From Dick... to Duck... to Pluck!

This is the Tiny Toon Adventure short "The Return of Pluck Twacy", part of the episode "New Character Day", one of the last episodes of the original 65-episode run. It was written, 'boarded and directed by Eddie Fitzgerald. The opening few seconds of the video are the end of the first segment of the episode. You can ignore that.



First of all, I'd like to clear up any confusion caused by the multiple Tracy/Twacys:

Dick Tracy is a private detective from a newspaper comic strip.
Duck Twacy is from the 1946 cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery". In this cartoon Daffy avidly reads a Dick Tracy comic strip, knocks himself unconscious, and dreams about being a Dick Tracy style character named "Duck Twacy."
PLUCK Twacy is from the Tiny Toons episode. It is the character *Plucky* dreams about after hearing a speech by Daffy in his Duck Twacy persona.

All sorted? Good. Why do I think there might be some confusion? Well, the segment is supposedly Daffy/Duck Twacy's audition tape, and yet most of it is about Plucky/Pluck Twacy. Also, at one point on his blog Eddie Fitzgerald said that *Pluck* Twacy was a character from a 1940s cartoon who he brought back for TTA. (although he later deleted that, either when someone else pointed out his mistake or when he realised it)

Finally, there is the title, The *Return* of Pluck Twacy. We have never seen Pluck Twacy before, and never will again. So why The Return, unless someone mistook Pluck Twacy for a character who had already appeared?

Anyway, ignoring these problems (which is easy to do after the first few seconds) this is a pretty fun cartoon. The scenes where Plucky bashes himself over the head in order to cope with the tickling are really funny, and the bit on the neon train (a reference, perhaps, to GPBR's "Neon Noodle") is gloriously imaginative, although some may feel it drags out a little.

Some TTA fans are quite hard on it, including one review (on the Tiny Toons Reference Guide) who says that it "sinks to the level of its inspiration", which sounds like a criticism of the original "Great Piggy Bank Robbery". So, it's probably not one for audiences who are into 90s cartoons but not the ones from the 40s. (well, unless there are actually 40s WB fans who don't like "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" for some reason)

I can kind of understand the problems some people might have with it. There's nothing particularly distinctive to Tiny Toons about it, except in the opening and closing scenes, set in Acme Looniversity, and the point where Plucky gets the vision of Daffy/Duck Twacy giving him advice (that is, because it follows the TTA theme that these are the fans/disciples of the classic characters). Mostly it's a mash-up of multiple classic Warners cartoons, made by someone who is clearly a fan of them and saw this as a chance to make his own.

Obviously, the main set-up comes from Bob Clampett's "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery". The "aura" character is based on Hata Marie from Frank Tashlin's WW2 era "Plane Daffy", and "Tickle-Puss" is Sloppy Moe from Clampett's "Wagon Heels", who saves the day by tickling the villain into submission. There may also be an influence from Bob McKimson's "The Super Snooper" in the way the aura behaves towards Plucky, but the style is much more influenced by Clampett and Tashlin. The scenes where Plucky is surrounded by criminals with weird names, and he gasps as he lists them, is directly from GPBR, although it had already been given a TTA treatment in "Return of Batduck." (I feel the Batduck version works a little better, as it is more imaginative and unexpected, and making all the criminals parodies of Batman's Rogues Gallery gives it a life of its own. Putting it in a setting more directly influenced by GPBR feels less imagintive and more derivative.)

Some shots even seem to be traced from the original cartoons: the long shots of Plucky surrounded by the weird criminals - who all of a sudden look much more like the GPBR villains than the ones in the rest of this cartoon, and the part where Plucky leaps off the guillotine and faces-off the aura - the helmet which he puts on to protect himself from the blade makes him look even more like Daffy in Plane Daffy.

The animation is by Glen Kennedy's studio, which is probably the best choice for a Clampett/Tashlin influenced cartoon. I'm a lot easier on Kennedy than a lot of people, but their animation here is a lot weaker than on some of their other episodes. The scene where Plucky wakes up on the floor of the classroom is particularly bad looking (and there's a strange mistake, where he is seen writhing around for the first few seconds without anyone surrounding him... is he, like, dreaming that he's waking up in an empty classroom, before he actually wakes up in a full one?) Jon McClenahan of Startoons fame animated the introduction where Babs and Buster audition Daffy, and speech Daffy makes to the class, although the last shot of Daffy with the apple seems to be a different animator. It's a shame there isn't more of him, though. I'm sure that Eddie himself was happy to see it assigned to Kennedy, because as we all know he admires Glen Kennedy's work. But I'm not sure if Glen actually animated anything on this one.

Oh, and the ending takes Daffy's "manic depravity" (John Kricfalusi's description of "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery") to a new level. When Daffy woke up, he found himself kissing a pig in a mud pen, and was disgusted for about a second before whooping around excitedly, no doubt because of how much fun his dream was. But in Plucky's case, he bashes himself over the head with a mallet so he can return to his dream! (watch Daffy's encouraging expression at this point!) Kind of reminds me of a certain cop show that I won't name to avoid spoiling people.

In this post, I continue to follow in the footsteps of Matt Groening

Another thing which frightened and/or disturbed me as a kid:

This picture of the wolf with his belly full of rocks in the ladybird edition of "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids."

In this post, I shall follow in the footsteps of Matt Groening

In the Simpsons comics, Matt Groening would often write some editorial (maybe he still does, I stopped getting them a few years ago... are they still running, actually, or is it all reprints? I mean, the ones I got were *already* reprints, of the American versions. Anyway...), sometimes related to The Simpsons but often just about his life. One of those was "Things which frightened and disturbed me as a kid." And that's kind of the approach I'd like to take to this post.

Sometimes it feels like my defining childhood moments involve watching something on TV which disturbed or haunted me. Usually they seem to be animated. There is one I remember which involved a ship which was overheating... the furnace was overloaded or something, and it was burning up. The main things I can remember are the scene where the characters escape by helicopter or something, and watch the ship blow up in a sort of mushroom cloud, and the fact that one of the characters had an unshaven face. If I saw it again I don't think it would have much of an effect on me, but at the time... well, let's just say I felt the need to leave the room any time The Simpsons was on - Homer's unshaven face brought back the unpleasant memory.

I'd love to find out what TV show that was, though.

Anyway, I think there can be something genuinely unsettling about the stark look of some of those 70s/80s animated TV shows, with their gloomy colours. One of them I am glad to say I was able to find. Say hello to... The Valley of the Dinosaurs, episode 5 "Volcano"!



Yes, it's only the second half. You're experiencing it the way I did. The first half isn't too hard to find if you're curious, and you want to know why this 70s family is hanging out with these cave-dwellers. Why these prehistoric Ama-zon inhabitants are white (or maybe slightly Asian) or why they speak in the same dialect as the 1970s family, only slower and with no inflections, remain mysteries.

So, anyway, this was a TV series that was on before Saturday morning Disney cartoons. So I invariably saw the last few minutes of it before the cartoons I wanted to see came on. This "Volcano" episode was being shown on the first morning I started seeing Saturday morning cartoons, and I must say that in spite of all the tackiness I see before me now, for a young kid like I was at the time, that volcano... referred to at 03:53 as "Devil's Pudding" for some reason... was High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

And, this was followed by an advert for some sort of superhero-based pasta shapes... which was animated, and involved a tidal wave of spaghetti sauce flooding through a city. I think I assumed this was the preview for the following week's episode: "Next time... the lava reaches the city and kills a lot of people!"

And then... the first cartoon on the Saturday Disney show was the Donald Duck classic "Good Scouts", where Donald and his nephews visit Yellowstone National Park... and begins with them all crossing a mud spring called "Devil's Stew Pot". Oh... and the fact that Donald later winds up on top of a geyser, which *erupts*, didn't exactly put the Hanna-Barbera Nightmare Fuel out of my head.

Four-eyes

When I was a small kid, I remember having a typically small-kid-like top with a picture of a dog as an aviator on it. Also, the writing "Dog Gone Flying". The dog had a cheerful, friendly face, he didn't look evil or anything. However, there was something a bit disturbing about him. His face was quite small, compacted down in the lower part of his head. That's not disturbing, it an be quite appealing. What was distrurbing was the fact that, up on his high forehead were a pair of goggles... over another pair of eyes!

In the absence of any photos of this garment, here's a rough impression of it on MSPaint based on memory.