Gerald McBoing! Boing! on Planet Moo is a 1956 cartoon from UPA directed by Robert Cannon.
In this short Gerald is playing with friends when an alien spaceship swoops down and abducts him. The spaceship whisks Gerald to Planet Moo. The good people of Planet Moo are actually trying to boost interest in tourism among Earthlings, now that humans are starting to voyage into space. After some comic hijinks the king of Planet Moo sails back to Earth with Gerald, but their selection of a boy who only talks in sound effects has unintended consequences.
4th and last cartoon in the series that started with the classic Gerald McBoing-Boing.
Tropes:
- Aliens Speaking English: The aliens. Ironically, when they come to Earth they speak like McBoing-Boing, thinking that all Earthlings speak that way.
- King Incognito: Accidentally, and much to the king's chagrin. When he's pulled over for speeding by a space cop while taking Gerald home, the king can't prove he's king, because he doesn't have his crown. He gets tossed in jail.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: The last Gerald cartoon, and the only one where the narration/dialogue doesn't rhyme.
- Limited Animation: As with all the Gerald shorts. While this was innovative at the time and certainly effective in the Gerald series, Limited Animation would soon dominate the art form as Hollywood lurched into The Dark Age of Animation.
- Mistook the Dominant Lifeform: In a variation, the inhabitants of Planet Moo thought Gerald's noises were the Earthlings' native language. When the King of Moo introduced himself to humans with "Boinga-boinga", they thought he was speaking some kind of alien language.
- The Unintelligible: Played straight at first with Gerald and the kids he plays with; later possibly averted when the king claims to understand Gerald and speak his boing-boing language.
- What's Up, King Dude?: The king of Planet Moo certainly is freer with his subjects than Earth sovereigns. When he finds out that he doesn't have enough money to take Gerald back to Earth, he goes to a pawn shop and hocks his crown.
