The Pups' Christmas

It's MGM with puppies, so you can be pretty sure of saccharine cuteness throughout-- and yet this rather unfocused piece turns uneasily dark... Two realistic small boys and their sister come downstairs on Christmas Eve to see what Santa's brought, followed by Black Pup and Brown Pup. Santa seems to have brought enough to stock an entire toy store and half a pet store as well! The pups react quite naturally when encountering all these new objects, and I thought Black Pup's bristling at a large stuffed dog particularly amusing in a mild way. The little girl exclaims over the new doll that says 'Mama', while the boys wind up a train, ride a trike, and then --fatefully-- wind up a toy tank, which brings it to conscious and malevolent life. At this point the cartoon seems to have been taken over by someone new; the children disappear, presumably having returned to bed, and leaving the pups in possession of the field. Brown Pup is discovered to have dismembered the 'Mama' doll, and manages to swallow the 'Mama' device, with consequent schtick. The vicious toy tank pursues and attacks anything that moves, murdering two other live toys-- where will it all end?

It is Christmas morning and the kids sneak downstairs. They are followed closely by their two puppies. The kids begin opening their gifts. The pups are confronted by a stuffed dog toy. They continue to be confronted by all the different new toys.

It is a MGM Happy Harmonies cartoon. The kids look weird with their two pink circle cheeks. It looks like bad makeup. I guess that is the style of animation back in the day. The puppies are only cuteness. It's all very wholesome and very Christmas. It's a Harman-Ising cartoon. The big names in this one are Rudolf Ising, William Hanna, and James Tyer.

"The Pups' Christmas" is one of those animated Christmas shorts that is low on humor, depending on cuteness to sustain it. The story concerns a bunch of kids and their puppies who sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve to see what Santa brought them. About midway through, it seems that the film makers couldn't decide whether to do a Christmas film with puppies or a toys come alive story. Both elements are used and neither works. A sequence involving an out of control toy tank shows promise, but it quickly fizzles out yet refuses to go away. The quality of the animation is about average. All around a pretty boring short.

This wonderfully-animated, full-color cartoon from 1936 would no doubt have been a pleasure to watch in cinemas back in the day. It's amazing to see color animation from this early period, especially with a style that hasn't really dated at all.

Two pups follow the kids downstairs on Xmas morning and curiously sniff around the presents only to be terrorized when some of them have a mind of their own, for some unexplained reason. That's about it really, but it's quaint seeing what presents kids were satisfied with back then without Galaxy S4s or whatever.

Very cosy. And worth watching.

Just watched this Hugh Harmon-Rudolf Ising Happy Harmonies M-G-M cartoon short on YouTube. It's Christmas Day and the kids and their two puppies have woken up and opened the presents. Among them: a train with tracks provided, a doll that says "Momma", a calico dog, a tank, and an airplane. It's the former that "shoots" at the pups and the latter that gets in the former's way. Those scenes provided most of the humor of this short which mainly relied on the cuteness of the pups' actions. Since Harmon-Ising (harmonizing, get it?) got their start with Walt Disney, that cuteness factor was not very surprising to me. With all that said, The Pups' Christmas was another amusing cartoon that I'd say is worth a look for any vintage animation buff out there.