Toonerville Trolley

"Toonerville Trolley" is a cartoon made by Van Beuren Studio---a now-defunct third-tier cartoon studio of the 1930s. Why is it defunct? Well, I think it's because their cartoons lacked any sort of edge and were generally very cute. In other words, kids might have enjoyed them but older audiences probably would have struggled to pay attention to them. Also, in their earlier cartoons, the animation quality was rather poor when compared to Fleischer Brothers or Disney, though their later films (like "Toonerville Trolley") had improved on this quite a bit. The colors are INTENSE and the backgrounds very, very nice.

The story is minimal. It's all the adventures of an old man as he tries to get his trolley to the train station on time. Along the way, the rickety trolley has LOTS of trouble and it's up to the old guy's wife (or daughter or ?) to come to the rescue, as this woman is MEGA-strong and very talented. Overall, it's a decent enough film but one that could have used an injection of humor.

By the way, you see a scene where a bull goes crazy at the color red. This is, you probably know, a myth and the colors red and green look pretty much the same to a bull.

This cartoon by Van Beuren is, strangely, included on a disc entitled "The Amazing World of Betty Boop" as it has nothing to do with Betty and was made by an entirely different studio.