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Flop Goes the Weasel is a 1943 Merrie Melodies short directed by Charles M. Jones.
Title[]
The title is a play on the children's nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel".
Plot[]
A mother hen is trying to catch a worm for her soon-to-be-hatched baby. While she is away, a dimwitted weasel steals the egg for his breakfast. Unfortunately, the egg hatches, and it mistakes the weasel for its mother.
Throughout the cartoon, the baby chicken frequently outwit the weasel's attempts at eating him. In one of the weasel's futile attempts at catching and eating the baby chicken, he accidentally launches an entire bottle of pepper into his face via a blowing table fan, resulting the weasel to sneeze uncontrollably for the rest of the cartoon.
When the mother hen returns home with a worm for her newly-hatched baby, the baby chicken realizes that the hen is his real mother, and tells her that a weasel attempts to catch and eat him which she initially doesn't believe him, until the injured weasel admits to the hen "He ain't just whistling dixie, Mammy!" before sneezing for the last time.
Music Cues[4][]
- Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose (Music by Richard A. Whiting & Lyrics by Ray Egan)
- Little Brown Jug (by Joseph Winner)
- Sung by the Weasel
- Rock-a-Bye Baby (by Effie I. Canning)
- Plays when the baby chicken is talking to the weasal
- Shortenin' Bread (traditional)
- Plays when after the Weasel is hit with the hammer
Availability[]
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 2, Side 4: Chuck Jones
Notes[]
- The black baby chicken in this cartoon physically resembles an early design of Henery Hawk, who previously debuted in Chuck Jones' "The Squawkin' Hawk" the previous year, albeit not the same character or bird species.
- The cartoon's premise is very reminiscent to that of Tex Avery's "The Sneezing Weasel" produced five years earlier, as both cartoons involve dopey weasels unsuccessfully attempting to catch and eat the baby chickens when the mother hen is away, only for the weasel to end up sneezing uncontrollably. Except here, the weasel sneezes not because he catches a cold from the rain, but rather because of the weasel accidentally having an entire bottle of pepper blown into his face.
- Co-incidentally, both cartoons have been reissued under the Blue Ribbon program in the late-1940s with their original credits cut.
- The cartoon has a 1995 dubbed version but has never aired in the US due to the birds being depicted as black stereotypes, though it is not one of the Censored Eleven.
- In 2021, a cel of the original title card and credits card was revealed on Facebook.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Library of Congress, Copyright Office (1975), Catalog of Copyright Entries: Motion Pictures and Filmstrips (Parts 12-13), Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3291213libr/page/n126/mode/1up?view=theater
- ↑ http://likelylooneymostlymerrie.blogspot.com/2016/04/398-flop-goes-weasel-1943.html
- ↑ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0035889/soundtrack/
- ↑ https://www.patreon.com/posts/whats-score-81644429
- ↑ https://books.google.com/books/about/Tunes_for_Toons.html?id=Rz2WJ_-NxsAC