The Sunshine Makers (1935)*** (out of 4) Catchy animated short has a bunch of gnomes gathering up sunshine, turning it into milk and then passing it around to people so that they can be happy. One gnome ends up running across an unhappy man who lives in the dark forest with many other unhappy people. Soon the gnomes are trying to pour milk on them so that they too will be happy.I was surprised to see how much I enjoyed this film and I was even more shocked to see that it was rather catchy. This really comes across as a dark fairy tell where the happy people must venture into a dark area and try to make the bad people see why they should be good. Of course, the selling point here is that milk makes people happy. I thought the animation itself was quite good and I really liked the simple story and the song itself was very good and catchy.

"The Sunshine Makers" was sponsored by Borden and it's the sort of film that just screams out 'THIS IS JUST A GIANT ADVERTISEMENT' to the audience. I noticed one reviewer loved it--I just thought it was a blatant attempt by Borden to brain-wash audiences.The film consists of happy gnomes (which I think are supposed to represent Borden) and nasty creatures in black who LIKE gloom and depression. However, the happy gnomes squirt milk (huh?!) on the gloomy guys and it makes their black clothes spread sunshine!! Naturally, the gloomy guys don't like this and do on the attack. But, with the power of milk (one of Borden's biggest selling products), the cute gnomes vanquish the dark jerks and spread color (or at least Cinecolor with its rather limited color spectrum) all about. Three cheers for the gnomes...those corporate shills! Preachy and dumb but at least the animation is reasonably good for 1935.

Having read about this cartoon short from the Van Beuren Studios for several years, I finally got to see this when I randomly picked animated shorts on YouTube. What a wonderfully strange and musically humorous cartoon this was! Seeing all those happy little elves singing of glad times while making milk in contrast to all those sad ones warbling of how they're "happy when they're sad" and then turn into the opposite due to the milk being forced into their mouths with the sunshine brightening their bodies is nothing short of psychedelic three decades before that became fashionable! This, along with Disney's Fantasia, might have been a "hit" with the hippie crowd during the late '60s! And dig the fact that it's sponsored by Borden! I'm surprised someone didn't try to add Borden's mascot Elsie the Cow! So on that note, I highly recommend The Sunshine Makers.

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.