“Straight Shooters”

I’m not actually sure the nephews are supposed to be Donald’s nephews in this cartoon. I mean, that’s who we’ve got, but no acknowledgment of the relationship comes up. They might as well be three other random ducks. Donald is definitely Donald; unlike Goofy, he’s hardly ever anyone else. But it is also true that the nephews have basically never had true personalities. In these days, their presentation shifted based on the needs of the cartoon. However, they usually at least seemed to recognize Donald.

Donald is running a carnival booth. The nephews come up in uniforms of some sort, and Donald encourages the soldier boys to try their luck. Which they do. Indeterminate Nephew One takes one of the guns and shoots all the clay pipes and all the targets, much to Donald’s shock. (Wikipedia names them, but I don’t know how.) Donald gives them a small box of candy instead of the large one they believed they’d won. He then challenges them to make a second attempt, handing Possibly The Same Nephew But Possibly A Different One a “sucker gun,” where the bullets fall before actually damaging the pipes. Next, it’s a full-on empty one, with Definitely Another Nephew breaking the pipes. Eventually, the nephews take even weirder revenge.

In a rare response for a Disney cartoon, I laughed quite a lot at this one. The nephew hitting the pipes looks Donald dead in the eye and hits his hand with a hammer at one point. (Wing?) There’s also the fact that it’s yet another cartoon where the nephews manage to disguise themselves as a female duck whom Donald pursues. This time, he even fails to notice when the other duck’s bottom half comes off entirely as he pursues “her” literally over a table. He seems taken aback when she pours candy down her cleavage, but it doesn’t stop him.

It’s clear this isn’t just an ordinary fair. These aren’t the sturdiest buildings, but they appear permanent. There’s electricity. This seems as though it’s one of the amusement parks Walt himself disliked, the kind of thing that inspired him to build Disneyland. I think I went to one like that once, but mostly what we did was go to Disneyland, because in those days it wasn’t as ridiculously expensive, and why wouldn’t you just daytrip to Disneyland, where you weren’t going to get scammed as bad?

So yeah, those uniforms? Apparently, they’re cadets of some kind. The short is vague about it. Presumably it’s a reason they’re so good at shooting. Also, you know, it was 1947, and the US was understandably still interested in military stuff. Then again, Donald’s been wearing a sailor suit off and on for almost a century now, so who even knows?