155 Park Your Baby

Title: Park Your Baby
Studio: Columbia
Date: 12/22/39
Credits:
Story
Allen Rose
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Harry Love
Lou Lilly
Series: Scrappy
Running time (of viewed version): 6:04

Synopsis: Thug leaves kids with Scrappy, who is hassled by and then reforms them.


























Comments: This cartoon supposedly released on the same day as Gulliver's Travels. Only Columbia was brave enough to launch in the 6 days before and the six days after Gulliver, and they did it twice. Or maybe Guliver had no effect on shorts and it just happened that way. Great title painting and lettering. Deco in the cartoon, too, starting at the establishing external building shot. Pale background characters painted in in the quick pan. Screwy Squirrel style voice on the tough dad. The threatening guy and the hapless clerk setup feels more like a Porky Pig story than a Scrappy story. I'm not sure if the babies were doing sumo moves. Baby fight. For some reason, the department store has wooden siding and a backyard with a clothesline. Maybe they lifted the animation for the sequence from another cartoon, with its singing drying diapers? Scrappy's design is more modern looking than the Snooks kid in the last cartoon, but the tough's design is less modern than the dad's design from the last cartoon. Baby torture machine. The tough actually makes to physically attack Scrappy, who's still a little kid even if he's not a baby. On the other hand, it's the babies beating up Scrappy that make the cartoon good... The twinned motions aren't really a good idea. Scrappy cartoons sometimes feel like they're happening in a different city in the Popeye universe... The only thing to fear in Scrappy cartoons are the generic credit title cards; they always fill me with dread; but then I am pleased by the cartoon, so it works out. You just have to get by the opening...