The Great Piggy Bank Robbery

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a 1946 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon directed by Bob Clampett.^[1] The cartoon was released on July 20, 1946 and stars Daffy Duck.^[2] The short is Clampett's penultimate Warner cartoon produced shortly before he left the studio.

Plot

On a farm, Daffy Duck eagerly awaits his new Dick Tracy comic book, rushing to read it as soon as it arrives. Knocking himself out while imagining himself as "Duck Twacy," he embarks on a comical detective adventure. Mistaking ordinary objects for criminals, like a mousehole for the hideout of "Mouse Man," Daffy finds himself pursued by a colorful array of villains, including Snake Eyes, 88 Teeth, Neon Noodle, Batman and Rubberhead.

In a chaotic showdown, Daffy manages to outwit the villains with slapstick tactics, including turning Neon Noodle into a neon sign. Finally, he recovers the stolen piggy banks, including his own, and wakes up on the farm, unwittingly kissing a real pig. Recoiling in horror, Daffy flees, leaving the enamored pig declaring her love for him in amusement.

Reception

Animation historian Steve Schneider writes, "Banners and bouquets to the great Bob C. for this still-astonishing melange of ultra-silliness and film noir. He creates a realm where stylizations feed into the fugue states so beloved of the director, where animation's capacity for compressing and distending space and time (and bodies!) is stunningly realized, where terror and hilarity are shown to be natural bedmates, and where the whacked-out visions come so fast and thick that the thing seems to anticipate MTV by forty years."^[3]

Allusions and influence

• The opening where Daffy waits for the mail and gets his comic book, lies down on the ground and says, "I can't wait to see what happens to Dick Tracy!" is a reused gag from Clampett's Farm Frolics.
• Daffy's early line about Dick Tracy, "I love that man!" and the pig's closing line, "I love that duck!" are references to a popular catch-phrase of the time, "Love dat man!", said by the character Beulah on Fibber McGee and Molly.^[4] Clampett would use the gag again in his next and final cartoon at Warner Bros., The Big Snooze.
• A sequel, The Night of the Living Duck, would follow in 1988, with Daffy reading a fictional horror/science-fiction comic Hideous Tales in that film. Pumpkinhead also makes a cameo in that film.
• The gag where Duck Twacy says "I'm gonna pin it on ya," only to be revealed to be playing pin the tail on the donkey, is taken from the Tex Avery cartoon Thugs with Dirty Mugs.
• In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "New Character Day", there was a segment called "The Return of Pluck Twacy" where Plucky Duck is in that homages this cartoon. Here, Pluck Twacy had to rescue Shirley the Loon's aura (who is really Hatta Mari) from gangsters like Ticklepuss (based on Sloppy Moe from Wagon Heels), Soupy Man (an anthropomorphic soup can), Jack the Zipper (an anthropomorphic zipper), Boston Dangler (an upside-down Bostonian on a trapeze), Flatbottom (a naval criminal with a miniature battleship for a butt), Boxcars (a train conductor based on the Peter Lorre scientist), the Generic Thugs, Wolvertoon (a deformed version of Bugs Bunny in a homage to Basil Wolverton's drawings), Millipede Pete (an anthropomorphic millipede), the Chorus Line Men, and the other unnamed grotesque criminals.
• Daffy says "sufferin' succotash" while waiting for his Dick Tracy comic. This line would eventually become the catchphrase of Sylvester, who also speaks with a lisp. Daffy has said this line in Ain't That Ducky, Baby Bottleneck and Hollywood Daffy, and repeats it in seven more cartoons: The Up-Standing Sitter, You Were Never Duckier, Daffy Dilly, His Bitter Half, Fiesta Fiasco and Skyscraper Caper and in a Tiny Toon Adventures segment as Duck Dodgers called "Duck Dodgers Jr."
• In the scene in which Daffy is seen through a door in silhouette as Duck Twacy, he briefly morphs into Dick Tracy's trademark profile.
• After Daffy shoots through the door with his Tommy gun and the rogues' gallery of characters begin falling, there is a brief shot of a well-endowed woman falling among them.
• An episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold titled "Legends of the Dark Mite" contains a sequence which heavily parodies the cartoon. Unlike when Daffy faces criminals which are parodies, here Bat-Mite faces actual Batman villains (namely Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter, Catman, Polka-Dot Man, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Killer Moth, Kite Man, Zebra-Man, and Tiger Shark). As an example, miniature Kite Man figures launch off the top hat of the Mad Hatter.

Legacy

Animation historian Steve Schneider said of this picture:

...Bob Clampett's forever priceless The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is clearly a work of the highest cinematic poetry, for prompting the film's manic hilarity are a sequence of images that remain among the most indelible in cartoon history.^[5]

Animator John Kricfalusi (creator of Ren and Stimpy) called The Great Piggy Bank Robbery his favorite cartoon: "I saw this thing and it completely changed my life, I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, and I still think it is."^[6]

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery was the first of several cartoons in which Daffy Duck would do a parody of a well-known character, but the only one in which he was actually competent. In other take-offs, such as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, he was somewhat buffoonish, though still able to intimidate the villains. But, in later stories such as Stuporduck, Boston Quackie, Robin Hood Daffy and Deduce, You Say? (in which he played "Doorlock Holmes"), Daffy was hopelessly outmatched.

In 1994, it was voted No. 16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.^[5]

See also

• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1940–1949)

References

External links

• The Great Piggy Bank Robbery at IMDb