Oh Yeah! Cartoons: #29: Slap T. Pooch in What is Funny?

Nickelodeon 

Previously, Triplets have fun [Here]

#29 Slap T. Pooch in: What is Funny?

Season 1, Episode 1b

    The name of this one makes it feel like there is going to be more but there is not, it's just this one.   Back to season 1 and the very first episode. This segment of the three is the only one that's not part of a series of shorts that would show up in the series later. I've already written about Jelly's Day . 

             Slap T. Pooch in What is Funny?  was created by Bill Burnett and Vincent Waller. Burnett also wrote this one. Bill Burnett had been a singer songwriter for the purpose of this post he met with Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman (Seibert being a reason why Oh Yeah! exists) and he was a writer for their agency. Seibert and Goodman are the creative minds behind MTV's look in the 1980's, Nickelodeon's splat logo, Nick at Nite, and Comedy Central. Burnett is the one who thought up the name Comedy Central.  When Seibert went to Hanna-Barbera Burnett followed and became VP Creative Director of the company. He also worked on the show "Cow and Chicken".   He went with Seibert again to Nickelodeon and worked on this. That's my speed run. I will mention a little more about him at the end.  I've mentioned Waller before, but for this one they have connection where they both worked on "Cow and Chicken" he storyboarded an episode. (One that's uh well known)  Anyway to this short. 

                This one is very focused on being meta and 4th wall breaking. Our main character is named Slap T. Pooch, a dog who knows that this is a cartoon and decides to ask if something is funny. That's the whole 7 minutes.  This a very visual and quick paced short.  It accelerates into randomness as the dog tries to focus group the viewers into wondering if that event is funny.  It has a lot of slapstick. 

            There's really not much story here and that's fine. It's a showcase of madness more than anything else.  I can see it even being grating to some because of the constant of the asking if something is funny.  It's not like there's nothing funny happening in the short, but yeah it can be seen as little much. A highlight has to be the prison  of gingerbread men.  The short has a running gag song of a choir singing "What is Funny? What is Funny?" 

                 I guess I could ask would this have made a good series? Probably not, this feels more one off  unless it's making a meta cartoon where Slap does different things, but the constant question repeating and stuff hampers it a bit.  You should check it out, at least once, to see what it is, but that should be it. 

             Back to Burnett, before we close. This episode of Oh Yeah! Cartoons has his fingers all over it, he was involved in all three shorts. The first one , "Chalk Zone" which was the first of many shorts and one of the shorts featured that became it's own show. He co-created that with Larry Huber. With Slap T. Pooch and Chalkzone you'll notice music is part of them and he again did make music too. He also worked on Jelly's Day as a co-creator.   

             That's really it here... uh was this post fun?  Was it?  help.