"Butterscotch and Soda" - Little Audrey (1948)

I post a good many cartoons, but not enough of a variety to suit my granddaughters. Popeye can't really hold a candle to Dora the Explorer. So, stuck for an idea I googled the phrase “classic cartoons for girls” and came up with this character, Little Audrey, and I actually remember seeing a few seconds of these on TV when I was a kid. They were the ones that came on when I went to get a snack. Being a boy I wasn't interested in Little Audrey, but now that I've taken a look at one of these cartoons, I’m a bit intrigued.

   

Little Audrey is actually based upon the Little Lulu comic strip character created by Marjorie Henderson Buell. These cartoons came about between 1947 and 1958 when Paramount decided not to renew the Little Lulu series. Little Audrey’s voice is done by Mae Questel, who also did almost all of the other major female cartoon characters for Paramount, including Betty Boop and Olive Oyl.

The plot of this cartoon, which was the first of the Little Audrey releases, is fairly simple. Audrey can’t stop eating candy and her Nanny is at her wits end concerning what to do about it. In desperation she finally searches the entire house, discovering Audrey’s hidden stashes everywhere and destroying them all. When Audrey discovers her candy missing, she goes into shock and enters a dreamland of; you guessed it; Candy!

But even enough of a good thing can become too much and Audrey ends up locked in a dream world where the very things which she craves all seem to turn against her, singing out their warnings to her in a very clever song “Tummy Ache Blues”, written by Winston Sharples and Buddy Kane. When Audrey finally comes to, she is met by the face of her Nanny; who thought she was dying; but now holds out a box of chocolates, telling Audrey that she can have all the candy she wants.

These cartoons were the product of Seymour Kneitel and illustrators Al Eugster, Bill Hudson and Irving Spector. Though the Nanny character is a stereotype; just as the character of Little Audrey is; the Nanny is clearly the wiser of the two. Now, I wonder how this one will stand up next to Dora the Explorer?

"Peace On Earth" - A Hugh Harman Cartoon (1939)

I have run this one before, so excuse me while I do it again. The message is that important. Consider that this cartoon was released while Europe was already at war, and our country was soon to be drawn in. You would think, that after such a horrible war, we would have learned something. But, we didn't.

I love the simple wisdom of this cartoon as these little critters question why they are celebrating; and when they realize what the mistakes of the past were, they set about to make a better world.

Yet, as of this writing there are conflicts raging in about half of the world. Think about that. We don't have big wars anymore; the costs associated with them are too large. The insurance companies don't allow it. So, we find out of the way places with no real infrastructure; discounting the people of course; and lay waste to it in what we call limited engagements; as if they are matinee shows to be caught before they leave town.

We humans find more and more imaginative terms, with each generation, in order to justify killing without calling it war. In the end the little critters like these will inherit what we leave of the earth after we lay waste to it. And when I really think about it; I'd rather be with them.