Poulin Baker Animation Studios

"Poulin Baker" and "Poulin-Baker" redirect here.

Poulin Baker Animation Studios is a French/American film studio and a subsidiary of Poulin Communications. It took on its current name in 1975. Films produced by The Baker Company and Poulin Baker Ordinateur Studios are also released under this brand. The company is currently owned by Poulin's daughter, Pecca Poulin.

Prehistory
In 1895, when Aurele Poulin was only fourteen years old, he started drawing funny advertisements for companies through the Poulin Drawing Company. By 1897, he started painting the local houses and decorating them. Poulin did not have a true interest in art and just wanted to draw simplified stories. Soon he started reading comic strips and started an interest in them. Soon, by 1899, Poulin started thinking about making his own comic strip and renamed his company "Poulin Drawing Company" briefly before finally coming up with an idea and renaming the company the Little Cats Group.

The Little Cats
Poulin created a comic strip named Les Petits Chats, or The Little Cats. Produced and distributed by Poulin's own Little Cats Group, it focused on three young mischievous stray cat siblings, Marie, Missy and Thomas, who commonly got in trouble with their mother. At the start of the strip, Poulin had little to no drawing skill, and so the strip reflected that. However, Poulin improved by the end of the strip. The format of The Little Cats was an "adventure-of-the-week" type. It began on 31 January 1901, and ended on 5 September 1904, due to Poulin not knowing any original adventures by then.

After The Little Cats ended, Poulin renamed Little Cats Group to Poulin Productions and continued drawing funny advertisements. It wasn't until 1907 when Poulin was able to get distribution for The Little Cats in the United States, when the strip was translated to English and distributed by World Feature Service. This English-translated version lasted till 1910, but due to the strip being popular, new adventures were created for it until 1939, and after that, it switched to a monthly comic book format and continued through the 1960s.

Poulin Productions
In 1909, Poulin finished a cartoon that he called "Comics in Motion". The cartoon was more of an animated slideshow and featured two black peccaries he would soon call Missy and Georges in the next 1915 cartoon, Missy the Little Pig. Missy was renamed Pecca in The Adventures of Pecca to distinguish her from the cat Missy. By 1918, three distributors were looking to pick up the Pecca cartoons: National Exchange, International Film Syndication and Kädzer Distributors. National and Kädzer were both defunct by 1919 and International was no longer interested, so Paramount Pictures was chosen to distribute all cartoons made by Poulin. Their partnership continued until 1968.

Poulin Productions shut down in 1927.

Poulin-Baker Cartoon Studios
In 1929, Poulin reformed Poulin Productions as Poulin-Baker Productions. In 1932, with the beginning of Peppatoons, Pecca was renamed Peppa but retained her peccary appearance until 1931, when Polacolor became widely available, when she was recolored to be a pink pig. Dippy Ditties was created in 1934 and was black and white until 1939, and Peppa still appeared a peccary in that series until then.

Poulin-Baker Television
In 1949, a television division, Screen Rhapsody, was established. It was originally created to distribute old Poulin and Poulin-Baker cartoons to television.

In 1955, a Peppa Pig sequel started production. It was canceled because Poulin said the story was too small-scale for a feature film. The film was split up and broadcast as the first episodes of The Peppa Pig Show on ABC on pan and scan, taking the slot of the Disney show. The Poulin-Baker animators were on a rush and were forced to finish the film quickly, resulting in cheap-looking animation to finish the film. Restored versions of the film can now be found on the Peppa Pig: The Original Series DVD bundle.

A sequel was eventually released in 1962.

In 1958, most of the Poulin-Baker short cartoon team was sent to Screen Rhapsody to start production on new episodes of The Peppa Pig Show. The show was self-distributed until 1962.

Poulin Baker Home Entertainment
Poulin Baker Home Entertainment was formed in 1977 as a partnership with Magnetic Video. The first video put up by PBHE was the Peppa Pig: The Golden Boots LaserDisc in 1979.

Television shows

 * The Peppa Pig Show (1957, 1958-1964, 1969-1973)
 * The Little Cats Show (1960-1966, 1969-1973)
 * The Mouse House (1962-1966)
 * Peppa and Friends (1988-2000)
 * The Three Little Cats (1992-2001)
 * One of the earliest cartoons to use a 20 minute segment format.
 * Peppa Pig Tales (2006-)
 * Takes place in the "Peppa Pig universe", which contains all canon Peppa Pig media since the original 1909 cartoons. Created to celebrate 100th anniversary of Pecca/Peppa Pig. The Little Cats is a segment on the show. Variety show.