Pink Suds

The Pink Panther visits the laundromat and tries to clean his clothes, but he has trouble getting his laundry inside the washing machine. He also attracts the attention of a little mangy dog, who, like most dogs in Pink Panther cartoons, are annoying as heck (glad the panther slaps him a few). Then, the little pointy-nosed man walks into the laundromat, resulting in more mayhem as he clashes with the panther, resulting in another all-out duel. Unfortunately, the result wasn't very amusing or entertaining, save for a tidbit of laugh out loud moments. For a cartoon, there were just so many things happening that it is difficult to follow.

Grade D

The early Pink Panther cartoons from 1964-1975 were mostly hugely enjoyable, the best of them hilarious and very well-animated with great music that fitted the Pink Panther's characteristics perfectly and one of the most memorable titular characters in animation.

After 1975 however (mostly from 1978 onwards), the series wasn't as good, with some decent ones but a fair share of mediocre ones. Pinky was still very funny and likable, there were some good support characters and there were still some funny cartoons and a few pleasantly emotional and sweet ones, but the animation noticeably had much less finesse and appeal and the music became repetitive, over-scored and didn't fit anywhere near as well.

Pink Suds, as far as the very hit-and-miss 1979 batch of Pink Panther cartoons go, is one of the better-faring ones. It is not great and is nowhere near one of the best of the series, but it is a long way from a disaster as well. In fact while with some major problems it's reasonably entertaining.

Starting with the good things, the theme tune as always is a justifiable classic and still sounds great. Pinky is cool and likable still, he has lost none of his comic timing (which he always manages to do without saying a single word) and Pink Suds fares better than most other late Pink Panther cartoons in allowing us to root for him. The pointy-nosed man is a good match and plays off with Pinky very well. The gags are not hilarious but they are still funny and avoid generally being too brief or stretched (with exception of the washing machine gag towards the start, amusing and inventive at first but got a little repetitive and drawn out), one of the funnier and better-timed 1979 Pink Panther cartoons to me.

However, Pink Suds does have its problems. Apart from the nice design on Pinky (the bright pink colour doesn't jar) and some nicely done expressions for him and the pointy-nosed man, the animation- as with a vast majority of the post-1975 Pink Panther cartoons- is not very good at all, the lower budgets and tighter deadlines showing loud and clear. The whole cartoon looks like it was made in haste, particularly in the scrappy and over-simplistic backgrounds and the oddly proportioned and stiff-in-movement character design for the rather annoying dog, and the colours are both flat and garish.

Outside of the theme tune, the music is too repetitive, too randomly placed and too over-scored, very seldom does it fit with the action like the music in the early Pink Panther cartoons did so brilliantly. Despite being a scenario that allows one to identify with Pinky and his situation, the story is too formulaic, did get too repetitious in places and pacing is erratic, mostly rushed. As aforementioned, the dog is not an interesting, cute or entertaining character and is poorly drawn.

In conclusion, reasonably entertaining but not great. 6/10 Bethany Cox