95. Pop Goes Your Heart (1934)

Warner cartoon no. 94.
Release date: December 8, 1934.
Series: Merrie Melodies.
Supervision: Friz Freleng.
Producer: Leon Schlesinger.
Cast unknown.
Musical Score: Norman Spencer.
Animation: Frank Tipper and Sandy Walker.

Our cartoon begins with a beautiful view of a mountain and forest with some lovely snow. A bird flies into the scene and lands on a limb to chirp for the other animals to wake up. We fade in to the next shot of the bird still chirping and all the snow is gone - Ahh, looks like the snow melting away really couldn't be achieved back then. Hummingbirds are outside smelling the scent of beautiful flowers. We see the next shot of this bird couple and the male couple sees that the eggs have been laid and makes a tally on the tree - is that meant to mean how many eggs were laid?

There are a line of bees that are flying past and sucking up the honey with their stinger. Meanwhile, there are a group of grasshoppers and the adult one is teaching them out to chew tobacco and spit. The first child grasshopper tries on his attempt but accidentally burps them out leaving him with soggy tobacco stuck on his mouth - which is rather gross.

A mother turtle and her children then start to dive from the log into the lake. They all dive into the lake; the mother turtle is swimming while the baby turtles are on their backs rowing themselves by using cattails as oars. Meanwhile up in a tree we hear these strange sounds of some type of organ playing in the string section. It turns out to be a pair of spiders who are playing a harp on a spider web. Boy that "harp playing" sure does sound very strange.

From what I've been watching in this cartoon so far, with all those cute animals doing notable things - am I confusing THIS to a early Silly Symphony colorized?! (Not likely). The 2-strip Technicolor stuff isn't very good and the colors just look to reddish to me.

The next scene to be shown is another one of those: "dance routines" and there are these apples with worms doing the job as being the arms and legs. They are doing the dance and my goodness that just looks creepy with those apples dancing. From my own personal views how can these worms really do the job of doing a dance routine like that (acting as arms and legs), they're just going to likely get squashed by an apple - well worms do have bones - but are they really that strong? Look at those tiny eyes that they have - worms don't have eyes. Meanwhile there is then a frog chorus standing on lilypads - Lilypads - Gee, I hope we won't get confused with this!! Well; it turns out that these frogs are singing the title song Pop Goes Your Heart, the "boomp-boomp-da-boomp" sounds from a frog sounds like something that inspired Paul McCartney to be involved in that We All Stand Together frog song - doubt it.

We are then seeing a shot of a swam who is swimming in a river; but dives underwater to find some fish to eat. Once the swan dives back in again for some wish; best I can remember - that gag was reused from One Step Ahead of My Shadow and I almost forgot about that. But still; I can't bear those gags of a fish eating a swan. Sure the audience will find it amusing because it's not possible; but fishes can't eat swans - it's creepy and unnatural. Meanwhile there is a bird who is sitting on a tree in a  bird's nest - and notices a worm inside an apple. The baby bird tries to look through his head into the apple for the worm, but the worm makes an escape and slaps the bird from the apple.

The bird then yelps in pain with the worm laughing. Once again; this worm has a mouth and eyes - which is NOT what they have - but I guess it was used just to show caricature and what we know about the worm. We then see these group of beavers who are having fun in their part of the forest and there are a group of beavers who are playing baseball. I'm just curious but when Friz Freleng was making these cartoons - did he ever use model sheets to make them? I'm a little curious because the designs aren't much and I thought that did the animators just design a beaver from scratch and draw it?

Meanwhile there is a grizzly bear who is sniffing through the forest probably to find animals to eat. The bear then growls but sprays perfume in his mouth (oddly enough for some reason). The bear then continues to walk on and sniff for some animals to eat. The bear then starts to walk behind the turtle sniffing it's shell. The turtle starts to speed up slightly, but the turtle then changes position of its shell and bites the bear on the nose. Well, that certainly showed that bear.

The bear starts to walk to the next part of the forest where he then plans to eat some beavers for supper. It's working well since the beavers are running for their lives as the bear chases after them. The beavers start to run away and they hide inside the trees in which the bear tries to dig through to try and eat the beavers up. But he doesn't quite make it yet since his head is stuck. A beaver comes out and smacks the bear's derriere.

The beavers then reach the top of the tree through the role in which they are carrying a bee hive with them. Is it me or is that shot of the beavers laughing just weird to watch - it just seems unsettling to me, but I can't explain why? They drop the bee hive in which honey lands on top of the bear's behind and there are a swarm of bees flying around him. The bear is covered with honey all over - and I admit the animation of the bear being chased by bees is just really weird because there is hardly any inbetweens on there, and the animation is not very good because you can't see him move properly - just bad inbetweening.

The bear then starts to crash through a gate by accident and rolls down a field will of hay in which it sticks into the honey attached to his back. As he rolls down - he's turned into a haystack. Meanwhile, there is a farmer working on his "Hay bailer" machine. The bear rolls down and looks like another haystack to the farmer. The farmer uses his pitchfork to pick up the bear and dumps it into the machine. The haystack comes out all sorted into a block. The bear's head, and legs pop out. Much to the bear's surprise - he is shocked and runs out of the scene. The farmer looks at the haystack bear running, rather puzzled - and that's all folks.

This is another cartoon in which shows some creepy 2-strip Technicolor. The colors look really reddish/pinkish to me and it doesn't suit it well; but I guess that to it was to keep budgets low. Michael Barrier confirms that when Technicolor was brought to Merrie Melodies - it was raised to around $9'000 when the Schlesinger budgets used to be $7'500. Some of the scenes in there don't look very much like color to me and that it feels as though it wasn't painted. The short is something that reminds me of a early Silly Symphonies cartoon in black-and-white when there were plants and forest creatures dancing. Some of the animation didn't look so splendid - particularly the bear scenes. Well, with 1934 almost complete - 1935 will hopefully be better (at least towards the end).