“Camping Out”

Dippy Dawg existed. He wouldn’t be Goofy for another few months, however. “The Wise Little Hen” would come out later that year and introduce Donald Duck to the world. The pair would be known as the sort to hang around Mickey Mouse for decades to come, apparently in part inspired by the team of the Three Stooges. But they aren’t here, because they couldn’t be. It’s a strange short, because this is not the group you expect, but it wouldn’t have seemed strange to 1934 audiences—they didn’t have the ninety years of expectations behind them.

Still, there was Minnie, as there had been since day one. Horace Horsecollar, in existence since 1929, is arguably the star of the short, inasmuch as he sets off the whole conflict. Clarabelle Cow, who officially debuted in “Plane Crazy,” the first Mickey short animated, is here in more anthropomorphic form. The quartet are camping. (No Pluto, despite his creation in 1930.) A mosquito goes after Horace, who swats it. It raises its family and friends, and all the mosquitoes in the region attack Horace and the others.

There is, frankly, not a lot of plot here. That’s okay; there’s not a lot of plot to a lot of far better cartoons. The plot of any given Roadrunner cartoon can be summed up in “Coyote chases Roadrunner,” though my partner suggests it is in fact “Coyote deals with the existential dread of existence.” Fair. I don’t expect great drama of a cartoon, from this era or any other. It’s just that the gag wears awfully thin awfully fast.

Honestly, I tend to think of all the Disney shorts, especially in the pre-Snow White era, as more experimental than anything else. The animators were learning to do things. It’s all practice for bigger and better things. And, sure, a lot of the shorts aren’t terribly funny, but they aren’t alone in that. Warner Bros. Had just made the switch from Bosko to Buddy, and I have to tell you it wasn’t much of an improvement. It almost feels as though funny cartoons hadn’t been invented yet, which isn’t entirely fair but close enough.

This one is, surprisingly, on Disney+. I can’t imagine why. I’m not sure I’d ever seen it before, and if I had, I didn’t remember it. It’s not terribly memorable. It’s not the worst cartoon I’ve ever seen. Not the worst Disney cartoon I’ve seen. It’s just that there are so many classics that I have to go hunting for elsewhere, and I can’t imagine the demand was high for this one.