Spike Punctured

Some years ago, the U.S. Library of Congress decided to put Daredevil Droopy in its collection. Maybe they wanted a cartoon full of Tex Avery’s standard gags, because there’s not a lot that’s really inventive here. He and gagman Rich Hogan pulled out the “Timmmm-brr” routine, the explosion/blackface bit, the shot-a-hole-through-the-body gag, the wrong-thing-falls-after-sawing joke. You’ve seen them all before.

In other cases, you know what’s going to happen before the scene ends.

The cartoon is a variation of The Chump Champ, where Droopy and Spike compete against each other, except that one has a far better ending. Here’s a gag which needs nothing from me to set it up, other than the observation that Spike’s snicker was, more or less, borrowed by Hanna-Barbera several years later for a number of its doggy characters.



Grant Simmons likely animated much of this scene. Mike Lah and Walt Clinton are the other animators with voices by Bill Thompson, Pat McGeehan and Billy Bletcher pulled out of the archive for the ending.