Release Date:

January 17, 1942

Main Character(s):

Conrad Cat

Summary:

Conrad Cat is a delivery boy for the “Arctic Palm Co.” and first has trouble delivering a plant to a theater. After successfully delivering the plant, he fools around with a magic hat, whose inhabitant, a tough little bird, attacks him every time something bad happens to the hat.

That’s Not All, Folks:

This is the first of three cartoons starring the Goofy-like Conrad Cat, who never really took off and was shortly retired. Conrad’s other two appearances were incidentally Jones’ next two cartoons, “Porky’s Cafe” and “Conrad the Sailor”.

The second half of the cartoon reuses the same plot as “Stage Fright”.

The cartoon has no dialogue, apart from Conrad’s chuckling.

Like the bird in “Stage Fright”, the bird in this cartoon bears a resemblance to Henery Hawk, who Jones would introduce later in 1942 with “The Squawkin’ Hawk” (released four years before Foghorn Leghorn was introduced).

The title is a play on words for the 1941 film “The Bride Came COD”.

The music over the opening titles of “Wabbit Twouble” is prominently featured in this cartoon.

This is one of the earliest known uses of Treg Brown’s (the sound effects man at Warner Bros.) crash sound effect.

What I Like About This One:

The name “Arctic Palm Co.” is a clever oxymoron (since Palm trees are only in tropical weather).

Conrad’s left arm being attached to a pulley so he can signal as to which way he’s turning (Conrad is also one of several idiots in cartoons that makes you wonder how on earth he passed his driver’s test).

The way Conrad walks is some kind of shuffle dance.

All the pots in the back of Conrad’s delivery truck are empty but then he waters one of them and flutters his eyebrows as a plant grows out.

Conrad accidentally wrapping his tail around his legs.

Conrad is initially unable to enter the back exit of the theater due to the plant’s leaves being too spread out.

Then, the door keeps closing when Conrad tries to enter.

After finally getting in, Conrad does his strange walk into the theater, drops his plant when he hits a hurdle face-first, but manages to catch it.

Conrad falling off a stepladder but then coming back up from the elevator completely unscathed.

While pretending to do a magic act, Conrad is bewildered at actually managing to pull a real rabbit out of the hat (animated by Robert Cannon).

After putting the rabbit back in the hat, Conrad looks down into it only for the bird to pop out and start walking up to him. Since Conrad’s fist was above his head, he accidentally bumps his head into his fist (animated by Cannon).

Conrad slapping the magic hat down to which the bird walks up his arm and into his face. He then opens Conrad’s eye like a curtain shade and hits Conrad’s eye.

Conrad then throws the hat into the distance only for it to come back in the other direction and hit him in the face as he starts to walk away.

The bird backing Conrad into the instruments below the stage.

Now with two black eyes, Conrad takes the old plant he replaced out of the theater but runs into a brick wall and comes out dazed while carrying several bricks before stumbling into the wardrobe room and knocking into a shelf that contains six magic hats. Six tough little birds all come out of each hat, pull down Conrad’s hat in front of his face, and then march in unison back into their respective hats.

Where Can I Watch It?

At archive.org! (and archive is FINALLY back up; yay!)

Carrot Rating:

🥕🥕🥕🥕