After starting on an underwhelming note with Pink Breakfast and Pink Quackers, the 1979 batch of Pink Panther cartoons got back on track with Toro Pink, which had foibles but had some impressive things. String Along in Pink is a couple of steps backwards, neither a return to form or quite bad enough to be among the worst of the series but with not very much to distinguish it.
The theme tune is still a justifiable classic, and it is still infectious, it was also lovely to include it a little more in the score for the cartoon too (something that a good deal of the post-1975 cartoons didn't do enough of). Pinky is cool, likable and amusing as ever, and is still well-designed, his expressions and characteristics still hugely enjoyable to watch. There are a few nice colours here and there, and the part of the train did have a little tension.
However, as with a lot of the later Pink Panther cartoons the animation is not great, aside from the drawing of Pinky and a few nice colours it's not even good. The nice colours are far outweighed by the flat or garish ones, backgrounds are scrappy and sparse with little detail and almost everything is drawn in a rushed and cheap-looking way. While the theme tune and that it's incorporated more are great, the same cannot be said for the rest of the music, which is basically themes recycled from the 1976-1978 cartoons and used over and over in a very loud and hasty-sounding manner. And apart from the part of the train none of it fits, with the slower pacing of the cartoon it was in need of more subtlety as well as energy like the slinky elegance of the earlier cartoons, instead it goes against Pinky's characteristics rather than add to them like the scoring of the early outings did so brilliantly.
Other problems include the story, which is little more than a series of string gags being strung together, being very formulaic, and while the following the string concept wasn't that enterprising to start with little is done with it, it's just one very dull journey. As well as the gags, none of which are funny or remotely amusing and while not quite as repetitive as the music there is very little variation or imagination. The ending is also weak, ending on a whimper rather than being explosive, considering Pinky's reaction and the lengths he went through to follow the string it just felt like a waste to have a little momentary tension and then it evaporates just like that.
In conclusion, not terrible but pretty lacklustre. 4/10 Bethany Cox
