How the Objects Came to Life

How the Objects Came to Life is a 1949 American live action/stop-motion film. It was the second stop-motion film released by Poulin-Baker Cartoon Studios. The film is about inanimate objects who turn anthropomorphic when the humans are absent and predates the object fiction genre by 40 years.

Characters

 * Building Block
 * Plate
 * Cup
 * Pencil
 * Pillow
 * "Yellow", the human owner of the objects

Production
In 1933, the short The Tale of the Objects was released as a Peppatoon. It was successful and development started on a feature film based on the short. The short was fully stop-motion, with model humans and objects. Production started with the idea of using model humans, but the idea dropped after some animation tests were made in 1940. Production was forced to stall until 1945, when production restarted. Because the finished scenes at the time (about twenty minutes) used model humans, Poulin-Baker had to reshoot using real humans. They also reanimated the scenes with only stop-motion, due to it looking "tacky".

Release
How the Objects Came to Life was released in Los Angeles on November 25, 1949 and in France in January 1950 to mixed reviews. Worldwide it gained almost $9,000,000 off a $2,000,000 budget. It also launched three live broadcasts in 1954, 1954 and 1955 respectively. The 1955 broadcast was disastrous, requiring a hand to pick up the object puppets. Later it got a 1957 sequel, How the Objects Came Back and a 1986–1991 CGI television series. It was rereleased in 1970 and given a rating of M. It was rerated in 1972 to PG.