News — AnimationTrails

Proceeding deeper into the 1930’s, we continue to encounter the occasional visit to a savage cannibal island, and more retellings of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, providing various toons with a beachfront setting. (We’ll continue to highlight some of these, most of which we’ve not encountered before, but avoid several marginal ones we’ve visited in past articles, such as the Avery-style travelogues previously covered last year (including The Isle of Pingo Pongo and Lantz’s Bola Mola Land). We also, by the way, will for the most part avoid anything to do with pirates and buried treasure, and some episodes dealing...

4: “More Eggs-acting Detail” A new decade – an old breakfast. Eggs continue to be delivered sunnyside up by all the major animation studios. Let’s serve up a dozen this week so there’s plenty to go around. The Good Egg (Warner, Merrie Melodies, 10/21/39 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir.), marks animation’s first egg confusion Involving an egg not derived from a feathered species – although our story still starts in a barnyard. As with Mickey’s The Musical Farmer, we’ve got one hen who just can’t lay. She watches while other hens easily hatch families (such as by putting their...

6: “Eggs-trapolation” Into the late 1940’s, with another springtime holiday for eggs on the plate. It’s high time all of Hollywood’s chickens and bunnies took some tips on the subject from the greatest “Wabbit” of them all. Easter Yeggs (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 6/28/47 – Robert McKimson, dir.) – If Walter Lantz could turn his staring Rabbit into an Easter Bunny, it was inevitable that Bugs would sooner or later have to follow suit. (In fact, Bugs would perform Easter services twice, also appearing as an Easter bunny (but without eggs) in the “Freddie, Get Ready” number with Doris Day and...