I was a single-digit age when I walked past a TV that had been left on either PBS or some other local station, and it aired a cartoon that was meant to teach business concepts, not really to entertain but to educate. I want to pull it up on Youtube to see if it was meant for kids at all or if it was actually for adults.
Here’s all I remember:
There was an old man in an old-timey setting, perhaps a shoemaker. He’s having a hard time running his shoe (?) business and an elf comes along to help him. In the fairy tale, the elves make shoes overnight for the shoemaker, but in this one, the single elf turns his business into a corporation.
The elf tells the man to sell shares of his business to other people. And the man goes “Then I’ll be rich?” and the elf says “No, you use that money to buy more leather (?) and tools so you can make more shoes.” Man says “Then I’ll be rich?" or “Then I’ll keep the money?” and the elf says no, you have to use that money to buy another store or some employees or something. “Then I’ll keep the money?” No, the elf says. “You have to pay back some of that money to the people who bought shares. That’s called a dividend.” And I remember the elf floating in the air, drawing an imaginary dollar bill and slicing off a piece of it to give to the shareholders. “And then I’ll keep the money?” And the elf is like, yeah, if there’s any left over, you keep that. Etc.
Problem is, if I just Google “elf shoemaker cartoon business” it’s just giving me a million results about the old fairy tale, not a specific educational cartoon. So here’s to hoping one of the Teeming Millions knows what I’m talking about and can add, if not a name, then a Googlable crucial detail.
