the brave little toaster to the rescue references

Intended to appear in Saludos Amigos, “Blame it on the Samba” was animated and completed in time for it to be incorporated in The Three Caballeros. “Blame it on the Samba” feels like it should have been featured in either Saludos Amigos or The Three Caballeros – and that was the intention exactly. Otherwise, it is least interesting segment of the film. Aside from some fascinating water effects, there is not much that “Little Toot” offers in the way of animated interest. The segment is grating, including the novelty title song sung by The Andrews Sisters. All of the tugboats will love him, as they belt out with glee that Little Toot will go down in history. Of course, Little Toot is eventually redeemed through some heroic deeds. Given that Little Toot is a meddling prankster playing tugboat games, it is difficult to feel much sympathy when he finally faces the consequences of his actions – which probably includes calamitous infrastructural damage and human casualties. Just as in “Pedro”, this is a case of an anthropomorphized vehicle child who attempts to assume adult responsibility in order to prove that they can perform tasks as well as the adults can. Along the Hudson River in New York City, Little Toot is a tiny tugboat who aspires to be like his father Big Toot. The segment shares similar narrative and aesthetic tissue with Saludos Amigos’ (1942) “Pedro”, which concerned an anthropomorphic mail airplane that thinks it could. Hackneyed, too, is the fact that the woodland animals come to the human’s rescue.īased on a 1939 children’s picture book of the same name Hardie Gramatky, “Little Toot” is a chore to sit through.

But the stereotypical treatment of the young women appearing in “Once Upon a Wintertime” is, to put it mildly, clichéd writing at best. Unlike a picturesque and meaningful holiday card, though, it overstays its welcome. “Once Upon a Wintertime” is like a holiday card brought to animated life.

With any piece of animation involving Mary Blair, one can expect an eye-catching use of color and her modernist art style. The segment, however, is partially redeemed by Frances Langford singing the segment’s title song (composed by Bobby Worth and Ray Gilbert) and the unmistakable influence of Mary Blair (1950’s Cinderella, the “It’s a Small World” attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim) in its aesthetic. A young couple are out and about, flirting and flitting, all while the woodland animals scurrying back and forth mirror human courtship. “Once Upon a Wintertime” is based on an overused Disney narrative template that never ceases to be a bore.

The brave little toaster to the rescue references