Chickens and Magic Honey

In Confidence, Walter Lantz’s Oswald the Rabbit injects barnyard animals with a syringe filled with the title subject to end the Depression as the title tune chugs along. That was in 1933. Four year later, in Columbia’s Let’s Go, bees drop honey on top of barnyard animals, which ends their depression as the title tune chugs along.

Let’s Go is a lot like a Disney cartoon, too—plenty of colour, lots of characters populating the screen. There’s some nice animation as well. The palsied grasshopper slowly walking and then playing his violin is excellent. I also like how the shaking, emaciated hens turn robust when the honey goops all over them, prompting them to lay gold eggs.



Ben Harrison’s story makes no sense unless you treat it as a Depression allegory. Why else would honey suddenly make grasshoppers rush to the nearest slot machine or plant corn while high-step dancing?

Manny Gould received the sole animation credit but I’d like to think Emery Hawkins worked on this as well. There may be more cycles in this cartoon that in any other colour theatrical short. Columbia re-released this as a "Favorite" as late as December 1957 and April 1963.