Release Date:

August 1, 1936

Main Character(s):

Porky Pig

Summary:

A terrible heat wave is having a negative effect on Porky Pig’s father’s farm and the animals are going on strike. Porky’s father gives him their last dollar to spend on feed. Porky sees an auction on the way where a salesman is selling boxes of weather pills (which include rain, snow, ice, lightning, thunder, earthquake, wind, cyclone, and sun). Porky buys one, but his dad is not pleased that Porky came home with pills, and tosses them in the yard. The hungry animals eat them, and react to the pills’ respective effects.

That’s Not All, Folks:

The cartoon’s premise would be reused three years later in the 1939 cartoon “Sioux Me”, which takes place on an Indian reservation suffering a drought.

What I Like About This One:

The “crops drying up gags” (which include watermelons boiling and eggplants frying into yolks).

The salesman telling Porky to not lean on the platform in the middle of his lecture.

The idea of “weather pills” is genius.

A chicken eating the lightning pill and becoming a feathered bolt of electricity.

A duck swallowing the thunder and wind pills.

A chicken getting all her feathers removed after consuming the cyclone pill.

The duck consuming the rain pill (Porky tells him, “Drop that pill, you little varmint!”), but the earlier effects of the wind pill cause him to eject the rain pill into the sky, where the long-awaited rain saves the farm.

The animals suddenly going into the effects of the pills again at the end, with the duck flying into the black screen of the iris-out. He bangs on it like a door, and is pulled back in, before the “That’s all, folks!” end card appears.

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org!

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕