ReFrederator Blog

Cuckoo clocks! Old cartoons are lousy with ‘em. Put them high on the list of animated inanimate objects (anvils, seltzer bottles, steam cabinets, vanishing cream, etc.) that seemed so essential in constructing a socko cartoon short, back in the day.

Of course, unlike all that other stuff, a cuckoo clock is an item that somebody born after the Truman administration might actually have seen in real life. More importantly, this particular type of timepiece was a uniquely versatile prop, and could be used in a jillion different ways by a good cartoon director. It might pop up as a single spot joke, as seen above in Chuck Jones’ “Fox Pop.” Or it could reappear throughout a film, as a running gag. Occasionally, the bird in the clock became a kind of Greek chorus, commenting in some way on the action around him, letting us know, if nothing else, the passage of time.

And sometimes it was just something for somebody to bash his head into, so the little cuckoo could pop out of the injured party’s mouth, still attached to the bouncing spring.

Dave Kirwan