The Butter Battle Book
Tags: allegory

Plot synopsis:
The Yooks and the Zooks live on opposite sides of a long curving wall. The Yooks wear blue clothes; the Zooks wear orange. The primary dispute between the two cultures is that the Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up, while the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two sides leads to an escalating arms race, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction.
The race begins when a Zook patrolman named Van Itch slingshots the Yook patrolman's "Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch" (a many-pronged whip). The Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a "Triple-Sling Jigger". This works once; but the Zooks counterattack with their own creation: The "Jigger-Rock Snatchem", a machine with three nets to fling the rocks fired by the Triple-Sling Jigger back to the Yooks' side.
The Yooks then create a gun called the "Kick-A-Poo Kid", loaded with "powerful Poo-A-Doo powder and ants' eggs and bees' legs and dried-fried clam chowder", and carried by a dog named Daniel. The Zooks counterattack with an "Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz", a machine that shoots "high-explosive sour cherry stone pits". The Yooks then devise the "Utterly Sputter": a large blue vehicle intended "to sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks". The Zooks counterattack with a Sputter identical to the Yooks'. Eventually, each side possesses a small but extremely destructive red bomb called the "Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo", and neither has any defense against it.
No resolution is reached by the book's end, with the generals of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting for the other to strike.

Review: A brilliant story with a hard lesson.
This was one of my favorite adaptations of a Dr. Suess story.
On one side of a stone wall, there's the Yooks, the "proper" race that butters their bread "butter side up".
On the other side live the Zooks, which (gasp!) butter their bread "butter side down".
The two groups, whom appear to be the exact same with the exception of this one characteristic, have waged war with each other for countless years.
The Butter Battle Book shows the story of an old man who was once patrolled the wall, protecting the Yooks from the terror of the Zooks.
With the help of his advisor, things get worse and worse until he and Zooks' protector both bring out a device that will destroy both sides of the wall forever.
Who's going to drop it first?
We may never know...I saw this when I was a child, and it left a lasting impression on me.
These two races are fight over something as simple as this, and it shows what happens if we don't learn to get along and accept one another as each other.
In a way, this story is the summary of every war that has happened: the fighting gets worse, and if we don't learn to get along, things are only going to get worse until both sides will destroy one another.
Even though the story is very humorous, the moral is an important one.
I'm hoping that one day I can share this story with my children and my grandchildren..
a brilliant, if all-too-brief, collaboration between Bakshi and Dr. Seuss.
Who would've thought that one of the very best adaptations from book to screen- albeit small screen- in the Dr. Seuss realm would be by underground animated filmmaker Ralph Bakshi.
By then, Bakshi had gone on from the more personal work of the 70s, trademarked with rough pencil and inking with wild color combos in unconventional stories, to more sci-fi/fantasy fare like Wizards, Fire and Ice, and even a hit and miss attempt at Lord of the Rings.
This short work that he produced and directed, probably as a way to make ends meet as much as an artistic statement, is probably one of his most obscure works, but it might be one of his better works because he keeps his ambitions low and his targets simple enough to accomplish completely.
What we have here is a story that has a level of appeal for children and adults, and like the recent Happy Feet it will mean different things for different audiences.
For either age group, child or parent (or those who are out to seek any and all works by Bakshi), there's some appeal.For kids, it's a bright story of what it means to have a job to do, however petty or ridiculous it might seem.
The Yooks and the Zooks are two different kinds of, well, Seuss characters, who each have their own way of spreading butter on bread, one side up, the other side down.
Soon there are goofy attempts by a hired Grandfather Yook (voiced by Charles Durning) to take on the task of stopping the Zooks from continuing on their bottom-buttered path.
There are also some whimsical songs, and even some random moments of strange humor, as can only come out of Seuss.
But for the older ones, those who might have any kind of political awareness, Seuss and Bakshi have a simple message to go on, which is the notion of wars being started on the most petty but fastidiously held points of merit.
And, as escalating tactics go, pretty soon it's less about the actual butter itself than the point of one side being too different enough- separated by a 'great-wall' kind of wall barrier- to ever have any kind of peace.
There's details like how grandfather, however incompetent he might be to swart the Zooks, gets promoted to general, or how intricate a bomb can be made: and how it's just as easy for the other side to get the same power.It's not only how sharply and aptly Bakshi is in having Seuss's words have their impact, and the wit as scathing as it is poke-in-the-ribs playful and fairly hilarious (I loved the ending, which I won't reveal, but has its suddenness as a point of absurdity and satirical merit), but in fusing in his own methods of style that make this a success.
Bakshi, taking a break from rotoscoping, makes the Seuss cartoonish world come to life, and in a manner that presents it not totally smooth and finely tuned but a little scratchy and messy and with the colors usually of the lighter-primary side (the exception, and a great scene at that, is when grandfather ventures down the staircase to the bomb-making lava-pool area).
There's something very much alive to how Baskhi gets the Yoots and Zoots moving along, how they use oddball weaponry or machines, and how the timing is less out of Looney Tunes than out of his background as a satirist of culture.
He even gets Seuss's songs, which are by turns silly and inane, as entertaining little notes in the story.If you can find this for your kids, if they happen to be Dr. Seuss fans anyway, it's a sure bet to get them into a lesser known but still worthwhile work.
It's smart, vibrant, and almost cheerfully discomforting; second only to Chuck Jones's How the Grinch Stole Christmas as the best animated adaptation of a Seuss work.
The World In Ten Million Years.
Wow. Wow, wow.
Hmmm.
Do I waste the words?
In the spirit of Bakshi, I'll stay human and fail by trying.
I won't believe the Grandfather.
Anyone who studies Bakshi feels the tides of generations, of change, of the street, of music, and art, addiction and emotion.
Of the loss of soul which accompanies conviction.
So those few will suck on the sour, ironic pill of these comments like they have every minute of Bakshi film, and twist their face wry, and spit it out and never forget.
They illustrate alike.
Let me simplify and close; from 'a brilliant, if all-too-brief, collaboration...' "Soon there are goofy attempts by a hired Grandfather Yook (voiced by Charles Durning) to take on the task of stopping the Zooks from continuing on their bottom-buttered path." And contrast.
From 'Simplistic and misguided' "In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children." Do I really need to summarize?
Probably, but I won't.
Conviction becomes reality.
What acts is indestructible..
Another terrific Dr Seuss animated adaptation.
Even from an early age I have loved Dr Seuss, and I find the animated versions of his work on the most part classics(1966's How the Grinch Stole Christmas is my favourite).
Ralph Bakshi's The Butter Battle Book is not an exception.
While I am more familiar with and prefer Chuck Jones' visual style, the animation is very good, not always smooth but always colourful and vibrant.
The score has the right mix of whimsy and energy, while the songs are very catchy and succeed in making Dr Seuss' classic rhymes highly memorable.
With or without song, the rhymes have razor-sharp bite and wit and move along at a sprightly(and gentle when needed) pace.
The story is simple, smart, charming and true to Dr Seuss' book, with many funny moments for children and adults to savour.
The message is important and doesn't feel thankfully overly-didactic in how it was put across.
The characters are wholly engaging and the voice acting I can't fault either.
All in all, terrific like most of the Dr Seuss animated adaptations.
10/10 Bethany Cox. Best Dr. Seuss and a perfect adaptation!.
Many people say both the book and this short is to heavy for the kids but I think it's the best way to teach them about the evils of war.
It doesn't give them any answers but instead ask question and make them think!What great about this short is that not only it's a perfect adaptation of Seuss work but add's another learn by adding a musical number which show just how horrifying the concept of something like the Atom Boomb is.
Overall one of the best Seuss book and a fantastic animated short!
It's very sad it's so undertated....
Simplistic and misguided.
Butter Battle is an entertaining story about two fictional cities and their arms race.
It is also as misguided allegory about the Cold-War and arms races in general.
Yes, it is a children's book, but like so many of Theodor Seuss Geisel's works it hits people over the head with its moral.And that moral is what, exactly?
Sure it is laudable to encourage us to concentrate more on what unites us than what divides us.
It is even a good thing to encourage international cooperation.
But to equate the differences between the Warsaw Pact nations and the Nato west to a difference in butter application is just plain wrong.
To point out the obvious, many Warsaw Pact nations enjoyed intermittent periods of shortages of butter and bread -- they would have been happy to eat it butter sideways if it were available.
On a less literal level, and whatever your political inclination, Soviet socialism versus Western (particularly Anglo-American) democracy is not a mere question of preference and custom.To make the point even clearer, nuclear weapons were not developed in a Cold War with the Soviets, but in a hot war with the Axis powers.
There is no doubt that Germany was developing nuclear capability during the war.
Should the US have refrained from nuclear weapons research putting their trust in their (less than inevitable) victory in the conventional war?
Once the weapons were developed they were used against the enemy who attacked us at Pearl Harbor.
What does a nation do at this point when the genie is out of the bottle?
Furthermore, hindsight is 20-20, which is to say that there was no way of assuring another half crazed dictator wouldn't crop up with his eyes on developing nuclear weapons.
The second Gulf War has shown the incredible difficulty in ascertaining credible threats and neutralizing them.In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children..
Anti-War Propaganda.
I did not care for this at all.
I wish Dr. Seuss would've stayed away from all political/social commentaries because it gets old very fast.
This cartoon has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and is also about as funny.It's still Dr. Seuss so there is some whimsy, so in the end I gave it 5 out of 10..
The weakest of 'The Best of Dr. Seuss' DVD but reminiscent of a 'My Little Pony Episode'.
I first saw this short upon purchasing a 4-DVD pack containing 'The Best of Dr Seuss,' 'Laura's Star,' 'Quest for Camelot' and 'The Powerpuff Girls Movie.' While it's not the best of 'The Best of Dr Seuss,' it still had rhyming narrative, Dr Seuss-illustration-type characters and a storyline that reminded me of that from the 'My Little Pony ' episode 'Ice Cream Wars.'The animation style is sketchy, is not as smooth as that in 'Daisy-Head Mayzie' or 'Horton Hatches the Egg' and has a few lip-syncing flaws but the colours are bold.
A lot of the musical score was military and although there were a few moments with no music at all, I liked the harmonious vocals of a group of female characters..
While a lot of the story was hard to follow, I liked the concept of one community spreading their bread butter-side down and the other butter-side up.
The pace dragged on in the middle and while I found the ending abrupt, it was something of a cliffhanger as well.Overall this is the weakest addition to 'The Best of Dr. Seuss' DVD but its most positive assets are the narration, the colours, the music and the nostalgic appeal it brings to a certain extent by reminding me of one of my favourite episodes of one of my favourite childhood cartoons.
This way up.
"The Butter Battle Book" is an American half-hour television special, well actually just a little over 20 minutes as usual, that was released back in 1989, so it has its 30th anniversary this yeah.
The director is Ralph Bakshi and while he is not entirely unknown the writer is the star here as here we got one of Dr. Seuss lesser known works and he was in charge of the original material as well as the adaptation.
This one was not nominated for an Emmy.
The cast includes some known names too, the voice cast that is andthese are Oscar nominee Charles Durning as well as Golden Globe nominee Clive Revill with the latter being still alive today.
Now I must say I can see why people did not really like this one as much as some of Seuss' other works, even if the imdb rating is decent.
The characters felt pretty uninteresting to me, even if it was clearly visible who made this.
The fact that nothing except their either blue or brown outfit makes a difference between them visually is typical Seuss.
Same goes for the rhymes.
No narration this time, but the characters are speaking.
It is basically about two lands who fight and one of them eats bread with the buttered side up, the other with the butter side down.
Now that is the one truly baffling thing here.
Yep people did eat bread with the butter side down at some point apparently.
Anyway, the result of this conflict is that they are fighting each other, not really violently to keep it kids- and family friendly, but yeah there are arguments and we also see catapults and what they shoot with these catapults were slices of bread, a large amount, with the buttered side where they think it belongs.
I think this is in terms of almost every production value a bit of a poor man's version of other stuff by Dr. Seuss.
His easily recognizable approach to comedy alone is not enough.
The characters, the music, the animation (maybe), the exact contents - itg all feels tolerable, but not really worth seeing.
It is certainly as far away from failure territory as it is from real quality.
So if you totally adore Seuss' works, then go check this one out.
What I found far more interesting than the story or so is thatg you can easily make a connection here between this short film and the plot and the cold war atmosphere that was still existing back in the late 80s globally, even if it was really quickly getting less, also with the Fall of the Berlin Wall around that time.
But this is not supposed to become a history lesson, but a review instead.
So I say as an overall suggestion that you may want to skip the watch here.
Nothing worth seeing really except the buttered bread that may make you hungry.
Not recommended..
Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau documented that .
. Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin began fingering his sock puppet Don Juan Rump toward America's once-respectable White House in 1989.
Dr. Seuss nailed this emerging threat to America at this time (that is, 28 years ago) by including ALL of the most deranged elements of Putin's Deplorable Rump Administration within the 24 minutes spanned by BUTTER BATTLE BOOK.
As most American Media Outlets predict the END of Life as We Knew It will occur Tomorrow (that is, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017) because Rump and his counterpart madman in North Korea BOTH have their itchy trigger fingers hovering over their respective Nuclear Missile Launch Buttons, this moment is perfectly captured by BUTTER's Yook and Zook leaders on the brink of Mutually Assured Destruction from their own "Itsy Bitsy Big Boy Boom-Er-Roo" weapons as this animated short concludes on an ambiguous note.
The entire cartoon takes place at or near the Great Wall of Rump, and Dr. Seuss is surely quoting Rump at some future date when the Yook Grandpa boasts "with my Triple Sling Jigger, I sure felt bigger!" Putin's Secretary for U.S. Miseducation, Billionairess Betsy "Amway Calling" DeVos, even makes a cameo appearance here at 2:45, as she leads the tykes of Yook in a brainwashing song at one of her for-profit Charter Bamboozling Shacks.