The Pooch the Pup Cartoons Ranked
Pooch the Pup, from what I understand, was the first original character creation from Walter Lantz, later to be best known for Woody Woodpecker. After the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit transitioned from Disney to Universal and the latter continued the series, Lantz was brought on in 1928 or ’29 to direct the cartoons after years working at Bray Studios and doing odd jobs in Hollywood. By 1932, Oswald’s popularity was flagging, so a new Universal cartoon series was cooked up by Lantz in the form of Pooch the Pup. While leaving Bill Nolan to keep the ship steady as the director of the Oswald cartoons, Lantz focused on his short-lived character as the director of only 13 shorts released from August 1932 to October 1933, just over a year. Perhaps Pooch’s doom was sealed by the fact that he wasn’t much different than Oswald, in spite of a couple quick redesigns. He was a stand-in or avatar for the same kind of gags done in that series, and of course stylistically, the look of the two series was quite similar. Nevertheless, Lantz’s initiative resulted in a number of decent little cartoons starring Pooch the Pup in a remarkable era of Pre-Code animation.
All shorts directed by Walter Lantz.
#13 — THE TERRIBLE TROUBADOUR (1933)
THE TERRIBLE TROUBADOUR is not one of those decent little cartoons. Terrible is right. Not only does the animation of this short seem somehow rougher than other installments in the Pooch the Pup series, this entry also proceeds with a strangely inert pace, uncreative gags, and blackface caricatures. If THE TERRIBLE TROUBADOUR was the only Pooch the Pup cartoon I saw, I’d understand why the character and series was so obscure.
#12 — CATS AND DOGS (1932)
1932 was the year of football cartoons, among a few other tropes. Lantz’s interpretation of the cliches is actually pretty good, as Pooch’s foray into the sport for CATS AND DOGS results in decent twists through well-trod gag territory. Although the big boss was directly involved with this series rather than Oswald, the Pup cartoons do seem to carry less animation fidelity than the sister series. That really sticks out in CATS AND DOGS, which isn’t terrible but isn’t always the most pleasant to look at.
#11 — THE UNDER DOG (1932)
THE UNDER DOG succeeds on the strength of a few great, dark Pre-Code gags. It’s also helped along by some decent background work, but on the whole, its character designs and fluidity leave something to be desired. Although we’re talking about the bottom realms of an, at best, alright cartoon series, there isn’t anything offensively bad about THE UNDER DOG.
#10 — PIN FEATHERS (1933)
When Pooch the Pup hit the scene, he was a white dog with a single suspender. Released towards the end of his run, the dog was changed to have black fur and a bunched up sweater. The new appearance made him look even more like Oswald, making the two characters’ separate efforts even more baffling. PIN FEATHERS was the cartoon that inaugurated this redesign, although presumably a holdover from the old style would be released next, before closing out the series with this version of Pooch. All that being said, this cartoon is a bit of an outlier in the series. Focusing primarily on a fledgling bird rather than the canine, PIN FEATHERS isn’t often outright funny. But something about its design of the bird characters, including one who looks eerily like a proto-Woody Woodpecker, is unique and indicative of a style evolving past the “variation on Disney” many studios were working with at the time. PIN FEATHERS showed that a redesigned Pooch wasn’t going to suddenly invigorate the series, but it’s entertaining enough.
#9 — KING KLUNK (1933)
The penultimate Pooch the Pup cartoon is, as you might tell from its title, a parody of RKO’s KING KONG, released earlier in the year. As a sendup of that landmark film, KING KLUNK isn’t exactly successful. Its opening bits, full of racist caricatures, is even more problematic than the depictions present in the live action source material. But here and there throughout the cartoon, Lantz and Co. are able to demonstrate a greater fidelity than that shown in past Pooch cartoons. KING KLUNK isn’t a riotously funny affair nor a standout animation showcase, but then, that’s why it’s toward the bottom of this list.
#8 — MERRY DOG (1933)
This Christmas cartoon certainly goes a different route than that of the contemporary Disney. Mixing some feel-good images with a surreal battle with a big bad wolf, MERRY DOG features a pugilistic Santa and a generally threatening aura. You know, just what you want from Christmas! MERRY DOG is aptly at a middling threshold for a Pooch the Pup cartoon.
#7 — THE ATHLETE (1932)
THE ATHLETE, as Pooch the Pup’s debut, perhaps fittingly ends up at just about the average quality of the series. Featuring a white Pooch whose look would be tweaked just a bit in short order, separately from the big redesign towards the end of the run, and running with race-themed gags, this first cartoon isn’t too inventive. It’s not even particularly jazzed up, fidelity-wise, from what was being done for Oswald. Even still, THE ATHLETE carries enough cute moments to keep it in the running.
#6 — THE BUTCHER BOY (1932)
THE ATHLETE’s follow up was a much more effective illustration of what Lantz could do with Pooch. Throughout the character’s life, he variably made it a straight-ahead, lighthearted affair and leaned into the darkness Pre-Code standards allowed for animated jokes. The violent nature of THE BUTCHER BOY demonstrates that latter tendency. And to be clear, by violent, I mean a chicken being ripped from its skin then reassembling itself, as just one example. This strangeness is replicated enough so as to make THE BUTCHER BOY a decidedly bizarre cartoon, one with a morbid sense of humor that I really appreciate.
#5 — THE LUMBER CHAMP (1933)
Perhaps the high-resolution restored version of THE LUMBER CHAMP did some of the heavy lifting in regards to this opinion, but by this stage of the Pooch series, I think Lantz and Co. had effectively upped their game. Both in terms of gagwriting and animation fluidity, the studio had made something eminently more watchable, full of flourishes and a pace that is consistently entertaining. The anthropomorphizing of strange objects is a highlight of the short and the resolution of its “damsel on the train tracks” moment got a serious laugh out of me. THE LUMBER CHAMP is certainly in the upper echelon of, yes, the relatively short run of Pooch the Pup cartoons.
#4 — THE CROWD SNORES (1932)
Parodying the not very good Howard Hawks film THE CROWD ROARS (1932), THE CROWD SNORES also takes a crack at a madcap vehicular race story that had been done numerous times in American animation since the silent days, presaging something like WACKY RACES (1968–1969). The chaos of this cartoon and its fluidity relative to the earlier Pooch installments, however, distinguishes it within that grand tradition of cars with telescoping wheels and the like and from other entries in the series. THE CROWD SNORES is a great, stretchy time in the early days of the Golden Age of Cartoons.
#3 — SHE DONE HIM RIGHT (1933)
Parodies make up a decent chunk of the Pooch the Pup filmography. The best one of them is SHE DONE HIM RIGHT, an over-the-top take that can’t even measure up to the comedic intensity of Mae West’s SHE DONE HIM WRONG. Still, the need to caricature a star who had made her way into every cartoon studio’s repertoire that very year resulted in one of the best Pooch cartoons. Veering close to the Pre-Code scandal of West’s own films, SHE DONE HIM RIGHT is horny in a way few cartoons not made by the Fleischers are. I’m not even necessarily saying that’s a good thing, but it definitely makes this short stand out, especially for the Pup. And besides, being the series’ last installment, SHE DONE HIM RIGHT has a sense of movement that is among the sharpest put to screen by Lantz and Co.
#2 — HOT AND COLD (1933)
I mentioned that Lantz never really struck a consistent tone with the Pooch the Pup cartoons, going from wholesome silliness to innuendo-laden morbidity. Besides the Oswald overlap, perhaps that had something to do with the series’ lack of success. Even still, it makes for a varied viewing experience today. HOT AND COLD plays out more like a Silly Symphony than a Betty Boop cartoon, featuring a Disney-Santa-like Arctic king and anthropomorphized penguins, walruses, and polar bears. The premise of the cartoon is imaginative, as the weather control of a whole pole gets messed around with, going from blizzard temps to tropical warmness. It allows for a lot of fun ideas to be thrown at the screen in quick succession and that’s really appreciated. HOT AND COLD is nearly the best Pooch the Pup cartoon by leaning into one aspect of the series’ identity crisis with effective aplomb.
#1 — NATURE’S WORKSHOP (1933)
Pooch the Pup’s best cartoon is actually one that straddles the innocent-to-dark instincts variably represented throughout the series. NATURE’S WORKSHOP starts out like a Silly Symphony, romanticizing the world of insects, before taking a gruesome turn and approaching the sensation of body horror in its ending! Of course, it’s all played for laughs, which makes it all the more disturbing. Oh, and there’s a Mae West caricature pulled out for good measure. NATURE’S WORKSHOP is kind of a jumble of ideas typical of the time, all compiled into one messy cartoon. It’s a short greater than the sum of its parts, I suppose, which is representative of the whole series. NATURE’S WORKSHOP is the best Pooch the Pup cartoon because of its increasingly madcap pace and bizarre images it conjures up in the name of, what appears intended to be, good innocent fun.
