Cartoonist and children's author Ted Key is best remembered today for creating the Mister Peabody & Sherman characters for
Bullwinkle & Rocky as well as the long-running
Hazel comic strip (which itself was the inspiration for a successful TV series), but the TOS crew first encountered his name during the 1970s when he wrote a trio of live-action animal comedies for Walt Disney Productions: THE MILLION DOLLAR DUCK (1971), GUS (1976), and THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE (1978). A big fan of the first two movies, Po-Man was an age-appropriate Disney die-hard when he saw the third during its theatrical run, and even then found it as lackluster and formulaic as its title, despite a cast of familiar faces and old pros (Ken Berry, Sandy Duncan, Harry Morgan, Roddy McDowall, McLean Stevenson, Jesse White, Alan Young, Hans Conried, James Hampton, Howard Platt, William Prince, Hank Jones, Rick Hurst, Sorrell Booke, and Ronnie Schell, who has an onscreen role
and provides the voice of the titular feline). That still didn't stop him from buying the Pocket Books novelization -- also penned by Key -- or this neat View-Master packet, which is more enjoyable than the movie itself thanks to brevity and 3 reels of eye-popping 3D images. As for the booklet, which has been scanned and posted below for your amusement, please note that top-liners Berry, Duncan, and the darn cat are nowhere to be found in any of the photos.
