Sometimes credited as the first sound cartoon ever produced (a credit often erroneously given to the Walt Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie (1928) starring Mickey Mouse), owing to Pinkie the Pup's synchronized dialogue and the film's original 1926 release date. The actual history is a bit more complicated. Animation innovator Max Fleischer was producing sound cartoons as early as 1924, using the De Forest Phonofilm process. (The first sound cartoon released was Come Take a Trip in My Airship (1924).) Most of Fleischer's cartoons were still produced as silents, though, until the end of the decade. In 1929, studio president Alfred Weiss reissued some silent Fleischer cartoons with new synchronized soundtracks and new animated scenes. The synchronized dialogue animation in "My Old Kentucky Home" is believed to have originated from the film's 1929 reissue, rather than the 1926 release.
Reviewed in the September 29, 1929, edition of "The Film Daily" and the October 5, 1929, edition of "Motion Picture News" (reissue/sound version). The latter review identifies the film as a S. Roy Luby Inkwell production and cites the Roxy Quartet as the vocalists.
Reviewed in the April 3, 1926, edition of "Moving Picture World" and the April 10, 1926, edition of "Motion Picture News" (original/silent version). The summaries suggest that the original version of the cartoon featured a drawing-come-to-life of Ko-Ko the clown leading a brass band into a theatre.
The Pinkie the Pup character (sometimes spelled "Pinky the Pup") appeared again in the S. Roy Luby-produced "Down in Jungle Town", released soon after this film's 1929 reissue.
The barking noises heard under the opening credits in the common Film Circulation Corporation reissue version suggest that the film had been released earlier as one of Alfred Weiss's "Screen Tunes". The opening credits of "Down in Jungle Town" (1929) feature Pinkie the Pup inside the "Screen Tune" logo, and toward the end of the credits he makes a series of barking sounds. These are the same sounds heard under the Film Circulation Corp. credits.