I’m hard pressed to call 1947’s “Tubby the Tuba” a bad cartoon. Terrifying? Yes. Boring? Sure. Say what you want about the historical importance of this cartoon, but my copy came from a Jesse “Junkstore” Thompson’s bargain bin, crammed onto one VHS with an atrocious 3 Stooges cartoon (more on that later). Yes, George Pal escaped from the Nazis as a boy, and over 60 years later some smart-ass is making fun of his Oscar-winning creation. Seems fair.

Animation buffs are already pretty familiar with George Pal, who helped pave the way for Pixar with tons of stop-motion animated shorts such as “Shoe-Shine Jasper,” “Jasper and the Watermelons,” and “Jasper’s Minstrels.” Ok, so George Pal’s most famous character—Jasper—might have tarnished his legacy a tad bit. I, for one, fail to see the offensiveness of an adventure though watermelon land by a white-lipped, large headed black child. Only time will tell if history disagrees with me.

Pal’s wikipedia an IMDB entries kind of gloss over all this. Actually, they just sweep it under the rug completely because Pal apologists preach about what a nice guy he was, and how he never saw the offensiveness of his work. He also never called a cop “sugar-tits.” Pal also did “The Gay Knighties” and “What Ho, She Bumps” if minstrel humor isn’t your thing.

I had a hard time making it through Tubby the Tuba, a pretty predictable ‘toon even for anthropomorphic brass instrument flicks. Tubby wants to play more melodic songs, he’s laughed at, a spiritual frog finds him and shows him the way, he proves everyone wrong, he becomes rich, divorces his wife, buys a newspaper chain, and dies alone. I’ve re-edited the short in a more pleasing manner. Enjoy.