Bouncing Off the Cow

Whenever there’s a train in 1920s cartoon, there always seems to be a cow on the tracks. Here’s one in perspective in Mickey’s Choo-Choo (1929).



The rubbery cow runs into a tree. A runaway box car with Mickey and Minnie...well, you can see what happens. The gag is all about funny cow shapes.



Down comes debris from the runaway rail car which forms a hand-car. Down come Minnie and Mickey.



They ride off into the distance. We get to see Minnie’s butt.



Between that and a belch gag earlier in the cartoon, people were complaining (at least by 1930) about bad taste jokes finding their way into Mickey Mouse cartoons. Bluenoses didn’t want their kids seeing these kinds of things. 40 years later, these same kinds of people complained they didn’t want their kids seeing “violence” in TV cartoons.