Supermarket Pink

The Pink Panther's food supply is empty, so he goes to the supermarket. There he causes constant trouble by knocking a worker into a box of bananas, repeatedly knocking down a huge pyramid of food cans, arguing with a taste tester about which drink - A or B - is better, and flinging a live lobster into a man's hat.

This short was the last one in the series of short Pink Panther cartoons. The whole series had already run its course, and it shows painfully here. The gags here are tired and predictable, and the whole premise of this short is boring. How could you get any interesting ideas and original gags from a visit to a supermarket? The end gag is a little better, but still not good enough.

This is labeled as the last Pink Panther theatrical cartoon, and he went out with a thud. He gets into a last tangle with the pointy-nosed man, this time when the panther visits the supermarket where the man works as a store clerk.

The Pink Panther is rather a little clumsy in this short, knocking stuff off store shelves and mishandling a cart. But, he does drive the point-nosed man crazy one last time. But overall, the jokes and gags are predictable and not really funny, and the story is mediocre. A rather dull way to go out.

Grade D-

When the Pink Panther Show started back in 1964, it started off on a strong note with The Pink Phink being a classic. From that point up until 1971 there was a mix of very good cartoons to outstanding ones.

From 1975 until 1978 or so it wasn't as good, with the animation style and music being not as appealing. However quite a lot of the cartoons were still very funny if not as hilarious as the best of the 1964- 1971 batch, Pinky hadn't lost his charm and he had some good adversaries still. Sadly, the cartoons from 1978 onwards showed an even cheaper animation style, even more repetitive and in-your- face music and most of them (not all of them, there were some good ones if nowhere near as good as before) were tired and unfunny though with some some moments.

Supermarket Pink unfortunately has all the things that I and others dislike about the 1978-1980 cartoons, it is such a shame that a series that started so strongly ended on possibly the low point of the Pink Panther cartoons. As fairly weak as Pink-In, Pinkologist, Yankee Doodle Pink, Cat and the Pinkstalk, String Along with Pink and Spark Plug Pink were (a few made the mistake of being completely pointless), despite it getting the same rating as those it is marginally worse because everything that was wrong with those cartoons are wrong here and to worse effect. The only redeeming values for me were the catchy and infectious theme tune, the mildly amusing ending gag (the only gag to reach that level) and the reasonably good character design and slinky charm- all without saying a single word- of Pinky.

Everything else however is pretty much a mess. The animation is some of the cheapest of the entire series, the colours are flat and garish, the backgrounds are sparse, rushed-looking and completely lack fluidity and everything just looks hastily drawn with the sole exception of Pinky (and even he's been drawn better). The Pink Panther cartoons did adopt a simple, minimal animation style to begin with, but the later cartoons took the simplicity to extremes to the extent it looked ugly and simplistic. The music that accompanies the cartoon itself is incredibly repetitive- basically the same themes heard in the later cartoons heard again and again-, in-your-face and just doesn't fit often with what's going on, completely missing the subtle, understated slinkiness of the scoring of the earlier cartoons.

Story-wise, it's dull and predictable even for a later Pink Panther cartoon. There is little variety in the gags, and few of them are funny let alone hilarious, instead they were limply timed and the execution overall was just tired. The final gag as said already was the best of the lot but was only amusing. Pinky carries Supermarket Pink quite well though he has been much funnier before, while the Little Man is not easy to empathise for, his behaviour is practically the same for much of his cartoons, the chemistry between him and Pinky is limp and Supermarket Pink even manages to make the Little Man somewhat annoying.

All in all, the possible low-point for the Pink Panther and very disappointing. 4/10 Bethany Cox