Release Date:

January 15, 1955

Main Character(s):

Foghorn Leghorn, Egghead Jr., Miss Prissy

Summary:

While Miss Prissy is away at a hen party, Foghorn Leghorn tries to get Egghead Jr. to play some games with him instead of reading all the time, only for Jr. to once again show him up in everything.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The production number is 1295 and was released as a Merrie Melodie.

The cartoon is a follow-up to “Little Boy Boo”, which was coincidentally Foghorn’s previous cartoon. Also with that cartoon, Prissy has more extensive vocabulary and never says her trademark, “Yeessss”.

This is also the only cartoon where Prissy outright doesn’t like Foghorn since she views him as a “loafer”.

The title is a pun for “feather duster”.

The cartoon contains one of Foghorn’s boldest and absolute funniest one-liners, “That woman’s as cold as a nudist on an iceberg”.

Despite being a McKimson cartoon, the animator draft for the cartoon unfortunately has no evidence of existing.

This is officially the last cartoon to use the larger rings in the closing titles and overall, in general.

Favorite Scene:

The game of cops and robbers that ends with Foghorn getting arrested by the actual cops offscreen.

What Happens in This One:

Prissy walks out of her henhouse with Jr. and has him sit down on a bucket in the yard to read. “Sit right down here, Jr. Now I want Mother’s Little Man to sit quietly and study while Mother’s at the hen party. Understand?” Foghorn, who’s leaning against a barrel and twirling a yo-yo, greets her as she passes by, “Good, I say, good morning, Widow Hen!” Prissy only gives him a cold shoulder, “Hmmph! Loafer!” Foghorn responds to this with, “That woman’s as cold as a nudist on an iceberg” before looking at Jr. and deciding, “‘Mother, I say, Mother’s Little Man’. Huh! She’s trying to make a pantywaist out of that poor kid! I think, I say, I think I’ll just mosey over there and help that little bookworm turn! (laughs) Worm turn! (laughs)” (animated by Charles McKimson).

Foghorn walks up to Jr., who’s in the middle of reading, “How to Isolate the Isotope” and begins talking to him, “How-, I say, howdy, son! I, I came over to play games with ya, boy! Eh, won’t that be fun?” Jr. shakes his head without looking up. Foghorn continues, “I rea-, I say, I realize, boy, you ain’t just crazy about having to sit there reading that old book like a sissy, are ya?” Jr. nods his head at this, before Foghorn continues, “And y-, I say, you’d much rather be running around and playing games like other boys, wouldn’t ya?” Jr. shakes his head again, much to Foghorn’s confusion. He asides, “I don’t, I say, I don’t think this boy’s got all his marbles. Shakes his head when he means ‘yes’. And nods when he means ‘no’”. Foghorn then decides, “But I know he wants to play!” before leaving and taking a ball and some mallets out of a croquet set, “Better start with something mild. He looks a little puny” (animated by Charles).

Foghorn informs Jr., “You can drop the book now, boy. We’re gonna play croquet (pronounces it as “crow-ket”). Chicken, that is” before laughing and then realizing that this got no reaction out of Jr., “Eh, eh, that’s a joke, son! Chicken croquet! Don’t ya get it?” Jr. shakes his head but Foghorn takes him with him anyway (animated by Charles). Over at the wickets, Foghorn gives the instructions, “Here we are, boy. We pu-, I say, we put the ball down here. Now the object of the game is to knock it through these wickets. Then over to the left, then down to the center wicket through the second outside wicket about a 50-degree angle to the right-”. Foghorn notices Jr. writing something down on a piece of paper, “Hey, boy! Pay attention to me when I’m talkin’ to ya! You don’t need to write down what I’m tellin’ ya! Keep it in your head, boy!” He then gives Jr. the mallet, “Now you know the rules. You go first”. Jr.’s hit causes the ball to go through every single wicket, much to Foghorn’s disbelief, “Oh, no. I don’t believe it. I gotta get a worm’s eye view of this”. Watching it that way results in the ball rolling into his mouth and pushing his whole body backward into the two wickets in front of one of the poles, getting stuck in said wickets. When Jr. walks up to him, Foghorn protests, “That sh-, I say, that shot was impossible, boy. It can’t be done”. Jr. nods that it can and then shows what he wrote down earlier: an illustration of the wickets and an equation that equals, “I WIN” underlined three times. Foghorn decides, “Oh, uh, yeah. Uh, yeah, that is” (animated by Rod Scribner).

Foghorn next tells Jr., “What, I say, what you need, boy, is something more exciting. Uh, how would you like to play cops and robbers?” Jr. shakes his head, but Foghorn still believes this is him trying to say yes, “Attaboy!” before giving him a long piece of wood as a billy club, “You be the cop. And I’ll be the robber”. After dressing up in a robber outfit, Foghorn gives the instructions, “Now, boy. I’ll pretend I’m breaking into a bank over there, then you come and arrest me”, before putting on his mask. Sneaking up to a wooden tool shed that he’s using as the pretend bank, Foghorn chuckles, “This will be more fun than a barrel of half-witted monkeys!” He then yells, “Alright, boy! Come and get me!” before pretending to shoot while saying, “Bang!” several times. “Come and get me! (imitates machine gun fire)” Jr. responds by blowing a police whistle, which results in the actual police arresting Foghorn offscreen, who tries to explain that he’s innocent while Jr. is writing down another equation. After they drive away, Jr. draws an “X” on the ground with his pencil. Seconds later, Foghorn shovels his way out at that exact same spot, wearing a prisoner outfit and with a ball and chain attached to his leg. “Boy, I say, boy, let’s play something less confining” (animated by Herman Cohen).

At “Fort Pale Face”, Foghorn is seen dressed as an Indian and whooping around like one around the makeshift fort. He observes, “Here, I say, here I’m a heap-big Injun, but where’s all the Injun fighters at?”, before he is confronted by Jr. armed with a pop gun and wearing a raccoon-skin cap. Foghorn realizes, “Ugh! Daniel Boone!” before chuckling, “Well, Daniel, I’m just gonna pull your cork!” Once he does, the gun fires like an actual one and blasts Foghorn in the face. With his makeshift headdress destroyed, several holes in his beak, and most of his head feathers missing, a dazed Foghorn puts the now-detached cork back in the gun barrel (animated by Phil DeLara).

Now playing pirates, with Foghorn wearing a green bandana and Jr. wearing a red one, Foghorn tells him, “Wha-, I say, what you need, boy, is some red-blooded adventure!” before taking Jr. down to the lake for their game. On their makeshift boat made out of a raft, Foghorn sings, “15 Men on a Dead Man’s Chest” while Jr. is swabbing the deck. Spotting another ship (actually a toy one) through his spyglass, Foghorn exclaims, “Privateer off the port bow!”, and then sees that Jr. is still swabbing the deck, “Pay, I say, pay attention, boy! We’re being attacked”. He then takes out his makeshift sword as he continues, “Man the cannons! Get ready! Aim!” While he’s talking, Jr. loads the makeshift cannon (made from a pipe) with a cannonball and then with gunpowder, before writing down another equation and aiming it away from the ship. Foghorn attempts to tell him he’s doing it wrong, “No, no, boy! You’re not on the beam! Off your course, boy! Ya gotta allow for the wind!”, and turns it toward the ship. Jr. moves it back to where he had it so Foghorn decides, “Go away, boy! Go away! I’ll handle this myself!” He lights the fuse to the “cannon”, which blasts the cannonball (animated by DeLara up to here) and causes it to ricochet off several trees and fly back to Foghorn and Jr. as the former exclaims, “Broad side off the port bow! All men all-!” The cannonball then lands in Foghorn’s mouth and goes all the way down his stomach, causing it to land with a bowling strike-like noise from inside, and then shape Foghorn like a bowling pin, before he falls into the water (animated by Scribner).

Wearing an old-fashioned swimsuit, Foghorn encourages Jr. to get in the lake with him to swim, “Come on, boy! Last one in’s a rotten egg!” Running off a makeshift diving board, Foghorn tells Jr., “Watch me do a jackknife, boy!” He sticks out all his limbs one by one before the impact of him falling into the lake creates a Foghorn-shaped hole and then the splash occurs. Foghorn chuckles awkwardly at this and again encourages, “Eh, come on, boy. Get in the swim!”, to which Jr. shakes his head (animated by Cohen). Foghorn decides, “That boy’s as timid as a canary at a cat show. I’ll have, I say, I’ll have to lure him in”. He then calls out, “Loo-, I say, look, boy! I’m a battleship! Let’s see ya sink me!” Jr. winds up several toy battleships and has them all go up to Foghorn, surrounding him with repeated blasting and causing him to sink (animated by Scribner).

After pulling Foghorn out of the lake, Jr. is confronted by Prissy suddenly returning and her reacting in shock at what she’s seeing, “Jr.! What is the meaning of this!? Just look at yourself! You’re a mess, all sopping went! I never saw the like!” She then scolds Foghorn, “And, YOU! Always creating trouble, you good-for-nothing loafer! Mark my words! One of these days, some of your childish pranks are going to backfire on you!” Foghorn responds, “Ma’am, I say, ma’am, you are SO right!”, before standing up with water pouring out of several small holes in his body from the battleship blasts (animated by Scribner).

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕 ½