Ah, the Old Pepper Gag

Disney’s second-rate version of Felix thinks (you can see the wheels turning) and an idea pops out of his head in Alice’s Balloon Race (1926).



Julius engages in the pepper-creates-sneeze cliché to get a hippo to blow Alice’s downed balloon back into the air.



I imagine the pepper gag dates back to newspaper comic strips before this.

The cartoon bears the name of Walt Disney and producer M.J. Winkler.