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Canned Feud is a 1951 Looney Tunes short directed by I. Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a pun on "canned food."

Plot[]

Sylvester's family goes on vacation to California, but forgets to put him out. Sylvester abruptly notices this, finding that he is locked inside an empty house devoid of food with no milk being delivered for two weeks. Fortunately, he finds a cupboard full of canned tuna and cat food, but discovers that he also needs a can opener. He seemingly cannot find one, until he sees a mouse with one. He begs the mouse to give it, but the mouse throws it in his hole. Sylvester frantically tries and fails to retrieve it, and the mouse casually walks away. Furious, Sylvester gives chase to the mouse and crashes into the mouse's hole while trying to catch him.

Sylvester tries vainly to open the tuna by beating it against the floor and jumping on it. When this doesn't work he tries to chop it with an axe, but when he's about to swing, the blade flies off and goes out the mail slot. The mouse appears to be giving the can opener and when he tries to retrieve it the mouse grabs it and runs back into his hole causing Sylvester to crash into it again. Next he tries using a bent coat hanger to retrieve the can opener, however the mouse hooks it to a live wire and he receives an electric shock when the wire touches another. Sylvester then sets up a piano to drop on the can, just before the mouse offers the can opener, prompting Sylvester to release his hold on the rope attached to the piano, thereby crushing him. He then attempts to cut a larger hole in the wall to enter the mouse's home, but is foiled by the mouse simultaneously cutting the floor beneath Sylvester's feet.

His next attempt involves dynamite, which predictably backfires after the mouse inflates and pops a paper bag making him think the dynamite had already blown. His following attempt, involving a vacuum, results in Sylvester being sucked in, along with hot coals, and clumsily tumbling down into the basement while trying to hit the mouse with a golf club. However, the angrily persistent cat (thinking that that's the last straw) returns with an armful of dynamite and fireworks, but they blow prematurely while he's lighting the fuse, resulting in a tremendous explosion, but he does finally recover the can opener in the process. Going to the cupboard and yelling "I got it" along the way, he finds it locked, and the mouse now holds the key. Sylvester screams out in anguish and faints onto the floor, while the mouse merely shrugs and twirls the key on his finger.

Censorship[]

  • On CBS, the part where Sylvester uses a bent wire hanger to retrieve the can opener (only to get shocked when the hook of the hanger gets snagged on two bare electrical wires) was cut to remove Sylvester tugging harder and the predictable result of Sylvester getting shocked.[3]
    • The same scene that was cut on CBS was also removed on Nickelodeon (even though a similar scene in the Sylvester cartoon "Yankee Dood It" was left intact). Also cut was a scene where Sylvester uses an axe to open his can of cat food, only to have the blade fly off and go through the mail slot (even though a similar scene in the Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales short "Moby Duck" was left uncensored on Nickelodeon).[3]

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Analysis[]

"Canned Feud" is considered one of the more unusual Sylvester cartoons to have ever been produced. In this short, Sylvester is paired with the same unnamed mouse from "Rhapsody Rabbit" and "Stooge for a Mouse". In contrast to the mouse's sympathetic personality in those two shorts, here he is a sadistic nuisance to Sylvester, trying to starve him out of pure malice. Usually, Sylvester is the one who instigates conflict with other characters, such as his persistence to eating Tweety. But in this short, the mouse is the one who instigates the conflict with Sylvester by refusing to give the desperate feline a can-opener.

Robert McKimson would later revisit the premise in the cartoon, "Moby Duck", featuring Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. While Sylvester was the hero of "Canned Feud", Daffy was the villain of "Moby Duck" as he refuses to share a box of canned goods with Speedy, who in turn refuses to share him a can-opener despite offering it to him several times.

Notes[]

  • A gag involving a falling piano and piano key teeth was reused in both "The Super Snooper" and "Hook, Line and Stinker".
    • Sylvester gets piano key teeth again in "Muzzle Tough", and one of the sound effects was reused.
    • A similar piano key teeth gag is later re-enacted in one of the 2004-2011 Boomerang Europe character idents, except that the victim cat in question is Tom from Tom and Jerry instead of Sylvester. Co-incidentally, both Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes are currently owned by Warner Bros. as of 1997 following the 1996 Time Warner-Turner Entertainment merger.[4]
  • At once scene where one of Sylvester's owners leaves a note to the milkman to not deliver milk to the house for two weeks because they're on vacation, their last name is revealed to be Champin, which is a reference to animator Ken Champin.
  • The various cans of cat food in the cupboard include Pawley's Salmon, a reference to layout artist Hawley Pratt, Fritzling Packed Sardines, a Friz Freleng reference, Ross Codfish after Virgil Ross, and Champin Tuna, another Ken Champin reference. Cans of Starkist Tuna are also present.
  • Most of this cartoon was used in the Thanksgiving special Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet.
  • The Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc 4 release uses the 1955-64 rendition of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down", though the original music did exist in the 1998 dubbed version and the unrestored transfers beforehand such as the LaserDisc print and the Golden Jubilee tape print.[5]
  • Recent airings on Boomerang have the restored version with the original opening rings as well as the available streaming services.[6]
  • This is the first Freleng cartoon written by Warren Foster.
  • This is Manuel Perez's first short he animated for the Freleng unit since 1949's "Each Dawn I Crow".

Gallery[]

See also[]

References[]

External links[]

Sylvester Cartoons
1945 Life with Feathers ā€¢ Peck Up Your Troubles
1946 Kitty Kornered
1947 Tweetie Pie ā€¢ Crowing Pains ā€¢ Doggone Cats ā€¢ Catch as Cats Can
1948 Back Alley Oproar ā€¢ I Taw a Putty Tat ā€¢ Hop, Look and Listen ā€¢ Kit for Cat ā€¢ Scaredy Cat
1949 Mouse Mazurka ā€¢ Bad Ol' Putty Tat ā€¢ Hippety Hopper
1950 Home, Tweet Home ā€¢ The Scarlet Pumpernickel ā€¢ All a Bir-r-r-d ā€¢ Canary Row ā€¢ Stooge for a Mouse ā€¢ Pop 'Im Pop!
1951 Canned Feud ā€¢ Putty Tat Trouble ā€¢ Room and Bird ā€¢ Tweety's S.O.S. ā€¢ Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Who's Kitten Who? ā€¢ Gift Wrapped ā€¢ Little Red Rodent Hood ā€¢ Ain't She Tweet ā€¢ Hoppy Go Lucky ā€¢ A Bird in a Guilty Cage ā€¢ Tree for Two
1953 Snow Business ā€¢ A Mouse Divided ā€¢ Fowl Weather ā€¢ Tom Tom Tomcat ā€¢ A Street Cat Named Sylvester ā€¢ Catty Cornered ā€¢ Cats A-weigh!
1954 Dog Pounded ā€¢ Bell Hoppy ā€¢ Dr. Jerkyl's Hide ā€¢ Claws for Alarm ā€¢ Muzzle Tough ā€¢ Satan's Waitin' ā€¢ By Word of Mouse
1955 Lighthouse Mouse ā€¢ Sandy Claws ā€¢ Tweety's Circus ā€¢ Jumpin' Jupiter ā€¢ A Kiddies Kitty ā€¢ Speedy Gonzales ā€¢ Red Riding Hoodwinked ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned ā€¢ Pappy's Puppy
1956 Too Hop to Handle ā€¢ Tweet and Sour ā€¢ Tree Cornered Tweety ā€¢ The Unexpected Pest ā€¢ Tugboat Granny ā€¢ The Slap-Hoppy Mouse ā€¢ Yankee Dood It
1957 Tweet Zoo ā€¢ Tweety and the Beanstalk ā€¢ Birds Anonymous ā€¢ Greedy for Tweety ā€¢ Mouse-Taken Identity ā€¢ Gonzales' Tamales
1958 A Pizza Tweety-Pie ā€¢ A Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or Tweet ā€¢ Tweet and Lovely ā€¢ Cat's Paw ā€¢ Here Today, Gone Tamale ā€¢ Tweet Dreams
1960 West of the Pesos ā€¢ Goldimouse and the Three Cats ā€¢ Hyde and Go Tweet ā€¢ Mouse and Garden ā€¢ Trip for Tat
1961 Cannery Woe ā€¢ Hoppy Daze ā€¢ Birds of a Father ā€¢ D' Fightin' Ones ā€¢ The Rebel Without Claws ā€¢ The Pied Piper of Guadalupe ā€¢ The Last Hungry Cat
1962 Fish and Slips ā€¢ Mexican Boarders ā€¢ The Jet Cage
1963 Mexican Cat Dance ā€¢ Chili Weather ā€¢ Claws in the Lease
1964 A Message to Gracias ā€¢ Freudy Cat ā€¢ Nuts and Volts ā€¢ Hawaiian Aye Aye ā€¢ Road to Andalay
1965 It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House ā€¢ Cats and Bruises ā€¢ The Wild Chase
1966 A Taste of Catnip
1980 The Yolks on You
1995 Carrotblanca
1997 Father of the Bird
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat
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