"Mickey's Trailer" is a 1938 Classic Disney Short starring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. Released five months after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it is the 100th Mickey Mouse cartoon, and the second Disney short of 1938.
The cartoon opens with Mickey waking up to the beauty of nature from his mobile home. With a pull of a lever, however, the natural scene is revealed to be a façade to cover up the polluted city nearby and the mobile home turns into a moving trailer which sets off down the road. Traversing through the countryside with Goofy at the wheel, Mickey uses the bounty of the land to make breakfast for everyone while Donald takes his morning bath, despite being spied on by visiting birds. When it's time to eat, however, Goofy forgets to stop the car and the trailer keeps going on its own over a rocky road that makes eating difficult for Goofy. When Goofy realizes his mistake, he quickly rushes back to his post, but unknowingly unhooks the trailer from his car, causing the trailer containing Mickey and Donald to go out of control down the mountains.
"Mickey's Trailer" provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: The cartoon opens on Mickey in his house at a beautiful countryside. Then he pulls on a lever and suddenly the whole front yard retracts and the house transforms into a trailer; the "countryside" is then revealed to be a collapsible backdrop hiding a view of the city dump.
- Bigger on the Inside: The trio's trailer is very spacious.
- Bowdlerise: In some TV showings, the electrical outlet gag was removed, cutting right to Goofy grabbing the corn. Which led to confusion of Goofy suddenly eating popcorn.
- The Cameo: Blink and you'll miss Pete as a truck driver during the "runaway trailer" sequence.
- Dangerous Clifftop Road: The trailer goes into one of these while Goofy leaves his post as driver. He manages to rush back to the car and get back on the right path, but in doing so accidentally unhitches the trailer, sending it careening down the cliffside road with Mickey and Donald inside.
- Dramatic Irony: The cartoon ends with the trailer reattaching itself to Goofy's car, and Goofy, unaware of what Mickey and Donald just experienced, merely says, "Well, I brought ya down, safe and sound!"
- Failed a Spot Check: After Goofy accidentally detaches the trailer, we see him yell over his shoulder two times but he doesn't takes his eyes off the road and notice that there's no trailer, even if there should have been a number of ways he should have noticed (the car’s mirrors, no response from Mickey and Donald, the car suddenly feeling lighter, etc.).
- Harmless Electrocution: Goofy sticks a fork in an outlet, but the shock only shakes him up, and pops his ear of corn.
- Lethally Stupid: All of the short's climactic mayhem happens because of Goofy's bumbling (as the group's driver, he doesn't think of pulling over when he is called to breakfast, leading to the car driving itself into a closed road, and when he finally notices what he did, he detaches the trailer in his mad rush to get back on the car). Even more funny, he doesn't notice the last part.
- Non-Nude Bathing: When Donald takes his morning bath, he changes into an Old-Timey Bathing Suit and dives into the tub. When some birds peek through the window, Donald quickly covers himself with a towel.Donald: What's the big idea, you doggone flabberjacks?! Go on, SCRAM!
- Popcorn on the Cob: Goofy serves himself some corn, but in pulling the fork off the cob, he accidentally sticks it in an electrical outlet, and the current pops the corn.
- Pose of Supplication: Donald knells down to pray as the trailer approaches a train, which it narrowly misses. He quickly reassumes the position when the trailer approaches the train a second time.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Goofy sings "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", and much of the music is based around "Merrily, We Roll Along".
- Railroad Tracks of Doom: As the trailer, with Mickey and Donald inside, detaches from its car and careens down a steep mountain road, it approaches a crossing with an oncoming train. It just beats the train across, and the two barely have time to sigh in relief when the trailer approaches the train again further downhill, this time just missing the back end.
- Standard Snippet:
- Goofy's theme, "The World Owes Me a Living'", plays during the cow milking sequence.
- Donald quacks "When It's Springtime in the Rockies", a cowboy song originally written by Robert Sauer and Mary Hale Woolsey, while bathing.
- Super Multi-Purpose Room: The rooms on the trailer can transform with the pull of a lever. Donald's bedroom can become a bathroom, and the kitchen can become a dining room.
- Transforming Vehicle: The trailer can transform into a house and back, and the rooms inside can be changed with the push of a button.
- Typewriter Eating: Mickey and Donald eat corn this way: a strip starting at one end of the corncob, rotating the corncob a few degrees, and returning to the starting end, complete with dings and clacking.
- Who Is Driving?: When Mickey rings the bell for breakfast, Goofy races into the trailer to eat while forgetting to stop the car. When the trio notices the trailer is still moving...Mickey: Hey, who's driving?
Donald: Yeah! Who's driving?
Goofy: A-yuck! Why, I'm driving! [Realizes what he just said and has an Oh, Crap! expression]
