Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions (Merrie Melodies)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures, The Vitaphone Corporation
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
Sunday morning: the town goes to church and the general store closes for the day, and as soon as the owner has gone the groceries come to life. The mascots on the packets and cans sing and dance the title song, children of many nations from a biscuit tin ride the ceiling fan, which the Devil from a can of devilled ham spins faster, shredded wheat falls as rain, an Eskimo boy from a label fishes in the sink and lands his catch in a cup of coffee, and firemen from a biscuit tin flirt with schoolgirls from the salt. The Eskimo takes a lady cookie out on a date. Then a swarm of flies descends on the food, carries off the cookie, and the mascots go to war, with bug spray and popcorn against the flies' toothpick arrows fired from safety pins; the flies set fire to the mascots' fortress, and the battle ends in a rout and a reunion. The song came from the Warner film Harold Teen, released two months earlier.
Why It Matters
- The grocery-store cartoon, with its living labels, is a classic set piece and this is one of the fullest versions, two years before Fleischer's better-known Somewhere in Dreamland; the Devil on the fan and the flies' siege are Freleng already thinking in terms of military comedy, which he would return to all his life.
- It is one of Freleng's earliest Merrie Melodies as a director, from the season in which he was establishing himself as the studio's musical specialist, and it shows the series' formula, a Warner song and a world of animated objects, done with more wit than the Buddy cartoons running alongside it.
Notes and Trivia
- Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal also wrote "I'll Be Seeing You" and "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella".
- The ethnic mascots on the packaging date the film precisely to the advertising of its year.
- See also: Shake Your Powder Puff (1934), Sittin' on a Backyard Fence (1933), Buddy's Beer Garden (1933).
