons, my first exposure to classical music)---I heard a song that stayed in my head for twenty years, until I finally heard someone playing it and found out its name (the old English country dance tune known as "Sellenger's Round" or "The Beginning of the World").Anyway, I saw "The Sunshine Makers" there, and then promptly forgot about it until I saw it on the light show screen at the Fillmore East, many years and some illicit substances later. Stoned, we loved it...I still do. SO extremely weird. There were other cartoons the Fillmore East ran, including one with Tommy Popski that was all about immigrants and their "funny" names. Hey, social conscience! Rocks.

I agree with the other reviewer here that this primitive-looking 70-year-old cartoon is more than what first meets the eye. I'm not saying it's any award- winner but it was intriguing. It would be easy to dismiss at first because of the unimpressive graphics and fairly poor quality print. It's probably very difficult to get a good print of this but I'm sure it would enhance the story.That story is a simple one of Hobbit-like creatures who seem to worship the sun and they bottle it in the form of milk, which they deliver around town. The scenes in them are in reddish-orange and white. The "bad guys" are in the woods nearby and they sing "We're only happy when we're sad." Their scenes are all in blue-and-white. Like Dracula figures, if sunlight hits them, it's not good for them. (Actually, it is because it changes them into laughing, happy people.)They try to sabotage of positive-thinking, cheery people. The second half of the story is the war between the two groups. One is flinging milk bottle and the other a poisonous gas.This is a fantasy story, pure-and-simple, not a comedy. It's not going to provoke many laughs, if any, but it different enough to be an interesting seven-and-a-half minutes. It also has an excellent message. Some people may say, act or think "I don't want to be happy," but deep inside nobody wants that. I believe that was the message here in this battle between "positive" and "negative" people.The cartoon was "brought to you" by the Borden Milk Company. Hmmm, that explains why milk was the "good" product.