'Toon Reviews 14: Animaniacs Vol 1 Part 24: Yakko's World of Baldness/Opportunity Knox/Wings Take Heart

Episode 24

Yakko’s World of Baldness

Rather than starting this episode with a parody of another show’s intro, we get a full-blown faux commercial.  Considering that it’s provided by the Warners, there’s a humorous spin to the commercial as it advertises something really ridiculous and off-the-wall which is shaving one’s head and painting the scalp in a selected color. 

In addition, it’s all advertised by the best-suited Warner, Yakko.  His high energy and fast-talking mannerisms are synonymous with the manipulative promotion you’d expect from commercials.  Heck, Yakko’s advertising talents have even been showcased a lot in past cartoons, especially “Hooked on a Ceiling.”  It’s this kind of attitude from him that adds appeal to something that very little people would be willing to do by enthusiastically going through every step of the process against a scene that depicts them.  Whether it’s the actual head-shaving and scalp-painting process, what color for the scalp to be painted, and even an alternate of having Wakko gnaw all the hair off, there’s a lot of hilarity from there being a business of the ridiculous stuff the characters are doing, and Yakko’s salesman attitude makes it all stand as enticing.  It feels as if it’s worth getting your head shaved even though it’s an unethical thing to do, especially when Yakko goes back on the reported price for the shaving, and says that they’ll do it for free. 

Then the whole commercial is capped off with a funny scene of Yakko and his siblings getting their heads shaved themselves.  It turns out to be a great way to kick off the episode with a wacky yet greatly presented concept brought to us by the perfect character for the job. 10/10

Opportunity Knox

With this cartoon, we get one of the strongest instances of Pinky and the Brain working as a team.  Usually, since they both have very different and clashing personalities, they’re not on the same page especially with how Brain’s complex and intellectual plans frequently escape Pinky’s simple mindset.  As a result, Pinky is just along for the ride with little need to assist Brain.  Granted, the formula has shown that Brain’s plans will fail regardless of Pinky, but there are a few exceptions such as this cartoon where they’re both vital to the plan taking shape. 

This time, the plan is to drive to Fort Knox, put the guards in a helpless sneezing fit with a special pollen Brain put together, and steal the gold to get enough power to take over the world.  It’s another one of those plans where it seems like all the important steps are in place.  We’ve already discussed the purpose of the pollen, and it’s even demonstrated at the cartoon’s start in a scene that pokes fun at how we’re unable to cure the common cold.  However, there’s also the aspect of exactly how the mice are supposed to get to Fort Knox.  Brain simply plans on using Acme Labs’ minivan to drive there at night and has taken avoiding getting in trouble into account as well as how he’s going to drive such a big vehicle. 

The latter point to the plan is where Pinky’s usefulness comes in.  Because they’re both so small, none of them can drive the minivan alone, so Brain has to rely on Pinky to help perform all the appropriate driving controls.  Surprisingly, Pinky is able to perform Brain’s commands very well.  Granted, it does lead to certain mishaps like him mistaking the windshield wipers for the turn signal and getting his tail burnt which he doesn’t notice at first, but he still pulls through and performs his assigned tasks successfully.  If it wasn’t for Pinky, Brain wouldn’t have been able to get around a large vehicle, or fight through highway hypnosis.  Moments like this greatly prove that while he may be dumb, Pinky is actually one of the most loyal sidekicks any character can ask for.  For that, he’s pretty much the best dumb character in TV animation. 

In fact, this portrayal of Pinky only makes the interesting layer to the plans’ obligatory failures stand out more than usual.  The mice do make it to Fort Knox successfully, and they even take out the guards with the pollen so they can get to the gold, but when they actually get to the gold, the plan immediately fails as the heavy weight of the stuff crushes them.  In other words, the whole failure is on Brain not considering options to have two small mice lift heavy gold.  As a result, you’re both sympathetic for their pain, but also find it a little funny that it all failed because of one bit of ignorance and that this amounts to more proof that maybe Brain isn’t as much of a genius as it seems. 

For the insight in the mice’s dynamic from their moments of teamwork to further looks into how smart they really are, this cartoon is easily one of the most interesting they’ve put out. 10/10

Wings Take Heart

In the spirit of the original Looney Tunes, this cartoon shows willingness to break from the core cast and star one-off characters in an idea that’s abstract and totally different from what we typically expect.  Nevertheless, what we get here has a lot of impressive qualities to it which in turn helps it stand as a greatly unique way to step out of its comfort zone.  There’s little to no dialog here, and I’m always for animated works that are like that, since they push the potential of the art in telling a story through the visuals and music. 

This story is very basic.  A little moth sees a butterfly and is immediately smitten with her.  Right away the music effectively blends with the cartoon’s actions in moments as simple as a drop of water waking up the moth as he falls from his mushroom bed.  Then, when he first sees the butterfly, the music slowly elevates while he watches her, ultimately leading to a beautiful orchestral piece as they share a flight.  Just the simple scenes of them flying together feel like so much more than they really are with sweeping instrumentals to go along with them, and you feel like you’re flying along with them. 

Now, since our lead characters are tiny insignificant bugs, a conflict comes in the form of the moth getting whisked away by larger objects of the outside world, and just when he's about to kiss the butterfly too.  From then on, the cartoon is a series of mishaps the moth runs into while trying to get back to the butterfly.  With the lack of dialog, all that happens to the moth stand out uniquely, largely helped by the expressive music.  When he’s hit by large trucks, the actions of him being pushed at a high speed are backed up with music that’s lively and fast, greatly depicting what bugs in real life must feel should something similar happen to them.  Much more restrained music comes when the moth is picked up by a vulture who takes him to the nest where baby vultures intend to eat him.  However, through being restrained, the music simply isn’t threatening and fails to invest you in the moth’s potential morbid danger. 

From this moment though comes a much more effective dramatic music piece when a forest fire breaks out, placing the moth in even more danger.  As it plays while the moth struggles to get away from the spreading flames, the suspense is perfectly buyable, and it builds when creativity depicts the flames as a snake that draws the moth to it.  Eventually the fire is put out, and the moth is caught in a flood.  The music here is still appropriately suspenseful, but here it’s hard to care about when you can’t help but question why the moth never just flies to safety.  He can do it fine later on when he sees the butterfly, so there’s really no reason why he can’t fly immediately. 

At least the cartoon ends well when he’s finally reunited with the butterfly…until she smacks him after they kiss and flies away.  It’s mindboggling why the cartoon ends like this.  These bugs clearly had mutual feelings for each other right from the start and the butterfly was always ready to kiss.  It makes no sense why she would suddenly smack and get away from him. 

It’s an unfortunate sting on the cartoon for sure, but it still shines as a unique work of the show that astounds with what the animation medium can do with great music crafting many great things out of such a simple concept.  8/10

Cartoon Ranking

1. King Yakko
2. Hello Nice Warners
3. Meatballs or Consequences
4. Plane Pals
5. Slappy Goes Walnuts
6. H.M.S. Yakko
7. Hooked on a Ceiling
8. Temporary Insanity
9. Bumbie’s Mom
10. Les Miseranimals
11. Hearts of Twilight
12. Opportunity Knox
13. Space Probed
14. West Side Pigeons
15. Battle for the Planet
16. Four Score and Seven Migraines Ago
17. When Rita Met Runt
18. De-zanitized
19. Win Big
20. Guardin’ the Garden
21. Taming of the Screwy
22. Chalkboard Bungle
23. La La Law
24. Nothing but the Tooth
25. Piano Rag
26. Pavlov’s Mice
27. Cookies for Einstein
28. The Big Candy Store
29. Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump Dump Dump
30. Davy Omelette
31. Garage Sale of the Century
32. Wally Llama
33. Up the Crazy River
34. Where Rodents Dare
35. The Flame
36. Roll Over Beethoven
37. Wings Take Heart
38. Hurray for Slappy
39. Cat on a Hot Steel Beam
40. Operation: Lollipop
41. No Pain No Painting
42. Chicken Boo-Ryshnikov
43. Goodfeathers: The Beginning
44. The Cat and the Fiddle
45. La Behemoth
46. A Moving Experience
47. The Boids

Song Ranking

1. Yakko’s Universe
2. Yakko’s World
3. The Monkey Song
4. Wakko’s America
5. What Are We?
6. Be Careful What You Eat
7. Little Old Slappy from Pasadena

Miscellaneous Ranking

1. Yakko’s World of Baldness
2. The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
3. Hitchcock Parody
4. Gilligan’s Island Parody
5. Nighty-Night Toon
6. Flipper Parody

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the last episode on the Animaniacs Vol 1 DVD.  There's a cold opener of Disasterpiece Theater, Yakko becomes a detective searching for a diamond on a ship of many members of the cast, Rita and Runt are taken in by Cleopatra, and the Warners close the episode with a take on Shakespeare. 

Also included in the next review is an announcement for come major changes in this blog's review process

If you want to stay updated for more reviews, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter.

If you would like to check out other Animaniacs reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

'Toon Review 14: Animaniacs Vol 1 Part 23: Be Careful What You Eat/Up the Crazy River/Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump Dump Dump

Episode 23

Be Careful What You Eat

It’s common to be more conscious of having a good balanced diet as you get older, but as a kid, you’d most likely want something that tastes the best, regardless if it’s healthy.  With cartoon characters like the Warners however, given their overly-hyper zaniness that makes up the bulk of their personalities, junk food is obviously the most important part of their diet. 

So, when doing shopping at the supermarket, they’re speeding through the aisles getting as much of it as possible.  Scenes of this lead into the song, this time teaching about the chemicals, elements, fats, and sugars that go into junk food as the Warners read their featured ingredients on the labels and boxes.  Like all the other educational songs of the series, the impressiveness comes from how well it takes the long complicated names for the junk food ingredients and puts them to music which in this case is a fast-paced rendition of the Can-can, resulting in a particularly catchy number.  There’s even some nice visual cues to help you to remember the names of the ingredients when the scene is taken up by the ingredient label as the Warners point to them and hop across them as they sing, at least in the first part of the song.  The rest of it is set to scenes of them simply observing the actual ingredients and making their own junk food.  It’s not as fun as singing on the actual label, but it’s fitting for what they’re going for. 

That said, as good as the song is for teaching what NOT to want when searching for healthy food depicted with the Warners getting fat and claiming that they’re insides are rotting at the end of the song, I think the educational aspect could’ve been stronger with brief explanations of what many of the ingredients listed are.  I mean, which ones are sugars, fats, chemicals etc. and how exactly are they bad for you?  That would be a lot more effective in saying why we should be careful of those things as well as why the Warners love junk food so much. 

Regardless, this is still an enormously fun song that continues to remain catchy while educating on somewhat complex elements of life. 9.5/10

Up the Crazy River

This is yet another cartoon starring the formulaic escapades of Mindy and Buttons, but there are a few elements to make it stand out amongst their other cartoons. 

For one thing, the setting for the action is more exotic and clever than the mundane suburban home most Mindy and Buttons chases start at.  It all begins on a ferry going through the Amazon rainforest that Mindy and her family are taking.  We still have Mindy harnessed and Buttons being given a specific order, but starting with the family together for a boat ride through a jungle as opposed to them just doing their thing at home is a pretty significant difference anyway. 

Speaking of sticking to the formula, the chase begins the moment Mindy is distracted by a passing butterfly which prompts her to follow it off the boat and Buttons to keep her safe.  The chase provides many rainforest-related gags for Buttons to endure while keeping Mindy safe, and most of them aren’t too harsh to him.  When he gets caught on the ferry’s paddlewheel, all that happens is that he’s frequently dunked in the water a few times without any real pain.  When piranhas chew on him as he climbs out of the water, he just shrugs and flicks them off.  Even when he’s given a sinister glare by a mother alligator after he knocks away her babies, she’s not that hard on him.  For that, it’s easy to enjoy what happens, predictable as it is. 

Another interesting thing about this particular cartoon is how it can stand as a guide on how to effectively inform the audience about a major issue, in this case deforestation in major rainforests like the Amazon.  Before the chase even starts, during the ferry ride, there’s a monotone announcement on a PA system talking about the rainforest losing a lot of trees and many animals are losing their home.  All the while, both Mindy and Buttons give very bored expressions.  In fact you could argue that this gives a believable reason for Mindy to want to go after a butterfly.  Basically, this is an example of a weak way to get across a social message.  The announcement spelling out the effects of deforestation is both preachy for how it hammers the negativity of the issue, and boring for how it’s just there to make a point of the issue and nothing more. 

However, the following chase addresses the issue by showing the effects.  Shots of men cutting down trees, homeless animals fleeing, and the wood being taken to a factory speak wonders of the harsh effects of deforestation with very little dialog.  It’s easier to feel the emotional effects of the issue and you get more of what it’s all about than you could in a long restrained lecture.  Also, since the issue becomes a backdrop for Mindy and Buttons’ chase through the rainforest and even the factory, you learn a lot about deforestation while watching a fun, entertaining cartoon in the process which is always a plus.  The depiction of deforestation also shows some hope to end it when the chase gets the factory destroyed much to the animals’ delight.  Sure, it may cost some people their jobs, but it shows that for the good of the planet, we could use less factories. 

So, there’s a good amount of standout moments to make this one of the better Mindy and Buttons cartoons.  Even Buttons’ obligatory scolding, which to be fair was partially brought on by himself since he DID get Mindy wet, is lightened by a hug from Mindy at the end, and this wouldn’t be the last time this would happen. 

For a unique setting and effectively showing an environmental issue instead of telling it, this is a cartoon with these characters worth coming back to. 9/10

Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump Dump Dump

For this cartoon starring the Goodfeathers, the focus is on the simple comedic hijinks stemming from the pigeons’ daily tasks such as trying to find food.  It’s nothing particularly special, but the simplistic setup is made entertaining by the solid comedy and character dynamics, and that's good considering that most of the Goodfeathers’ cartoons mostly feature them getting mercilessly hurt over said dynamics. 

Even the violence we do get at the start of the cartoon, especially with Pesto crushed by a hotdog cart that does honestly look too realistic to be truly funny, works because it has a point to show just how much of a challenge getting food is.  The challenging part of this task also does its part to get the plot moving when the Goodfeathers travel to a garbage barge to obtain good food scraps.  There, the focus of entertainment is the Goodfeathers' chemistry with clashes of Squit’s innocence with Pesto’s temper while Bobby breaks up the tensions, as well as them putting up with the irritating seagulls who claim the garbage.  It’s not long before the a conflict arises when Pesto gets stuck in plastic soda rings. 

One thing to appreciate about this setup for the plot is a believable thing to happen to pigeons in the city, and it’s pleasing to see that to represent an honest look at what those creatures can encounter in the city as opposed to getting hit or knocked away by humans.  Like the previous cartoon, it’s an environmental awareness moment without flat-out stating it, so more time is devoted to countless attempts to remove the rings while Pesto’s temper helps liven up things up comedy-wise.  How he finds a way to make a big deal out of every minute thing that happens to him is his usual entertaining trait, but given his predicament, his attitude turns out to be a perfect fit. 

As for the attempts to free Pesto, they’re basic attempts that boil down to tugging on the rings whether its simply by the Goodfeathers themselves or taken to extreme measures by relying on taxis to pull them off.  However, these simple gags bring on even more great personality clashes such as from how Pesto’s temper is only quelled by Bobby’s threatening, but still sounding laid-back, attitude.  There’s also some creativity to how the plastic finally does come off.  Pesto’s temper ends up getting all the Goodfeathers stuck, but they find a way around this by posing as soda cans, shape and all, just as a woman buys hotdogs.  It gives us a cute visual gag, and they don’t even feature the woman beating them up after finding out she was offered pigeons. 

It really is amazing how easy this cartoon is on the Goodfeathers pain-wise, for even if what happens does prevent them from getting food like they had planned, this is a cartoon starring them that’s easy to enjoy.  It allows for the main trio’s personalities to show themselves off significantly, bring them together for great interactions, and overall specializes in their strengths.  The story isn’t the most interesting from the show, but it’s still greatly entertaining. 9/10

Cartoon Ranking

1. King Yakko
2. Hello Nice Warners
3. Meatballs or Consequences
4. Plane Pals
5. Slappy Goes Walnuts
6. H.M.S. Yakko
7. Hooked on a Ceiling
8. Temporary Insanity
9. Bumbie’s Mom
10. Les Miseranimals
11. Hearts of Twilight
12. Space Probed
13. West Side Pigeons
14. Battle for the Planet
15. Four Score and Seven Migraines Ago
16. When Rita Met Runt
17. De-zanitized
18. Win Big
19. Guardin’ the Garden
20. Taming of the Screwy
21. Chalkboard Bungle
22. La La Law
23. Nothing but the Tooth
24. Piano Rag
25. Pavlov’s Mice
26. Cookies for Einstein
27. The Big Candy Store
28. Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump, Ta Da Dump Dump Dump
29. Davy Omelette
30. Garage Sale of the Century
31. Wally Llama
32. Up the Crazy River
33. Where Rodents Dare
34. The Flame
35. Roll Over Beethoven
36. Hurray for Slappy
37. Cat on a Hot Steel Beam
38. Operation: Lollipop
39. No Pain No Painting
40. Chicken Boo-Ryshnikov
41. Goodfeathers: The Beginning
42. The Cat and the Fiddle
43. La Behemoth
44. A Moving Experience
45. The Boids

Song Ranking

1. Yakko’s Universe
2. Yakko’s World
3. The Monkey Song
4. Wakko’s America
5. What Are We?
6. Be Careful What You Eat
7. Little Old Slappy from Pasadena

Miscellaneous Ranking

1. The Great Wakkorotti: The Master and His Music
2. Hitchcock Parody
3. Gilligan’s Island Parody
4. Nighty-Night Toon
5. Flipper Parody

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode which features a commercial for Yakko's World of Baldness, Pinky and the Brain plotting to steal the gold from Fort Knox, and a one-off short about a moth falling for a butterfly told through music.
If you want to stay updated for more reviews, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter.

If you would like to check out other Animaniacs reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.