Film production company Muller Media Inc. today announced that it has recovered masters for two years’ worth of episodes of The New Three Stooges, a syndicated animated series which originally aired from 1965 to 1966. The company was apparently assigned the copyrights to the cartoons in 1987 and is currently looking into the status of those rights.

“We have ordered the U.S. Copyright Office to research their archives to determine if we still own the copyrights or if we merely own the original masters in the public domain,” says Muller Media president Kenneth Eade. “Either way, the series has value to the company.”

The New Three Stooges consists of 156 cartoons with 41 live-action wrap-around sequences. The episodes were produced by Cambria Studios, a West Hollywood animation production studio most famous for its use of the Syncro-Vox technique of animation developed by studio co-partner Edwin Gillette. who was a co-partner in the studio. All the animation was produced under the supervision of Lee Orgel and features the voices of real Stooges Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Joe De Rita.