Cap'n Rick's Cartoon Fun Time

Hey kids it's the weekend and it's no time for heavy thinking, so let's watch some great cartoons instead.

It's easy to forget in this modern era when Mickey Mouse is the ultimate symbol of everything corporate and status quo, that in his early days that the mouse starred in some excellent adventure/comedies.

1933's The Mail Pilot, directed by Disney veteran David Hand, features Mickey doing like Lindy and making sure the mail gets through despite the best efforts of Black Pete.

Some great site gags combined with a nice little adventure shows us the mouse when he was still an every-man hero, and one of the best cartoon characters in the business.

Also from 1933 is the the Fleischer brother's Snow White, starring Betty Boop, Koko the Clown and Bimbo.

It's a fun little cartoon, the highlight of which features Koko possessed by the spirit of Cab Calloway bringing us a fantastic version of St James Infirmary turning a good cartoon into a classic.


Mostly forgotten these days, Heckle and Jeckle were at one time major cartoon "stars".

From 1948, here is what I consider to be the pairs finest moment, directed by Eddie Donnelly, The Power of Thought.

In this surreal adventure the magpies come to the realization that as cartoon characters they have the ability to do anything that they want to, and then proceed to give their newly discovered powers a full test run.


From 1953 Tex Avery takes a not so serious look at that new invention for the modern age, television, TV of Tomorrow.

Mostly the tv is used for the normal batch of Avery sight gags, but it does give us a great look back to the earliest part of our modern media driven era.

Closing out where we began, let's go back to Disney for a bit, from 1944's seriously underrated, classic, The Three Caballeros, here's is Donald Duck having himself some fun with a young lady from mexico, in the Cactus Dance...

The short makes such great use of color and the mixture of live action and animation is flawless.