Little Toot

Little Toot is an animated short from the 1948 film Melody Time.
==Plot==
While his father Big Toot works hard towing ships throughout the port and out to sea, Little Toot prefers to play about, but carelessly annoys the big ocean liners with his giant figure eights and smokeballs.
After nearly getting into trouble with the Harbor Patrol, Little Toot resolves to be more responsible like his father. He tries to help his father with an ocean liner by pushing on its rudder, but causes it to spin out of control, and eventually crashes it into the city.
Because of this, he is escorted in chains outside the harbor limits by the Harbor Patrol as a punishment for his actions. Tearfully, he watches the other boats shun him as a criminal and his father demoted to pulling garbage barges in disgrace.
Twelve miles outside the Harbor, Little Toot is left alone. As the sky darkens, the sea grows rougher, and he is taunted by menacing bell buoys and ignored by a lighthouse. A sudden storm breaks out around him, and to his surprise, he discovers a ship in distress on the rocks. Thinking quickly, he puffs a smoky S.O.S. signal back to the harbor. With Big Toot realized his son is in trouble he in the lead, the other tugboats race to the rescue, but cannot make headway against the rough seas.
Little Toot meanwhile makes it to the stuck liner, which tosses him a tow line. At first, he cannot pull the ship out, but some lightning bolts shock him enough that he pulls the liner free. Trying to rush for safety, Little Toot is engulfed by one final wave as the storm ends.
All seems lost for the little tugboat, but miraculously Little Toot emerges coughing water from his smokestack. To much celebration, he then tows the liner into port all by himself, with Big Toot proudly watching.
==Characters==
*Little Toot
*Big Toot
*Ocean liners
*Harbor Patrols
*Sea Gull
==Releases (standalone)==
===Television===
*Disneyland, episode #4.8: "Adventures in Fantasy"
*Donald Duck Presents, episode #65
===Home Video===
*Walt Disney Home Video: Storybook Classics (VHS)
==Trivia==
*This segment later served as an inspiration for the British children series, TUGS, a series about the adventures of two anthropomorphized tugboat fleets, the Star Fleet and the Z-Stacks, who compete against each other for the best job contracts in the Bigg City Port, during the 1920s. It was created by Robert D. Cardona and the late David Mitton who both worked on the first two seasons of the original Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends TV series (shortened to Thomas & Friends), which ran for 24 seasons from 1984-2021. Tugs was considered as a sister series to Thomas.
*Little Toot would be adapted into cartoon two more times, both in 1992. The first was part of Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories and featured Little Toot meeting the Loch Ness Monster. The other, entitled The New Adventures of Little Toot, was about Little Toot helping a pair of dog siblings look for their father. Both cartoons have nothing to do with this short.
==Gallery==
Category:Melody Time
Category:1948 shorts
Category:Animated shorts
Category:Melody Time segments