The Persistence of Old Cartoon Memories – Part 1

Have you ever remembered seeing something odd or unusual on TV when you were a kid and wondered, decades later: “What was that? Did I imagine that?”

It happens to me a lot, since we watched a lot of TV in our house when I was growing up. Fortunately, the internet is here to help me figure out just what it was I was remembering.

Here’s a good example. For many years, I have thought of a cartoon in which a car pulls up and someone in the car tosses a sack out of the window with something live inside. What left an impression on me was that the person dropping the bag was very creepy – almost scary.

Although I probably only saw this cartoon once, I’ve wondered about it for years.

Now, there are many cartoons that begin with this same scenario. There’s a Tom and Jerry cartoon called Puppy Tale (1954) in which someone tosses a bag in the river with puppies inside, and Jerry has to rescue them. But we never see who does the dastardly deed.

From the late 1950s TV era, there’s a Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse cartoon called Puss N’ Booty (1959) that starts out the same way. (That’s no surprise because it and the T &J cartoon were both made by Hanna and Barbara.) The cat and mouse detective duo watch as someone in a mysterious car deposits a bag in the river. They retrieve the bag, and rescue the cat inside. But again, we never see who was in the car.

It wasn’t until I was watching some old Heckle and Jeckle Terry-toon cartoons on YouTube, that – thanks to YouTube cueing up suggestions for me to watch – that I finally stumbled upon the cartoon I was wondering about all these years. It was a Terry-toon called Mystery in the Moonlight (1948). Since Terry-toons haven’t been on TV for a generation or two, that explains why I never ran into Mystery in the Moonlight.

It’s a weird cartoon. While ominous music plays, a mouse turns on a TV and sees a car speeding along a road. The car stops, and inside is a really creepy goon – sort of an evil “Kilroy” – with eyes that have a hypnotic glow. The mouse is scared, and I was too when I first saw the cartoon as a kid.

The goon in the car drops a sack in the road, which turns out to contain a black cat. 

What’s really odd is that the cat ends up getting into the house, where it bedevils the mouse, as well as the typical Terry-toon bulldog who lives there. 

At the end of the cartoon (which features the usual Terry-toon violence and comic hijinks), the goon in the car comes back and picks up the cat, and they both make faces and laugh (via the TV again) at the mouse and bulldog.

The mouse shrugs (and so does the viewer, apparently).

Here's the cartoon. I hope it doesn’t stick in your head like it did mine!