Fields of Honey

Tiny Toon Adventures was an animated series that aired in syndication and on Fox Kids from 1990 to 1992. The premise was simple, these were the stories from the new stars of Warner Bros. cartoons and they were learning from the old guard at good ol' Acme Looniversity. This episode deals with Babs learning about early cartoon star Honey.

It's mentor day at Acme Looniversity. Everybody is excited to be working with their Golden Age Warner Bros. counterparts--Buster with Bugs, Plucky with Daffy, Elmyra with Elmer Fudd, Calamity Coyote with Wile E. Coyote but Babs is placed in study hall because there are no female Warner Bros. stars.

In order to settle an argument over who is better--Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck--Buster, Plucky, and Babs go down to the film vault to watch their old cartoons. I don't know how that would solve anything. I would just become more entrenched in my opinion because both are good.

Buster and Plucky arguing. Babs is not amused.

In the film vault, the mysterious vaultkeeper gives Buster and Plucky some Bugs and Daffy cartoons and asks what's wrong with Babs. She says it's because there are no girl cartoon stars. The vaultkeeper apologizes and then goes on his lunch break, asking Babs to watch things for him. A mysterious voice whispers out to Babs: "If you watch them, you will find her." Why the voice can't say who Babs should be looking for isn't clear but Babs spends the next several months watching old Warner Bros. cartoons. She finally finds the cartoon "Bosko In Person" from 1933. She plays it and discovers Honey, a female cartoon who does voices and impersonations just like Babs. Babs then wants to find her but the vaultkeeper reveals that no one has seen Honey in over 50 years. Babs is still determined to find her.

Honey and Bosko

Babs goes to the library to do some research on Honey. Honey was Warner Bros' first female cartoon star. Her and Bosko were on top until the creation of Porky Pig. Bosko and Honey continued to perform on stage but their old fashioned style and lack of color made them unpopular. Bosko continued to perform solo but a planned reunion with Honey on The Ed Sullivan Show was canceled when Honey was nowhere to be found. Bosko tried to find Honey until he also faded away into obscurity.

Babs tries to find Honey but has no idea where to start. The mysterious voice says that "If you build it, they will watch" meaning to build a theater to show Honey cartoons. Turns out laughter keeps a toon young, when the laughter stops, a toon grows old and forgotten. Babs tries to get some money by extorting Montana Max. Her ploy to sell Bunny Scout Carrots and help orphans doesn't work but a plan to send everybody without money to the moon does.

Sending poor people to the moon? Now that's a good idea.

The opening of the theater doesn't do well so the mysterious voice says Babs should advertise. Babs then advertises on television parodying Pee-Wee's Playhouse ("The secret word is 'honey'"), soap operas, and the Super Bowl. After hypnotizing the populace, the theater is full of people to watch Honey on the big screen once again.

Who would've thought a theater dedicated to one obscure cartoon
character from the 1930s would do so poorly?

I think this old lady is going to become important later.

The cartoons are big hit, people are literally falling out of their seats and balcony over these cartoons. Meanwhile, the little old lady from the previous picture starts to change and it's revealed that she's really Honey. After the show, Babs thanks Honey and wonders where the mysterious voice came from. Turns out the voice was really the mysterious vaultkeeper who was really Bosko all along. Nice of Acme Looniversity to give their first star a job. It's the least they could do, I guess.

Babs and Honey, together at last!

Honey and Bosko reunited!

With Honey and Bosco reunited, they dance off into the horizon.

***

Bosko and Honey were real cartoon characters from Warner Bros. Bosko was created by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising in 1927 when they were still working at Disney. They copyrighted the character and planned on starting a sound series with Bosko. After leaving Disney, they worked at Universal for a year before starting work on Bosko's first film, Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid. It was unique in that it focused on dialogue and not music like other short animated subjects of the time. Harman and Ising shopped the film around to numerous studios and Leon Schlesinger offered them a contract with Warner Bros.

Bosko and Honey's first cartoon was "Sinkin' In the Bathtub" in 1930. Bosco and Honey were originally considered to be two black children though that seemed to be later dropped or forgotten. Their adventures were not considered racist as they were treated in the same plot style as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Racist stereotypes were avoided and Bosko's race was never pointed out or even considered a part of the story. However, a scene in the 1930 "Congo Jazz" shows Bosko, a chimpanzee, and a gorilla with the same facial features. Despite the lack of overt racism, Bosko and Honey were still black children in almost-exaggerated black face and somewhat monkey features.

Bosko and Honey, 1930

Bosko and Honey's last cartoon was "Bosko's Picture Show" in 1933. Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. and, since they owned the rights, took Bosko with them to MGM for several ill-received shorts. Bosko's last film appearance was 1938's "Little Ol' Bosko in Bagdad." At Warner Bros., Buddy became their biggest star until 1935 when Porky Pig debuted. For Tiny Toons, Bosko and Honey were made more ambiguous, looking very similar to how Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would look in Animaniacs. Honey was voiced by B.J. Ward and Bosko was voiced by Don Messick.

The plot of this episode was based on the 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams which Babs references in the cartoon.

The animation in this episode is done by Kennedy Animation, an outfit from Canada that also did animation for Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, Bonkers, and Aladdin, among others. Warner Bros. was reportedly unhappy with the work Kennedy was producing and was dropped after the first season. The animation style seems very off-model and the characters move around too much. The founder, Glen Kennedy, worked for Hanna-Barbara in the 1980s. His style can be seen prominently in the series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.

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Felix the Cat: The Movie

Felix the Cat: The Movie was released in 1988. It was an American-German-Polish-Hungarian produced animated movie that didn't see an American release until 1991 and then it was just direct-to-video. There have been no official DVD releases of this movie in North America.

Felix the Cat was created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and/or Otto Messmer for Pat Sullivan Productions. Felix became the most popular animated star of the silent movie era. The animated shorts, combining adult humor with childlike fantasy was a hit with moviegoers. The last Felix short came out in 1930 after a disastrous attempt at adding sound to the shorts. Sullivan died in 1933. Messmer would continue the Felix the Cat comic strips and would illustrate the comic books. He would die in 1983. A short-lived attempt to revive Felix occurred in 1936 but only produced three shorts.

Joe Oriolo, an assistant of Messmer's on the comic strip, purchased the rights to Felix and, through Paramount, produced 260 Felix cartoons to distribute to television networks. The series debuted in 1958 and gave Felix much of his appearance and personality--the magic bag of tricks, a rotation of villains, and catchy theme song. After Oriolo's death in 1985, his son Don continued marketing Felix producing a new comic book series from Harvey Comics, a Nintendo video game, a series of bumpers for CBS Saturday morning cartoons, a new 13-episode series, and this movie.

Felix the Cat: The Movie was written by Pete Brown and directed by Tibor Hernadi who would go on to direct 86 Red Bull commercials between 1992 and his death in 2012. Currently, Felix the Cat is owned by NBCUniversal.

GAAH! Satan! Burn it with fire!

We are introduced to Felix through a floating disembodied head. This part, done by CGI in one of the first uses of motion-capture animation, stands out starkly as the rest of the movie is done with traditional hand-drawn animation. Felix tells us about Oriana and it being in another dimension and is very excited to tell you this tale. Perhaps, a little too excited.

We are introduced to Princess Oriana who rules the Kingdom of Oriana (o...k) and she is a kind and peaceful ruler. She wants to give back money to her people much to the dismay of her adviser Grumper and has disbanded the army believing the people will defend the kingdom if anything happens. As fate would have it, something is happening. The Duke of Zill begins invading the kingdom. Oriana tries to flee and find the dimensporter to summon a hero from another dimension. They activate the dimensporter but Zill and his robotic cylinders find Oriana and take her captive. A single tear with her cries for help are sent through the dimensporters and happen upon Felix the Cat. Despite saying he won't hurt it, Felix continuously swats at the tear as it cries "Help me." This chase scene between Felix and the tear goes on for nearly five minutes and then we get a short song called "Sly As a Fox" which are about foxes that has nothing to do with the story. The tear leads Felix into an abandoned mine where there happens to be a dimensporter which transports Felix to Oriana to rescue Oriana.

"Help me, Felix Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

After a couple mishaps with his magic bag, flooding the dimensporter chamber, and dancing sea creatures, Felix lands in the Land of Zill and meets Pim who offers to take Felix...somewhere but really just wants his magic bag despite not knowing that it's a magic bag. Meanwhile, back in our dimension, The Professor and Poindexter are tracking down Felix and find the mine. They then follow Felix to Oriana.

Felix and Pim. No, I don't know why Pim looks like an 1840s prospector.

As Felix and Pim arrive at Progress City, Felix is double-crossed and is taken captive by Wack Lizardi, who manages a circus in the city. Felix is thrown in jail and his magic bag is taken to Lizardi. The bag won't work with Felix so Lizardi says if Felix wants to eat (and see his bag again) he has to perform in Lizardi's circus. Felix initially refuses to he's locked back up where he meets some mizzard (mice-lizard hybrids). While locked up, Lizardi begins his show with a tribute to Zill.

"We are contented because he says we are."

I honestly don't hate this character design.

Like all villain songs, it's vastly superior to every other song in this movie. The first act in the circus are the mizzards tap dancing which the audience doesn't like--both the circus audience and the movie audience. The tap-dancing goes on for nearly four minutes. Felix is the next act and his act is that he talks and has a magic bag. Felix rips some jokes before performing with his magic bag. The crowd goes wild and Felix becomes a permanent feature at the circus.

Turns out Oriana (the princess not the kingdom) is now a dancer in Wack's circus and every night Zill watches Oriana dance like some sort of pervert. Oh, I forgot to tell you, the Duke of Zill is Oriana's uncle. Felix attempts to talk to Oriana after her performance but she doesn't listen and walks away.

The mizzards talk!

Felix befriends the mizzards who create a hole big enough for him to go through so he can visit Oriana (the princess not the kingdom). There are so many pointless scenes in this movie. Oriana isn't so sure about Felix being the dark hero but she tells him the story of her family and Oriana. The Duke was a great inventor and brilliant scientist who was disfigured during a lab explosion. Outfitting himself with a mechanical shell, the Duke became Doctor Doom The Duke of Zill after he was banished from Oriana for liking war too much. He gained the strange creatures of Zill as followers and built an army of cylinders and cubes as his military. Why are the Professor and Poindexter even in this movie?

Felix asks to perform with Oriana when she dances so Felix joins the band, playing saxophone with his magic bag. Emitting magic bubbles, Felix is able to float him, the band, Pim, and Oriana out of the circus and to freedom. Zill, watching this, freaks out, falling down the stairs, and injuring his back. They make the Duke of Zill out to be this smart, strong, and sinister villain but all that is brushed away with one pointless scene trying to be funny. It's just another of a bunch of disappointments in this movie.

Free! We're free! Wait. We still have half the movie to go.

Felix, Oriana, and Pim begin to make their way to Oriana with cylinders and cubes hot on their trail. Felix then realizes that he has left his magic bag behind despite it being in the screenshot posted above. Luckily, Professor and Poindexter catch up to Felix and they just so happen to have Felix's magic bag. Felix and the gang arrive at some hair forest in the shape of a face for some reason, it's not explained, and have to cut their way through the hair. Some more filler happens and Pim finds a boat to take them the rest of the way to Oriana.

"Hmm. The castle is around here somewhere..."

Princess Oriana is voiced by Maureen O'Connell, you probably haven't heard of her and despite a career spanning five decades, she has no credits of note. She kind of sounds like Didi Hill, Hank's stepmother on King of the Hill. It's very strange.

Felix tries to lasso Zill but his magic bag is confiscated and everyone is taken prisoner. Zill says he won't harm them if Oriana gives him the Book of Ultimate Power. She refuses so Zill sics his cylinders on her friends. She makes the book appear but Zill discovers it is useless to him. Zill has no use for Truth, Love, and Wisdom.

Still better than Cheryl Strayed's Wild.

The Duke of Zill unleashes the Master Cylinder on our heroes, an evil-er update of the Master Cylinder from the 1950s cartoon and the thing that controls the cylinder and cube army. There's no way that our heroes can overcome this.

Here are the blueprints if you want to make your own Master Cylinder..

Felix picks up the Book of Ultimate Power and throws it at the Master Cylinder. The Cylinder malfunctions and shuts down destroying the entire army and melting the Duke of Zill who promises that he will be back. So to recap: We've spent one hour and ten minutes getting to a villain that takes less than thirty seconds to defeat. Felix just threw a book. That was all it took. Oriana goes back to normal, everything is hunky-dory.

Yay.

Poindexter gives us an infodump that the purity of the gold binding on the book interfered with the circuitry of the Master Cylinder or some garbage thus explaining why everything blew up. Oriana decides to shut down the dimensporter so Felix will never be able to come back. Felix, the Professor, and Poindexter are sent back to their dimension. But not before Oriana says Felix has a heart of gold and he agrees with a "Righty-O!"

Oh, thank God it's over. Unfortunately that disembodied Felix
head is back.

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Fluppy Dogs

In 1984, Michael Eisner was brought into the Walt Disney Company to revitalize a brand that was showing its age. Eisner was brought in to revive Disney and one of the first things he decided to get his hands into was television. He got a team together and gave them the idea that Disney should be the name in animation. Aside from released thousands of animated shorts that had been locked away for decades, Eisner pushed for original animation. First pitched was Mickey and the Space Pirates but Eisner wanted to save Mickey, the face of the company for something big. The next show they pitched was The Wuzzles which premiered in September 1985. Another show, that premiered along with The Wuzzles, was The Adventure of the Gummi Bears. While The Wuzzles would be canceled after 13 episodes, Gummi Bears would last until 1990 and have 67 episodes. Despite this slight success, Eisner was still reluctant to use known Disney characters. The next show in development was Fluppy Dogs. Fluppy Dogs were about these dogs that weren't dogs. They talked and dressed like people and used jewels to travel through doors to other dimensions. The hour-long pilot, intended to serve as the first couple of episodes, premiered November 27, 1986--Thanksgiving--and was a ratings bomb. Disney immediately canceled the project and moved onto their next pitch about a duck test pilot named Launchpad McQuack. That show would become DuckTales. I recorded Fluppy Dogs during what I believe is a rerun before the 1987-1988 television season started. I know this because there is an ad for "Full House coming this fall" and a show called Once a Hero in the commercial breaks. Fluppy Dogs was one of my favorite things to watch when I was younger. There's potential but there is probably a reason Disney released the pilot on Thanksgiving.

Fluppy Dogs was written by Haskell Barkin (The Love Boat, Jabberjaw) and Bruce Talkington (DuckTales, New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Bonkers) and directed by Fred Wolf (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Five fluppy dogs are slowly making their way around a mountain in a stormy and desolate world trying to find a portal to open with a key. Fluppy dogs are adventurous canine-like creatures who use a key to open inter-dimensional doorways to other worlds. After landing in a prehistoric-like world, they find a door to our world and land in a grocery store. Chaos, as it does, ensues, and the fluppies cause a mess. While trying to escape, Stanley, the blue fluppy, talks and catches the attention of J.J. Wagstaff, a wealthy jerk of a businessman, who wants the fluppies for his collection of exotic animals. The fluppies are captured by animal control and placed in the pound. Luckily, they are only there a short time as Stanley is quickly adopted by Mrs. Bingham for her son, Jamie.

oh a dog great

Jamie isn't so sure about Stanley because he wanted a big dog. I'm confused why people keep thinking these are normal dogs when they are a bright pastel blue, pink, yellow, red, and green color. Those aren't normal colors, right?! While Jamie is walking Stanley, Stanley escapes his collar and runs away. Jamie runs after him into a construction site where Jamie climbs a ladder for some reason and winds up hanging from a steel beam making weird moaning sounds as he dangles. I don't know why the producers made the voice actor do that or kept it in when he did it but there it is: A 10-year-old boy moaning "oh, oh" for ten seconds.

Stanley recuses Jamie and explains his deal. Jamie offers to use his birthday money to break Stanley's friends out of the pound. Unfortunately, Jamie only has enough for one so they adopt Tippi, the pink fluppy. Also unfortunately, Mrs. Bingham refuses to let Jamie keep Tippi so he gives her to his next door neighbor, Claire, because your neighbor loves it when you bring them random pets.

Claire and Tippi. Why this 10-year-old hangs out with what is presumably
an 18-year-old, I have no idea.

At bedtime, Stanley explains that he enjoys adventure but gets too excited and he and his friends always wind up in trouble. At least he's self-aware. As Jamie falls asleep, he's scratching Stanley's head which causes the bed to lift into the air and fly away into the sky. They gain control of the bed and take Tippi from Claire, begging her not to tell anybody.

Jamie and the fluppies arrive at the pound to bust out Ozzie, Bink, and Dink but J.J. Wagstaff is there to also take the fluppies. The fluppies escape and all return home, safe and sound. The end.

A boy and his dog.

No. Wait. The fluppies need to find their way back home. The fluppies show up at Jamie's school saying that they've found a door but it's in the sewer so down they go. Despite having a fluppy that uses his nose to find where the doors are, Jamie thinks they are going to get lost and follows them. Whatever. We also learn that the key gets weaker with each use and the door gets a little harder to open. This door, sadly, doesn't lead anywhere but unleashes a torrent of water that floods the sewer.

While drying out in the basement, Ozzie smells another door. This door gives up a beautiful land of grass and flowers and also strange hippo creatures that charge right into the door. They call the thing a fulumpus and the thing can't return home because other fulumpuses are at the door probably wondering where it came from.

I'll admit. This is the dumbest of plot contrivances.

The fulumpus causes havoc and chaos inside Jamie's home and practically destroys it. Working together, they all clean up the house before Mrs. Bingham gets home but Jamie stills gets his butt chewed out because the school calls and snitches on him for skipping school. Meanwhile, J.J. Wagstaff puts out a $5000 reward for a fluppy dog. Ozzie, Bink, and Dink go out on their own and find the door to their world in front of the library. How convenient!

They rush to return to Stanley and Tippi but Wagstaff is on their tail and he is able to capture Ozzie. With Jamie acting strange, Mrs. Bingham chews his ass a bit more asking why he's become a terrible little boy in the last...checks watch...24 hours. "Ever since you got that dog..." The fluppies enlist Claire to help them but Jamie sees them drive away so Jamie uses the fulumpus to race after them to the Wagstaff mansion.

Wagstaff sees the fluppies approach and prepares to capture them too using Ozzie as bait. Stanley and Tippi are captured but Jamie and the fulumpus arrive and, you probably guessed it, destroy the crap out of Wagstaff's mansion. Wagstaff blackmails Jamie and Claire but Stanley has an idea. Jamie and Claire start scratching the fluppies' heads and that room of the mansion suddenly rises into the air. They crash land the room at the library but the key is malfunctioning. It reveals the door and the fluppies' world. The fluppies, the fulumpus, Wagstaff, and his minion Hamish, all wind up going through the door. I can only think they put Wagstaff into some sort of labor camp or something.

I don't know what Jamie told his mom when she learned that Jamie lost his first dog after only 36 hours.

A few months later, it's now winter, and Stanley and the others are back! And they've brought some friends with them. Hundreds of thousands of fluppies are pouring out of the door presumably to kill us all after learning what a terrible person J.J. Wagstaff was. I, for one, welcome our fluppy overlords. They will be the cutest dictators ever.

The end times are here.

The voice cast is interesting but unremarkable. Stanley is voiced by Marshall Efron who voiced characters in The Smurfs. Tippi and Bink were voiced by Susan Blu (DuckTales, The Magic School Bus). Ozzie was voiced by Lorenzo Music (Garfield and Friends, The Real Ghostbusters). Dink was voiced by Hal Smith (The Andy Griffith Show, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh). Claire was voiced by Jessica Pennington who now does things behind the scenes. J.J. Wagstaff was voiced by Michael Rye (Super Friends, Flintstone Kids). Jamie was voiced by Carl Steven, who was 12 when he recorded the voice for Fluppy Dogs. Steven is probably best known for voicing Fred in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo but he also appeared in TV shows such as Punky Brewster and Growing Pains. His last acting role was in 1996 as Matthew in Weird Science. He was arrested and sentenced to prison for armed robbery in 2010. He died of a heroin overdose in 2013 while in prison.

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Until next time, I remain...
~Brian

POB #8: The Legend of Big Paw

Pound Puppies was one of the most profitable toy franchises of the 1980s. If you were a kid in the 80s then you probably had a Pound Puppy, a sleepy-eyed lump of stuffing with a PP heart tattoo on its butt. There was also a television series because it was a toy franchise in the 80s. It ran only two seasons and 26 episodes and experienced a change in character animation and writing making it seem like two different shows. It also had a special that was used as a pilot for the series and a full-length animated feature film.

Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw was released in March of 1988. The animation was different than what was on TV at the time. The entire movie was also a flashback and about as close as you can get to it being a musical without actually calling it that. Unfortunately, critics and fans alike agree that it wasn't as good as what Disney and Don Bluth was putting out at that time and the movie was a box office bomb earning not even $600,000.

The movie starts out in the present-day, circa 1988. We're following Whopper, now a grown dog, taking his niece and nephew someplace for a surprise. A guy on a skateboard rolls past and nearly gets hit by a car but is saved by Whopper at the last minute. This gives the movie the chance to refresh the audience in looking both ways and waiting for the WALK signal before crossing the street. They mention Puppy Power because if dogs and humans couldn't talk to each other, Whopper never would've been able to lecture that guy. Whopper regales his niece and nephew with the story of how we got Puppy Power.

Back in the Dark Ages, circa 958 AD, Sir McNasty is hunting for the sword Excalibur and the Bone of Scone. Along the way, they run into a boy named Arthur and his dog, Digalot. Sir McNasty hunts down Arthur and Digalot who lead him right to the Excalibur and Bone. Arthur is able to pull out the sword and Digalot is able to pull out the Bone, a large, mysterious creature appears and McNasty runs away. McNasty swears that he or his children, or his children's children, or their children, will someday get the power of the Bone of Scone into McNasty hands. I don't understand how this Bone which allows humans and dogs to converse with each other will give him power but whatever.

Back in 1988, wondering who led Arthur and Digalot to the Bone/Sword, Whopper says it was Big Paw, the guardian of the Bone which leads to another story about how we almost lost Puppy Power. That occurred back in 1958 when Whopper was a puppy. How old is Whopper?

Pictured above: My next tattoo.

We open in the 1950s with a musical number set to the tune of Danny & the Juniors' "At the Hop" only called "At the Pound." Apparently there is a "pet sensation sweeping the nation at the pound" so you better get down there and adopt a pound puppy (or purry) as soon as possible. The pound is holding an adoption bazaar in honor of the Bone of Scone being at the museum. While the dogs and kids are at the museum a nurse dog comes in and says that Colette is having her puppies. It's amazing how much I don't care about the other animals unless they are Cooler, Nose Marie, Bright Eyes, Howler, or Whopper.

When they get back at the pound, they sing to the new puppies some slow do-wop melody when Marvin McNasty barges in, ready to adopt some puppies. McNasty adopts four cute bulldogs which makes Whopper wonder why he wants so many dogs. Today, adopting four dogs is nothing. In fact, I don't think you can even have a social media account unless you have a minimum of four pets. McNasty is acting weird around the dogs and they clearly don't like him as they keep trying to escape from the picnic basket he's placed them in. McNasty is also allergic to cats. That may or may not be a plot point.We are also introduced to Reflex, a dog who hugs and kisses and says "I love you" to everyone just like your drunk friend back at the fraternity whenever he hears a bell. That also may or may not be a plot point.

This dog commits at least 15 acts of sexual assault in this one hour
and twenty minute kid's movie.

The most random quote occurs when McNasty returns to his...lair(?) with the puppies and his henchmen, Lumpy and Bones, are having lunch.

Lumpy: "How'd it go, boss?"

McNasty: "Those stupid children didn't suspect a thing."

No, they totally suspected something but general creepiness isn't a valid excuse to deny adopting out a dog. Afterwards, McNasty gives the plan to Lumpy and Bones on how to steal the Bone of Scone. First, they go through the main entrance and then, stay with me, they follow the corridor to the Bone. Sounds like a great plan. The plan also consists of Lumpy and Bones dressing like cleaners but that's not mentioned when going over the plan.

Whopper follows Lumpy and Bones into the museum and after your standard "let's cause millions of dollars in damage to this museum" scene, Lumpy and Bones end up breaking the Bone of Scone in half. Whopper is able to take one half while the other is left in the museum as Lumpy and Bones chase after Whopper. They head to the pound while the alarm at the museum causes the other dogs to run there. The Bone ends up being dropped in the basket of Colette's puppies which leads to Colette biting Bones' butt when he reaches in to grab it.

I wonder if the writers ever considered how problematic it would be 30 years later to have an object named the Bone and having a character named Bones. Anyway, Colette and Whopper are vacuumed up, it's how they were going to steal the Bone of Scone, and Bones and Lumpy head back to McNasty's lair(?) leaving the puppies orphaned and near death somehow. The stakes have never been higher.

Cooler, Nose Marie, Bright Eyes, and Howler learn that McNasty is in an old house in the woods just outside of town. At the house, McNasty is upset that he only has half the Bone but that doesn't stop him from singing about being "The King of Everything" and turning his four new puppies into slobbering and vicious guard dogs with his Mean Machine. The Pound Puppies arrive at the woods and all of them are scared to go in. Cooler leads the way and sings a song about how everything is "All In Your Mind" to the tune of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" What's interesting about the song is that Cooler is talking about strange monsters and creatures that don't exist when there are real scary things in the woods such as wild animals, anti-government conspiracy theorists, and Slender Man.

In a scene clearly written to pad out the movie, Whopper and Colette are able to escape from McNasty and take the Bone with them but when they meet up with the others, Lumpy and Bones are able to re-capture them despite the other dogs BEING RIGHT THERE! The dogs follow Lumpy and Bones but just end up dangling from a rope in a mine shaft. The rope breaks but luckily the cats, who Cooler told to go the Hell, are able to pull them to safety. As a reward for saving their lives, Cooler allows the cats to come the rest of the way with them.

Back at the pound, Colette's puppies are about the die because no one can feed them?

We are finally introduced to Big Paw after the gang falls into a swamp of quicksand and Big Paw saves them. It's not clearly established what Big Paw is supposed to be. He's originally said to be the guardian of the Bone of Scone and that he's mean and scary and everyone goes around scared of him. But Big Paw doesn't even seem to know what the Bone of Scone is and doesn't seem concerned that, in the course of less than a day, it was broken and stolen. Honestly, it's probably just bad writing and no one cared enough to attempt to change it and clearly didn't count on kids who watched the movie and loved it to comment on it 30 years later.

Anyway, Big Paw introduces himself with a song, "I'm a Puppy Too" to the tune of Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl." See, Big Paw is just a lonely puppy who needs a home and friends. Big Paw is all of us.

The Puppies (and Purries) arrive at McNasty's old house where they are immediately captured, except for Big Paw, to be turned into ferocious, evil guard dogs. The Purries, however, who give McNasty allergies, are thrown out and not, you know, strangled or drowned right there like a real villain would attempt to do. Cooler is also thrown out because he put a pot on his head and began saying "Meow."

Yep, that's a cat.

McNasty, Lumpy, and Bones head out back to the city and take over the pound. (Views scene again. Yep, that's what happens.) His plan is to dig a tunnel from the pound to the museum so he can get the other half of the Bone. Cooler, Charlemange, and Hairball devise their own plan to dig a tunnel to the museum only this one will have blackjack and hookers.

The Bone of Scone is back together. With glue. Glue fixes everything including
millennia-old sacred objects.

We all end up back at the museum where the Puppies take back the Bone and after a scene of Scooby-Doo doors that goes on a bit too long, Lumpy winds up with the Bone. Cooler, in an attempt to grab the Bone back, ends up getting trapped underneath a dinosaur skeleton surrounded by his snarling, rabid friends.

Way too long.

All good things must come to an end and Colette's puppies, who followed everybody to the museum and are about to be devoured by their mom which can be nature's wont, find a solution to the vicious guard dog problem by saying "I love you" which turns Colette back to normal because of course it does. Cooler says that to Reflex and escapes his dino cage in order to ring a bell so that Reflex "I love you"s everybody back to normal. McNasty escapes but he has Big Paw and Cooler on his tail (ha!) and circles back around to the museum where the police are waiting. McNasty turns his van into the museum which will now have to shut down and has set archaeology and history in general back by centuries due to all the damage where they crash and lose the Bone of Scone in a giant pile of dinosaur bones.

The mean machine, meanwhile, have turned McNasty, Lumpy, and Bones into good guys because of course it does. Big Paw and Nose Marie find the Bone of Scone in the pile of other bones and everything is back to normal. The next day, the adoption bazaar, McNasty, Lumpy, and Bones are helping out and the gang sings "Puppy Power's Back" to the tune of Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock." So Whopper wasn't lying to his niece and nephew and the surprise is that the Bone of Scone is back at the museum, for the 40th anniversary, I guess, and that Big Paw is there, guarding it.

Whopper wore more clothes as a puppy than he does as an adult.

End movie. Cut to credits.

Frank Welker is literally in everything.

An interesting footnote to The Legend of Big Paw is that the voice of Marvin McNasty was George Rose. Rose was an established actor on screen and stage who won two Tony Awards for his performances in My Fair Lady and The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway. In 1984, Rose bought a holiday home in the Dominican Republic. Rose, who was gay and had no immediate family or permanent partners, adopted a 14-year-old Dominican boy and planned to leave his estate to him. On May 5, 1988, Rose was found tortured and beaten to death. Rose's adopted son, the boy's biological father, an uncle, and a friend of the father confessed to killing Rose. Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw was Rose's last film role. George Rose was 68.

Sunday Comics #15: Winsor McCay and The Rarebit Fiend

Winsor McCay was a pioneer in everything cartoons. You could say that he perfected the way comic strips are done today and developed animation so that your cartoons could be viewed like a movie. McCay was either born in Spring Lake, Michigan or in Canada in either 1867, 1869 or 1871. McCay would spend most of his childhood drawing cartoons and early in his career would draw editorial cartoons and commercial art. While working in Cincinnati and working on a comic strip based on a poem by George Randolph Chester, McCay's work caught the attention of James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. McCay soon moved to New York where he would work on Mr. Goodenough, Sister's Little Sister's Beau, and Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe's Phunny Phrolics. None of these strips would last long but in July 1904, McCay introduced Little Sammy Sneeze whose sneeze would build panel-by-panel until it was released with disastrous and humorous results. Little Sammy Sneeze would last until December 1906.

In 1905, McCay came up with the idea for Little Nemo in Slumberland in which a little boy named Nemo would have fantastical dreams ending with his awakening in the last panel. Nemo would become McCay's most popular strip lasting from 1905 to 1914 and again from 1924 to 1926. McCay's longest-running strip would be one with no recurring characters but also with fantastical element. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend began in 1904 and the premise was simple: a collection of random people would have a bad dream caused by eating Welsh rarebit. The last panel would have the person wake up promising not to eat rarebit again. The strip ended in 1913 but was revived in 1923 as Rarebit Reveries which lasted until 1925.

Rarebit Fiend inspired McCay to test out animation and McCay wound up creating four short cartoons taken from the strip including How a Mosquito Operates and The Pet.

McCay focused mostly on animation after the 1920s until July 26, 1934 when he complained to his wife, Maude, of a headache. McCay discovered that his right arm--his drawing arm--was paralyzed, collapsed, and was pronounced dead of a cerebral hemorrhage later that day.

In 1906, Edwin S. Porter produced a seven-minute live-action adaptation of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend: