"Porky's Poppa" is a 1938 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, starring Porky Pig. Originally in black and white, it was redrawn in color in 1967.
Porky's Poppa had a farm, EIEIO. But on this farm, he had a mortgage. And with the farm's cow, Bessie, not putting out enough milk, Porky's father is forced to order a robotic cow, which not only produces milk, but also other dairy products. Not about to let her be outdone (and be sent to the slaughterhouse), Porky sides with Bessie to show his father that their cow is better than any robot, and the situation soon turns into a battle between nature and machine.
Tropes:
- Acme Products: In one of its earliest appearances in a Warner Bros. cartoon, Porky's Poppa buys an Acme Mechanical Cow. True to future Acme products seen in the series, it causes nothing but trouble.
- Bowdlerization: The Nickelodeon version of this cartoon cuts the part where, as Bessie is "birthing" bottles of milk, one of them turns out to be a bottle of chocolate milk with "I Wish I Was in Dixie" playing in the background and Bessie and Porky bashfully look away.
- Cartoon Cheese: When the mechanical cow makes swiss cheese, the holes are produced by a toy bird shooting it with a tommy gun. The holes then become mouths that yodel.
- Chocolate Baby: Alluded to in the sequence where one of the bottles of milk "birthed" by Bessie is chocolate flavoured, whereas all the other bottles are plain white.
- Dinner Deformation: To get Bessie to eat hay despite her foot literally going into her mouth, Porky puts the whole haystack on her foot. It goes into her mouth, stuffing her cheeks to ten times their size.
- Invisibility Ink: One of the products made by the mechanical cow is vanishing cream. Some of the cream gets into Bessie's hay, causing the bottles of milk she produces to disappear. Eventually, the hay itself starts to disappear.
- Letting the Air out of the Band: When Porky's attempt to use a recording to get around his stutter fails, he throws the record player on the ground, and it slowly plays "Oooooh boooooy" as it expires.
- Literal Metaphor: Bessie suffers from Foot and Mouth disease, which in her case means she literally puts her foot in her mouth every time she opens it.
- Man Versus Machine: The race is on between Bessie and the mechanical cow over who can produce the most milk.
- Match Cut: The final line of the song is "Porky's Poppa had a mortgage", and the document in question is shown rolled up on screen. The scene then cross dissolves to Poppa pacing back and forth, bent over in the same position as the mortgage.
- Porky Pig Pronunciation: Porky's line in the opening song is supposed to be "Oh, boy!", but of course his stutter causes him to trip up. Even when he tries to use a recording to get around it, the needle skips on the record.
- Visual Pun:
- The lyrics on "Porky's Poppa Had a Farm" for Bessie are "With a little calf here, and a little calf there", with Bessie showing her legs. Later, she switches to the other kind of calf (as in baby cows).
- The mechanical cow's horns are car horns.
- The bottle caps on the bottles produced by the mechanical cow are tiny hats.
- Among the products the mechanical cow produces is cottage cheese shaped like little houses (including an outhouse).
