Release Date:

March 16, 1946

Main Character(s):

Daffy Duck, Porky Pig

Summary:

The postwar baby boom has the stork overworked and with inexperienced help delivering the wrong babies to the wrong mothers. Porky Pig sets up a new factory that fixes all these problems with Daffy Duck as his assistant. Things go wrong however, when an egg without an address tag is discovered and Daffy refuses to sit on it.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 12-15, the 12th Looney Tune in the 15th release season.

The cartoon was given a Blue Ribbon reissue. When it was restored for the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 DVD set in 2004, the original titles were put back in.

The cartoon originally contained a line of dialogue that was cut before its original release: when a baby alligator tries to nurse at Mrs. Pig, she would stop him and warn, “Ah, ah, ah. Don’t touch that dial!” The actual cartoon has her start to say it to him, before it cuts to the next baby mix-up. The presumed reason why the line was cut was because it was a suggestive term for nipples.

This is Clampett’s last Daffy and Porky cartoon as well as his penultimate cartoon with both respective characters (note that I had said “Wagon Heels” was Clampett’s penultimate Porky cartoon, but it turns out I was thinking only of Porky’s appearances without Daffy when I made that statement).

Having last animated for Clampett in his old unit in 1941, Izzy Ellis animated for him in his last cartoons.

The cartoon is in the 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons book.

“Powerhouse” plays during the conveyor belt scenes in the cartoon. This is also the most memorable usage of this piece.

Freleng would later do a series of cartoons with a drunken stork delivering the wrong babies to parents, with these including “A Mouse Divided” (1953), “Goo Goo Goliath” (1954), “Stork Naked” (1955), and “Apes of Wrath” (1959). All of those were written by Warren Foster, who also wrote this one.

The stork in this cartoon speaks like Jimmy Durante.

This is the first cartoon to have animation by Fred Abranz, who like Anatolle Kirsanoff, was always uncredited for some inexplicable reason.

The conveyor belt system includes a part where the babies are burped, but they say the actual word due to the Hays Office not approving of belching noises.

What I Like About This One:

The rendition of “Buzz Buzz Buzz Will You Be My Honey” over the opening credits.

A newspaper article reads “Unprecedented Demand for Babies Overworks Stork”. Inside the nightclub, the “Stork’s Club” the Durante-speaking stork is on the floor plastered: “I’m mortified! I’m disgustipated! I do all the work! And the fathers get all the credit! Umbriago!” (animated by Manny Gould)

Inexperienced help (animated by Bill Melendez with Gould animating the shot of a pelican carrying several babies in his beak and a mouse carrying a baby hippo) leads to some slight mistakes being made, with “slight” clearly being an understatement: a baby skunk is delivered to a mother goose who holds her beak with a clothespin (animated by Rod Scribner), a baby kitten delivered to a mother duck who can’t get said kitten to join them for a swim (animated by Melendez), a baby gorilla to Mrs. Kangaroo who is very oversized for her pouch, a baby hippo to Scotty Dog, whose weight crushes his rocking chair and has him finish “Rock a Bye Baby” sticking his mouth out from under her: “The cradle will flop!”, a baby alligator to Mrs. Pig and trying to nurse on her (animated by Gould), and a baby cat to Mr. Mouse, who desperately tries to avoid getting touched by him (animated by Scribner).

With Porky and Daffy aiming to fix these problems at their new factory, the “Pig and Duck Nip and Tuck Delivery Service”, Daffy is seen answering all the phones getting calls such as Bing Crosby who’s used up his quota, Eddie Cantor, who still hasn’t got his boy yet, “Long Distance” with Mr. Dione who requests another set of quintuplets to which Daffy answers, “Mr. Dione, Puh-lease!” Getting fed up with the constant calls from various phones, Daffy yells “QUIET!” before sighing in relief (brilliantly animated by Scribner).

A dog worker then barges into the control room where Porky is radioing the storks and shows him a new invention that will “speed up deliveries 1 billion percent!” It’s a rocket that immediately explodes. The dog worker walks out, deciding, “Oh, well! Back to the drawing board!” (animated by Melendez)

With Daffy calling “Full speed ahead for the conveyor belt which takes care of the babies (animated by Izzy Ellis), one of them includes a wailing baby hippo who stops at one point to confide, “I’m only three and a half seconds old!” (animated by Gould)

The conveyor belt system powders the babies from the front and the back by means of flipping them over with a spatula (animated by Gould), diapering them with a baby turtle being taken out of his shell to have his diaper put on (animated by Ellis), and are fed milk with the turtle’s shell becoming full of it and with the turtle scooping it out with a pail while ranting in gibberish (animated by Melendez), and burps them (animated by Ellis). A baby dog is facing the wrong way, resulting in the milk system spraying it on his rear end (animated by Gould). Alerted of this error via the controls flashing the word, “TILT” (animated by Fred Abranz), Porky has the baby dog washed like clothes and hung to dry (animated by Melendez).

Discovering an egg without an address tag, Porky calls Daffy over to sit on the egg and hatch it out to see who it belongs to. Daffy absentmindedly agrees to it, before coming to his senses. He refuses to sit on the egg as “Sitting on eggs is out! O-W-T, out!” (animated by Ellis)

Porky gets angry with Daffy’s refusal (animated by Ellis) and tries to push his rear end towards the egg but it bounces everywhere to avoid touching the egg. Daffy then pushes Porky over, with Porky managing to avoid sitting on the egg by suspending himself with his tongue. After Daffy hits him with a plank, Porky grabs his leg (animated by Scribner), which stretches it all over the factory (animated by Gould)

As Daffy is trying to get his leg together, he sees Porky with a snarling expression running towards him with his arms out in a grabbing system (Gould animated all shots of Daffy, while Melendez animated all shots of Porky). Chased onto the conveyor belt, Daffy gets his leg back to normal by pulling a feather on his head. They discover too late that they’re in their own system where they are stripped of their clothes (animated by Melendez) and packaged as one baby, with Porky being the lower half and Daffy being the upper half (animated by Ellis).

They are then shipped to Africa to a waiting mother gorilla (animated by Scribner). Seeing Daffy crying over this, she settles him down, but as she’s about to change the diaper, she’s spooked to see Porky peeking out from under it, and with Porky saying a simple, “Uh, boo”. Mrs. Gorilla calls for advice on the phone while crying hysterically, “Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!” (animated by Gould)

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕🥕