Tex Avery is one of the most well known and beloved directors of animation. He has directed many classic cartoons that innovated and pushed the way people saw screen entertainment. Even today nerds who study each and every frame of animation appreciate the draftsmanship that Avery directed through his talented crew.
Today we are not talking about Tex Avery’s greatest achievements in the animated arts, however. We are discussing his later “Tomorrow” cartoons. One of the things that Tex Avery did was to mix his attention between crafting great achievements in animation, with making simpler gag cartoons. Just before inventing “Bug’s Bunny” in the famous and beloved 1940 cartoon “A Wild Hare”, he would direct, for example, cartoons that parody the travelogues commonly seen in theaters of the time. These cartoons mostly featured basic sight gags and visual puns.
The “Of Tomorrow” cartoons are often considered among the crummiest of the Tex Avery catalogue, appearing at the very end of his career in the 1950s. This article will cover every single one of these cartoons, because it semt like a good idea at the time. Let’s go!
House of Tomorrow
The title cards look nice, sleek and modern with nice colors. Instantly as the cartoon begins we get to enjoy fat wife AND mother in law jokes. Thus we are thrown into the cartoons advanced structure of constant sight gags and visual puns, and of course not very good ones either. It’s an aggressively unimpressive cartoon. I do enjoy the toaster bit for its dryness. As someone who has been worried about lights in the refrigerator, that joke was a bit relatable. But all-in-all it’s a very stinky cartoon. The title card was indeed the finest part of this film.
Car of Tomorrow
This cartoon is like the last one, but it smells worse. The set-up is similar to the last one, but instead of a house there are cars. A bunch of weak sight gags one after one, most so boring not worth thinking about after your eyes have processed the visual stimuli. There are some jokes which are offensively bad too, like the woman car with the bow and butt. And if observing a car with an ass wasn’t bad enough, the mother in law jokes also return, and are just as funny as they were in the last cartoon. Watching this cartoon is like a nightmare where time stands still and the most terrible cartoon streams into your eyeballs and tries to haunt your mind.
TV of Tomorrow
TV of tomorrow is one i’ve actually watched multiple times, and I’ve usually enjoyed it. The playing with live action footage makes this one much more interesting to watch, and make the sight gags generally more fun to watch. Don’t really have a lot to say about it now, but it’s fun enough. And not a single mother in law joke!
Farm of Tomorrow
The farm of tomorrow features a much more modern art style than the previous cartoons, which makes this one feel like a parody of the animated advertising of the time this was made. Goofy solutions to problems nobody has. This could be the best one of these cartoons, however the cartoon is hindered by its lack of humor. A lot of the gags make no sense. The peelable duck joke is delightfully strange though, and reminds me of the peelable crocodile joke from Akiyuki Shinbos classic 1996 anime Original Video Animation “Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko”, which is admittedly a much better cartoon. In the very least the drawings are nice in this one.
And those are the cartoons of tomorrow. And while these cartoons might hint at the world of tomorrow, after watching these cartoons I think the only tomorrow any viewer will desire is one without having to watch these cartoons. Good night!