In 1990, we introduced Larry Cat in Space to our show lineup. It quickly became a popular standard for both public and school planetaria alike. We regularly hear from planetarium directors about how well it works for their audiences. Although it may seem hard to believe, a whole generation of kids (and their parents) has learned that cats call the Moon "Mee-yooon." We're starting to hear from planetarium directors who remember seeing Larry Cat in Space as kids when they visited the planetarium on school field trips. It seems that Larry and his story will never get old.

While Larry's saga may not be aging, the show materials certainly have been, and not too gracefully at that. There are more than 150 planetaria with original slides that are more than 10 years old. Slide film fades with repeated illumination by bright projector lamps, and Ektachrome colors shift to the green as it ages. If you're one of the theaters that shows Larry on a regular basis, you already know -- he's probably looking pretty haggard after all these years.

Even here in our own studios, the master slide set we have in our slide trays has grown dark and green with age. We don't show them on a regular basis, so they haven't faded as badly as those "out in the field". Also, we noticed the last batch of the mass-duped slides (we kept one set as backup for individual slide replacements) -- were also degrading.

Years ago, after shipping the last of the 1990 run of mass-duplicated slide sets, we began supplying Larry Cat In Space with glass-mounted, masked slides, shot from our original artwork. Unfortunately, our original art boards weren't designed for the rigors of copystand work. Several had multiple layers of acetate sheets to clean, overlay, and align, and each piece of artwork had to be shot from a different height on the copy stand, making the assembly of a slide set a pain in the back, literally!

We also found our original artwork had itself aged. The paint had dried out and cracked. Acetate layers had adhered themselves to other cels. Some of the backgrounds were created using marker pen on art board, and over the years, the ink from the pens leached into the fibers of the paper and spread beyond the figure borders. In addition, these differing sources and media lent a certain amount of stylistic inconsistency throughout the show. For example, in some images, Larry's color was more orange, in others more golden. Some areas of scenery showed pen marks, other places a smooth wash of color.

What to do? As Larry says, "time for a little excitement!"

Taking a page from Ted Turner, we remastered all the show's artwork. We scanned all the original art boards and acetates, and our graphics artist spent months in Adobe Photoshop, cleaning up the scans, developing a consistent color palette, and generating easy-to-shoot printouts for both the color Ektachrome slides and their Kodalith masks. This also provides us with the capability to easily customize the images containing text, so we can create add-on packages for different languages, such as the Spanish-language version we're now offering. You can see the results of our labors for yourself -- just scroll down this page.

We all want Larry to look his finest on your dome, so he can charm and captivate the next generation of audiences, for many more years to come.

And your cassette tape is surely wearing out after all these playings, so why not pick up the soundtrack on CD too?