ReFrederator Blog

Our pixie theme rolls on with today’s installment, “Sunshine Makers” — certainly the “Casablanca” of elf cartoons.

In a pre-Prozac world, relentlessly cheerful gnomes bottle sunshine (and, apparently, contentment) to distribute throughout the countryside, like little psychotropic milkmen. Meanwhile, some goblins dressed like undertakers seem to have the misery franchise sown up — they spend most of their day skulking around, singing about how great it is to feel rotten. Pretty soon it’s attitude adjustment warfare, with the sunshine makers forcing everyone to get happy WHETHER THEY WANT TO OR NOT! A classic!

This is a pretty notorious cult favorite, theatrically released in 1935, but also used as an advertisement for Borden Dairy (check out the titles on this print.) Ted Eshbaugh, who directed “Sunshine” for RKO/Van Beuren had a habit of producing happy, jolly cartoons all featuring a rather dark subtext if you think about it too hard, so let’s not. Too bad the ‘happiness juice’ has that unfortunate x-ray side effect!

If you like these little guys, they’re back again in tomorrow’s cartoon (well, okay, they’re back again tomorrow, even if you don’t like them!)

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Dave Kirwan