Abrasive, ill-behaved kids were a staple in classic cartoons decades before the South Park gang, Bart Simpson, or Universal’s Problem Child. It’s nice to know that every generation of animation fans has had its rotten apples.
Let’s go back to 1940 and the black-and-white Popeye short Wimmin is a Myskery. This cartoon introduced Popeye’s nephews, Pepeye (Poopeye in later cartoons), Pupeye, Pipeye, and Peepeye. The character designs were likely by Charlie Thorson. The credited director is Dave Fleischer, but it was actually Willard Bowsky, who also animated the key scenes. Ted(d) Pierce, a standout writer for Fleischer and Warner Bros, penned the story. In this short, an uncredited Margie Hines plays Olive, while Jack Mercer’s sped-up vocals portray the nephews.
While Popeye awaits an answer to his marriage proposal to Olive Oyl, Olive goes to bed and dreams of her marriage to Popeye. It turns out to be a nightmare in which Popeye does not appear at all. Instead, the nasty nephews wreck her kitchen, smash the ceiling, and steal a pie intended for Popeye by awkwardly disguising themselves as the sailor. When caught, they get a mass spanking with a broom, but then eat spinach and turn the tables on Olive. The initial revenge scene was possibly the work of animator Joe D’Igalo, as Olive appears to have eyes with actual pupils.
The hapless mom is flipped, spun, rocketed down a stair rail, and bounced off furniture after being used as a jump rope. This rapid, violent scene awakens Olive, who finds Popeye at her door awaiting her answer. She replies that she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on Earth and smashes a plate over his head!
• You can watch this cartoon on DailyMotion.
That’s nothing compared to what Porky Pig is in for in the 1944 wartime short Brother Brat. Director Frank (“Tish-Tash”) Tashlin and Storyman Melvin (“Tubby”) Millar teamed up to subject Porky to Baby Butch, one of the most savage brats ever to ravage a cartoon.
After a stylized opening (narrated by Robert C. Bruce) illustrating how women have gone to the factories to produce armaments for WWI, but there is a problem: “Where the heck to put the kids while she’s working?”
So it goes for one hefty welder at Blockheed Aircraft (Bea Benederet channeling singer/actress Cass Dailey). When Porky Pigs arrives to babysit, she hands him a book on Child Psychology (by Pistol P. Momma), literally flies off to her job, and leaves him to tend to the infant “Percy”. Upon meeting the child in his pram, Porky gets a deck of cards slammed down his throat and then painfully learns that the kid’s name is “Butch” after being mocked and having an anvil dropped on his head that crashes him through several floors to the basement.
The book advises Porky to “Give baby a cat and watch his little puss light up”. Porky does, with a gag typical of Tashlin: “Play with this k-k-k-c-c-, ah, pussy.” There is a pause, and then Porky winks at the viewers and says “p-pet.” This would be Tashlin’s final cartoon at Warner, and he may have been sporting with the censors. It would not be the last erotic gag in the short, since after Butch uses the poor cat as a jump rope, Porky catches Butch lustily reading Exquire Junior, which features female infants posed in provocative pin-up style.
When Porky tells Butch that he is too young to be reading such magazines, Butch lunges and bites Porky’s finger. In a magnificent display of animation by Art Davis, it seems like there are multiple images of Butch as Porky tries to shake the infant off.
Porky does, flinging the baby into the kitchen and a heap of pots and pans. Butch emerges as a caricature of Winston Churchill giving the “V” sign with a stirring speech. He also grabs a meat cleaver. Despite the learned child psychology book’s advice (“Do not hold a grudge – the kid’s ready to bury the hatchet”), Porky desperately dodges the cleaver. The following scenes are harrowing in their sheer, malevolent violence. Butch finally pursues Porky (and the cat seen earlier) in a warp-speed circular chase.
Just then, Mom comes home and beholds the carnage. She scolds Porky, “Didn’t you use the book?” Porky stammers that he did, but it didn’t work. Mom tells Porky he didn’t use it right while smacking the book across Percy’s bottom.
This cartoon is one of the few in which Porky wears pants. Carl Stalling’s score features several ironic variations of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Eight animators assisted Davis, including Cal Dalton, who likely animated the poor cat.
Our final brat is well-known and beloved by lovers of classic Bugs Bunny cartoons. That would be the monster child from the 1947 short Easter Yeggs directed by Robert McKimson, who also designed the character. A sign on his house refers to him as “The Dead-End Kid.” He is diminutive, with a red Moe Howard bowl cut and freckles, dressed in a red and white striped nightshirt about five sizes too big.
He initially appears in an apple crate, teething with a pistol. In this scene, animated by Izzy Ellis, Bugs, posing as the Easter Bunny, offers him an egg. The kid smashes it in Bugs’s face and states his signature line: “I wanna Easter egg!” The kid savagely bites Bug’s ankle. When Bugs tries to defend himself, the Kid screams that Bugs “broke his widdle arm”, bringing the Dead End family rushing in with shotguns, courtesy of animator Anatole Kirsanoff.
Bugs’ situation worsens when Elmer Fudd plots to trap the rabbit, but every trap fails. Of course. (Bugs’ attempt to distract Elmer with a “magic trick” is the work of McKimson). As Bugs flees from door to door (with frantic alternating scenes by Ellis and Kirsanoff), he finally succeeds in slamming Elmer’s head through the door, paints it like an Easter egg, and whistles for the Dead End Kid, who pounds on it with a hammer while screaming for Easter eggs, courtesy of animator Richard Bickenbach.
Thus, we take our leave of some of the nastiest brats of Golden Age animation. Birth control never sounded so good.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
Oh, those mean wittwe kids! You certainly picked some of the worst brats I’ve ever seen an animated cartoon. I couldn’t really remember much of what happens in little brother brat“, but I do remember the use of the poor cat! And I have to admit that the Popeye brats they were actually scary! Great stuff. I’m sure they were more brats than that, but I can’t really think of any right now.
Humorous stories about mischievous, misbehaving boys, often told in rhyming verse with illustrations, were all the rage in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wilhelm Busch’s “Max und Moritz” and Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann’s “Der Struwwelpeter” being just two of the more famous examples thereof. These left their mark on the popular culture of the United States, with its large population of German immigrants; there’s a very good English translation of “Der Struwwelpeter” by no less a personage than Mark Twain. The genre seems to have gone into decline in the postwar era, when the country was in a furor over juvenile delinquency, and few considered the issue a laughing matter. So the three cartoons discussed here, all from the 1940s, represent the ne plus ultra of the genre: not merely the brattiest kids ever conceived, but the brattiest kids conceivable.
“Wimmin Is a Myskery” follows a similar plot to Walt Disney’s “Mickey’s Nightmare” (1932), in which Mickey Mouse, like Olive Oyl, dreams that he is married with more children than he can handle. However, those kids, while destructive, are clearly just out to have a good time. There’s no malicious intent in their actions, which is more than can be said for Percy/Butch and Popeye’s demon seeds.
Probably the first cartoon star shown to have children was the first cartoon star, Felix the Cat, who has a wife and three kittens in “Flim Flam Films” (1927). Felix’s offspring are actually pretty benign, though they do cry a lot. The only trouble they cause is when they take home movies of Felix flirting with a bathing beauty, which causes fireworks when they screen the film for their parents.
By today’s standards, probably the worst thing Butch/Percy does — worse than biting, anvil-dropping, or axe-wielding — is ogling those erotic pictures of baby girls in diapers. A guy could go to jail in many jurisdictions just for having those images in his house.
This is a good selection for starters, but there’s more odious cartoon brats. Lots more.
There’s the piglet in Tex Avery’s “One Ham’s Family”, offspring of the third little pig from the story, who gives the Big Bad Wolf, pretending to be Santa Claus, the works. And when the wolf is indisposed, he decides to heckle the audience instead. “Mean widdle kid’ indeed.
“Bellboy Donald” introduces us to Pete’s son (not PJ from “Goof Troop” and ” A Goofy Movie”) who plays mean pranks on Donald Duck, who had been warned that he’d get fired if he lost his temper again. In the end, Donald has enough and decides that being unemployed is worth it as he gives Pete Jr. a well-deserved spanking.
And for a more esoteric kind of brattiness, there’s “Ain’t That Ducky”. Daffy Duck meets a duckling holding a briefcase, crying. He tries to be helpful, but the kid suddenly turns angry and tells him off before going back to crying. As Daffy then deals with a dopey hunter, the duckling makes repeated appearances, until finally the pair has enough and tries to take the briefcase by force — and once they do, they look inside and are shocked and in despair at what they see: “The End”.
Of course, Tony, you’re right! More recent entries include Universal’s “Problem Child”, and the odious Jonah Hill entry “Allan Gregory”, but I could not do a 25,00-word entry! Nice pickups by you!
I love writing for this site!
A correction. Part of what’s written above:
“This would be Tashlin’s final cartoon at Warner, …”
Frank Tashlin directed, at my count, eight more cartoons for Warner Bros. after “Brother Brat,” including the famous “Plane Daffy,” two Bugs Bunny cartoons (“The Unruly Hare” and “Hare Remover”), and the infamous “Nasty Quacks,” with Daffy Duck at, perhaps, his most obnoxious (and that’s really saying something!).
His last cartoon for Warners was the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Hare Remover” (1946).
(Source: Jerry Beck’s and Will Friedwald’s 1989 book “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies,” pp. 152-166. Just wanna cover all the bases here…)
Jim , I should have noted that this was Tashlin ‘s last turn with Porky , not Warners. My personal Tash favorite was “Porky Pig’s Feat” from 1943!
Huey, Dewey, and Louie regularly torment their Uncle Donald, with or without provocation. Mickey often suffered at the hands of the mob of little orphans he’d be trying to entertain.
Where does one file Swee’Pea, Baby Herman, and other seemingly innocents, who toddle into danger and require constant, often dangerous rescuing? Or outsized infants like Baby Huey and Chuck Jones’s Baby Bear, cheerfully and unwittingly doing bodily harm to adults they want to please (Baby Huey always believes the fox wants to play with him).
Here are some other brats for your pleasure and enjoyment: These are brats who are cats and dogs:
The Mintz-Oswald cartoon “Homeless Homer” (early 1929). Oswald makes the mistake of bringing home a homeless kitten. What that kitten does to Oz shouldn’t happen to a dog!
That cartoon may be lost, however. David Gerstein has made available excellent descriptions for this and all the other 25 Mintz-Oswalds (1928-9). They should be on this Web site someplace, but I can’t find the link.
A bratty little kitten named Wilber (note spelling) is in several Bosko cartoons. He causes all sorts of trouble for Bosko. For one example, see “Bosko’s Soda Fountain” (1931). Wilber may have been inspired by “Homeless Homer.” There was a lot of “borrowing”/plagiarism in cartoons, as you may know…
The identical twin puppies Ham and Ex in “The Fire Alarm” (1936). Juvenile delinquents and candidates for reform school… Also in “Westward Whoa,” same year. Porky Pig’s in that one, too.
HOMELESS HOMER isn’t lost—UCLA has a nicely preserved print.
Here’s someone’s much poorer one (the only one I can find online): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTvZhyUNkZg
There are other Oswald cartoons with Homer, including THE FIREMAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vIitSvX3pY
And the ancient Winkler Oswald website I was involved with is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110607024308/https://www.cartoonresearch.com/winkler/index.html
The similar Wilbur is actually spelled that way, with a “U,” in documentation from the period—apologies, but it’s not “Wilber.”
Hmm. That’s odd, because “Wilber” is how it’s spelled in the “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” book. So now we know!
David knows best:
Hanna-Barber’a Huck Hound’s “Truant Officer HUck”,1958, of course would be another as Huckleberry has to go two a pair of twin brats’s houses to return them to school..and has the usual trouble. The early, Tex Avery shufflin’Wolf Huck appears here..(rhyme intended!)/Steve C
See also “Porky’s Naughty Nephew” (1938), directed by Bob Clampett. Porky takes his nephew, Pinky, to the beach, and much mischief and violence ensues (Pinky dumps a load of sand on Porky, whacks him with a shovel, scares him with a fake shark fin, etc).
Fluff, Muff and Puff in “Triplet Trouble” weretrouble enough to force Tom and Jerry to work together. Their antics were not as crazy as the ones listed above but they knew what they were doing and were ready to take over the house as efficiently as possible.
“Wee Willie Wildcat” (MGM, Release Date: June 20, 1953, Dir.: Dick Lundy)
Barney Bear is busy attending to some yardwork at home when he hears a ruckus next door. He finds his wildcat neighbor seated atop a stone next to a tree, preparing to give his titular son a sound spanking. Barney intervenes, telling his neighbor that spanking is just too harsh a punishment for such a young lad, regardless of whatever misdeeds he’s done, and advises that disciplining Willie into a more well-behaved cub is all a matter of using “child psychology”. His neighbor is astonished upon hearing this, as Barney is unaware that this “poor little lamb” is not quite the angel, but in fact a troublemaking imp who becomes too much to “bear”, as he will soon find out. Barney decides to take up the task of reforming Wilie with the aid of a book on child psychology written by one “Helen Highwater” (apparently an allusion to the phrase “Hell or high water”). Barney follows along with each suggested “rule” advised within the book. But with each attempt at applying a new method, Barney immediately falls victim to the wily waifish wildcat’s persistent pranks, the shrewdness of which escalates as Barney moves along through the book. With just about every resort exhausted, Barney’s patience ultimately reaches the limit as he turns to the back of the book for the “Final Rule”, which reads as follows: “IF ALL ELSE FAILS, BOTTOMS UP!”. Without any hesitation and with a vengeful look on his face, Barney follows along thusly, wrangling Willie up to the very same stone where he was set to receive his just desserts from his own father to perform the task himself. But, in an ironic turn, before Barney could deal the first blow, Willie’s father now intervenes, shouting “STOP, YOU BRUTE! If you think I’m gonna let you spank this poor little defenseless child…YOU’RE CRAZY!”, adding,”I-I-I-I’M GONNA DO IT!!!”. Barney asks if he could join in, to which Willie’s dad obliges.The two proceed to make their deliveries to the rear, only to come out of it with red, swollen hands. Much to our surprise, Willie reveals that he cleverly managed to foist the book off of Barney’s hands and slip it right on the spot under his trousers where he would’ve recieved his due punishment, declaring to the audience, “Yes sir, folks, this psychology book really works, don’t it?”, directing a blink at the audience for the iris out.