AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL CARTOON REVOLUTION Volume 5

Life is complicated. So having cartoon characters help explain things makes everything easier, as you’ll discover with this 5th volume of Something Weird’s wacky-with-a-purpose Industrial Cartoons series!

EASY DOES IT (1946; color) is a 25-minute sales pitch for Stokely Foods – with a surprising degree of lechery attached. Joe works in Mr. Fuddle’s grocery store, which is on the verge of closing because they don’t sell the brands people want. Worse, the bank is about to foreclose on the store unless Mr. Squeeze, the hilariously sleazy bank president, marries Fuddle’s daughter Ann. While Mr. Squeeze is busy seducing her, Joe gets a visit from a little magical man named Easy who uses a flying time machine to take Joe back 60 years to show him the birth of Stokely Foods. Easy also introduces Joe to a giant on a cloud, and happy tomatoes getting washed and cooked in the modern Stokely plant (which, all things considered, is borderline disturbing). End result: Fuddle’s store becomes stocked with Stokley foods which the customers love! And Ann? Why Joe races to the Justice of the Peace just before Squeeze is about to marry her and beats the crap out of him! Directed by HUGH HARMAN.

MAN OF ACTION (1955; color) is the story of an “average man in an average home” whose average town becomes a slum overnight! And it’s all the fault of Satan! Yup, Satan encourages people to let their homes get run down until the neighborhood falls apart and the community is full of “juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and crime!” Unless, of course, citizens fight back! How? With bureaucracy!

LOOK WHO'S DRIVING? (color) gives us cartoon characters that drive like psychotic idiots and behave like crazed children on the road. Until they get into an accident and die. Then they float around like ghosts.

TELL ‘EM THE FACTS (color) has Gulf Oil calmly reminding us why their gasoline is better than anyone else’s gasoline. And it’s all because of their “balanced volatility” and “antiknock value.” You betcha.

THE SOLDIER'S HOUR (color) was made for Army personnel in charge of re-enlistment as a way of stemming the tide of soldiers leaving after their hitch is up. The trick is to zero in on certain kinds of soldiers… like former factory workers. But, hey, stay away from farmers.

AVOIDABLE CARRIER ACCIDENTS (1949; color) defines stupid sailors who crash their planes on aircraft carriers as the same stupid sailors who do dumb things on leave. Ah, the joy of stupidity.

THE ADVENTURES OF JUNIOR RAINDROP (color) is the story of cutesy raindrops who… well… go wrong once they get to earth. Because of forest fires or badly managed land, raindrops like Junior become “hoodlum raindrops” (!), get involved “with gangs” (!!), and turn into “gangster” raindrops (!!!). Wow.

MY GOVERNMENT U.S.A. (color) explains government to a cartoon caveman named Ugh. That Ugh is impressed is no surprise since Ugh, after all, is a primitive man.