Pappy's Puppy

Pappy's Puppy is a 1955 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.
== Plot ==
At a hospital, Butch J. Bulldog paces nervously, waiting for his baby to be born. He is, and Butch happily faints. 
Back at home, Butch teaches his new son how to walk, act tough, and bite cats by practicing on a dummy. One day, the young bulldog is playing with a ball when he wanders upon Sylvester. His training kicks in, and he attacks Sylvester, who proceeds to place the small bulldog under a tin can. However, Butch catches Sylvester doing this and exacts revenge by taking Sylvester to a shed and hammering the tin can onto his head and, as his emergence from the shed indicates, ultimately the rest of his body. 
Later, Sylvester is walking along while the baby bulldog is biting at his tail. He slaps the baby bulldog, only for Butch to catch up to him and wallop Sylvester in retaliation. After that, Sylvester reluctantly plays fetch with the baby bulldog and decides to throw the stick into a busy street, hoping the baby bulldog will be flattened. However, the young bulldog retrieves it successfully. Annoyed, Sylvester prepares to throw it again but Butch sees this and throws the stick into traffic himself, pointing for Sylvester to fetch the stick this time. Sylvester successfully retrieves it amidst heavy traffic, but is run over by a man on a scooter on the sidewalk anyway. 
Once again, Sylvester plays fetch with the baby bulldog again and throws a ball into a doghouse, which Sylvester boards up when the baby bulldog chases the ball into it. Sylvester plans to drop a lit stick of dynamite into the open hole on the top. However, Butch once again catches Sylvester and places the doghouse over Sylvester instead; Sylvester doesn't hammer out the nails in the boards in time, and it explodes. 
Sylvester sets up a booby trap of a dog bone hooked up to a shotgun. When Butch's son begins tugging on the bone, Butch gives Sylvester a stern look, prompting Sylvester to run over and plug the shotgun hole with his finger so the baby bulldog is unharmed, getting his finger shot over and over, including once in the face, as Butch's son tugs. 
The stork arrives and announces Butch has even more puppies to add to his family. Having had enough with dealing with more pesky baby bulldogs, Sylvester chases the stork, shooting at him.
== Censorship ==
When this cartoon aired on ABC's The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, the following scenes were edited:
* The sequence where Sylvester traps Butch's son in the doghouse and readies a dynamite stick to blow him up, only for Butch to appear and place the doghouse on Sylvester, blowing him up as he tries to escape.
* Several shots of Sylvester receiving painful blasts as he plugs the constantly firing gun and the scene of Sylvester getting his finger out and being blasted in the face were cut to make it seem like Sylvester was shot a few times off-camera.
== Notes ==
* The soundtrack to this cartoon, minus the title card music, appears on The Carl Stalling Project, Volume 2: More Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1939-1957, free of sound effects and voices.
* This short lacks a visible MPAA number on the credits card.
* The plot of this cartoon is a spoof of the Tom and Jerry cartoons with Spike and Tyke, where Spike is very protective of his son Tyke and would teach him to attack cats, particularly Tom at times. He would usually threaten and clobber Tom whenever he thinks Tom was annoying Tyke.
* This is one of the rare Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies cartoons to have only one animator, in this case Gerry Chiniquy. This is because the cartoon was animated around the time Friz Freleng was reassembling his unit after the 1953 shutdown.
* This is the only short where the stork, who is normally drunk, is sober throughout and delivers babies to the right parents.
* In this short, the only character who speaks on the camera is The Drunk Stork.
* In Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide, Jerry Beck states that Butch J. Bulldog is meant to be the same bulldog as Hector the Bulldog from the Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, which Friz Freleng also directed at the same time.https://archive.org/details/pdfcookie.com_looney-tunes-ultimate-guide/page/n33/mode/2up
* MeTV aired this short on Saturday Morning Cartoons; however, this airing appears unrestored. This is the only cartoon released in 1955 that has yet to be restored as of May 2024.
* The gag where Sylvester plays fetch with the puppy and throws the stick into traffic would be reworked for the Yosemite Sam short "Honey's Money", which Freleng also directed.
== Gallery ==
Pappy'spuppymediaset2.jpg
Pappy'spuppymediaset3.jpg
Pappys-puppy600.jpg|Lobby card
== External links ==
* "Pappy's Puppy" at the SFX Resource
== References ==
 
Category:Merrie Melodies Shorts
Category:Sylvester Cartoons
Category:1955
Category:Shorts
Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng
Category:Cartoons written by Warren Foster
Category:Cartoons with layouts by Hawley Pratt
Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Irv Wyner
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer