059 Barnyard Egg-citement

Title: Barnyard Egg-Citement
Studio: Terry
Date: 5/05/39
Credits:
Story by John Foster
Directed by Connie Rasinski
Music by Philip A. Scheib
Series: (These may technically all be Terry-Toons)
Running time (of viewed version): 6:49

Synopsis: A chick is born, pampered, tries his hand at eating someone, and is then abducted for eating by a vulture. Unfortunately he escapes.





















Comments: I'm not certain if the Walter Winchell caricature stork is limited in its animation or if it's the print. Or if it's full yet bad animation. This feels like a knockoff of a Disney barnyard cartoon from five or more years earlier, but of course it would be unsurprising if Terry had been making the same cartoon before Disney, and just hadn't moved forward. Odd to see a vulture as a predator; cartoons usually depict them that way of course, but I think most people think of them as carrion eaters (although they are not exclusively so). Maybe it's just that when I see them on the beach, they're eating a washed up fish, not going after small birds or rabbits. Redheaded woodpecker makes an appearance. The family is the J. Harrington Roosters. Specific reference or just sounds good? Such a very different barnyard world from that envisioned by Columbia's Peaceful Naighbors; instead of warring chicken factions, we have an interspecies community run by a single strongman in the form of the rooster, to whom there's a sort of Godfather quality, especially with the presentation scene, later ripped off (perhaps that is too strong a phrase) by Disney for the Lion King. It seems counterproductive for a bunch of chickens to lay a bunch of eggs to shoot at a vulture to save one chick. The buzzard actually catches fire after crashing. But it's ok; he must be dead already, as it doesn't seem to bother him.