The Ducksters is a 1950 Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones.
Contents
Title
The title is a pun on the 1947 film The Hucksters.
Plot
Porky Pig is on a radio quiz show called Truth or AAAHHH!!, a parody of the popular quiz show Truth or Consequences, hosted by a sadistic Daffy Duck and sponsored by "Eagle Hand Laundry" in which the object is to answer near-impossible questions, such as "Who, mind you WHO, was the referee for the New Zealand heavyweight title fight in 1726?" or "At what latitude and longitude did the wreck of the Hesperus occur?", or "pay the penalty". These penalties include Porky being crushed by the Rock of Gibraltar, rained upon by Niagara Falls, tied up and blown up with dynamite, severe pounding with a mallet, thrashing by a gorilla, threatened by a buzz saw, crushing by safes, and other forms of abuse.
However, Porky wins twenty-six million dollars and three cents which he uses to buy the Ajax Radio Network (costing exactly $26,000,000.03!), takes over the entire Truth or AAAHHH!! radio game show and then submits Daffy to the same "penalties" that he had received earlier as revenge. Daffy is then tied to a long plank being cut by the same buzz saw Porky was on previously. Daffy screams at his studio audience, "Have you got a doctor in the balcony, lady?!" (This line was a takeoff of another radio quiz show, Doctor IQ, where the announcer would note "I have a lady in the balcony, doctor" to introduce a new contestant.)
Availability
The Looney Tunes Video Show, Volume 1
Ham on Wry: The Porky Pig Laser Collection
Special Bumper Collection (Vol. 4)
Classic Bumper Collection
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc Two (1998 THIS VERSION, without notice)
Looney Tunes Collection Mini Volume 1
Daffy Duck
Looney Tunes 3 Feature Collection Best Of
The Wackiest Cartoons of All Time! Volume 3
Streaming
Censorship
When this short aired on Nickelodeon as part of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, the part after Daffy asks Porky if he'd like to continue the game, in which an off-screen audience member yells, "You'll be sor-ry!" and Daffy blasts him with a shotgun, was cut.[1] Coincidentally, Cartoon Network and Boomerang aired this uncut, even though a similar scene in "Daffy Duck & Egghead" was censored.
Notes
- This cartoon was used in the TV Special Bugs Bunny's Mad World of Television.
- The boulder that falls on Porky appears in the Boulder Museum.
- On the game show Porky Pig won the following prizes:
- The Rocky Mountains
- A 17-Jewel half Nelson
- The La Brea Tar Pits
- The Rock of Gibraltar
- 600 gallons of genuine Niagara Falls
- $26,000,000.03 worth of cash
- A Tiny Toon Adventures episode also features a game show that harms the losing contestant called Win, Lose, or Kerplowie.
- The original title was replaced with a new title card when it was reissued in the 1959-64 season. The original title card may or may not have had Daffy Duck and Porky Pig on it before it was reissued.
- On MeTV airings, the opening uses the 1940s Looney Tunes opening theme, while the ending uses the 1955-64 Looney Tunes closing theme.
- The 4K restored copy of the cartoon is presented in low pitched audio, unlike the previous restored copy presented in its original NTSC audio.
- For the original Italian dub in the 70s, the translation incorrectly refers to Daffy's quiz show as a television show, instead of a radio show. This was fixed in the 1999 re-dub.
- For the book, Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide, this cartoon was mentioned with Porky erroneously identified as Elmer Fudd.
Gallery
References
External Links
- The Ducksters
- The Ducksters
- The Ducksters on the SFX Resource
