Sunday 24 December 2023

Bagging the Cat

How many cartoons did Sylvester, Jr. do this?



This is from Who's Kitten Who? (1952), written by Tedd Pierce. It seems like young Sylvester was always shamed by his father’s inability to catch a giant mouse, but dad, the kid and the kangaroo only appeared in seven cartoons together.

However, Jr. pulled out the bag again in The Slap-Hoppy Mouse (1956).



The bag makes another appearance, though the "giant mouse" does not. Sylvester gets beaten up by a dwarf eagle and a butterfly in Cat's Paw (1959). Pierce uses it as an end gag.



Here’s the gag for a final time from Goldimouse and the Three Cats (1960). Mike Maltese wrote this cartoon.



Maltese left for Hanna-Barbera, where he developed Augie Doggie (named for one of wife Flossie’s relatives), who had some Sylvester Jr. "Oh, the shame of it" tendancies (but no paper bag).

6 comments:

  1. "However, Jr. pulled out the bag again in The Slap-Hoppy Mouse (1956)."

    The cartoon's there looks more "Mouse-Taken Identity" (1957) to me, in which it sets on a museum. Not "The Slap-Hoppy Mouse", that Jr. was ashamed, dialogues-wise to carry his dad stuck on a glue ceiling for trap Hippety instead to pull his face out a bag in the end of the cartoon.

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  2. Hans Christian Brando24 December 2023 at 08:09

    Oh, the shame of being a one-dimensional secondary character in a series of mediocre cartoons from a studio whose cartoons enjoy the highest regard with the general public (okay, possibly second to Disney) as a body of work.

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  3. Years later, DePatie-Freleng revived this overused concept in the Crazylegs Crane cartoons, with the goofy bird having a son, only ten times worse.

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  4. Honestly I never was really into the "oh, the shame of it" shtick from Jr. It came off more as annoying to me, especially in Cat's Paw. I liked it more when he was encouraging his father, like how he did in his debut short.

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    Replies
    1. I like the first short. The story and animation are more appealing, at least to me.

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