Recently, MeTV started adding Woody Woodpecker cartoons to its line-up, sprinkling them throughout Toon In With Me and having a whole hour of Walter Lantz cartoons on Saturday morning. lying like a suspiciously moist fragrant pile between Popeye and Bugs Bunny. It's bad enough that there's already MGM cartoons between them; at least the Tom and Jerry shorts can be enlivened with Harman-Ising shorts. I've never found any redeeming features in Woody Woodpecker; his conflicts with Wally Walrus and Buzz Buzzard seem simply a clash between idiots and rogues. The animation seems primitive, the humor sub-Stoogish. Bugs Bunny's taking carrots and Jerry's quest for cheese seem merely efforts for survival; Woody is a force of chaotic destruction, proactively trying to steal and destroy anything from everyone, casually wrecking whole forests for gluttony's sake. His associate Andy Panda is sickeningly sweet and easy-going. You feel even Micky Mouse would find him cloying. All of which is to say I disapprove of MeTV watering the stock. I only have so much time in the morning to cheer me up; Woody Woodpecker ... does not.
Update:
My brother John points out that as contemptible as we found the animated Woody Woodpecker, we rather enjoyed his comic book incarnation, which we we usually read in Gold Key Digests.
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