Booby Hatched

Booby Hatched
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Airdate:	14 October 1944 Blue Ribbon reissue: 1 July 1950
Series:	Looney Tunes
MPAA Number:	9496
Production Number:	10-14 1185 (reissue)
Copyright Renewed:	20 July 1972
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc (uncredited) Sara Berner (uncredited)
Director:	Frank Tashlin
Written By:	Warren Foster
Producer:	Eddie Selzer
Animated By:	I. Ellis Arthur Davis (uncredited)
Film Editor:	Treg Brown (uncredited)
Musician:	Carl W. Stalling

Booby Hatched is a 1944 Looney Tunes short directed by Frank Tashlin.

Title

The title is a play on the phrases "booby hatch" and "booby trapped".

Plot

During a snowstorm, a mother duck struggles mightily and finally hatches her eggs in the bitter cold after candling them and seeing the chicks skiing, skating, and otherwise enjoying winter inside the shells. All but one, that is, poor little Robespierre, who hatched prematurely. She doesn't notice until after the rest of the brood has gone swimming and Robespierre has sprouted legs and run off in desperate search of warmth. He finds it under a hibernating bear ("So I laid an egg"), but a wolf (resembling the wolf as seen in "I Got Plenty of Mutton", also directed by Tashlin earlier in 1944), who has followed him in, snatches the egg for his dinner, with some help from a stick of TNT. What the wolf hasn't counted on is mama, who's right behind him, with a couple of eye-poking fingers at the ready. The wolf swaps a doorknob for the egg and starts boiling it, but Mama arrives in the nick of time to save him from the wolf's hungry jaws, only to be rejected by the baby, who was just getting warm.

Availability

(1992) LaserDisc
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 3, Side 6 (Blue Ribbon reissue)

(2006) DVD
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc Two (Blue Ribbon reissue, with altered opening and ending music cues [see "Audio Goofs" for more details])

(2011) DVD
Porky Pig

(2014) DVD
Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 8 Disc 2

Streaming

HBO Max (2020 - 2023)

Max (2023 - )

Notes

• According to Cartoon Research, the original titles had the song "She Broke My Heart in Three Places" playing over them.
• The unhatched egg is named after Maximilien Francois Robespierre, an influential figure of the French Revolution, who originated the expression "Omelettes are not made without breaking a few eggs."

Audio Goofs

• The restored version on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 had an error with the Blue Ribbon opening: it had a cut-short 1941–45 Merrie Melodies opening music instead of the correct 1945–55 Merrie Melodies opening music over the Blue Ribbon opening titles. It also has the generic 1941–55 Merrie Melodies ending music replacing the original ending music cue.
• Old a.a.p. prints of this cartoon with old Brazilian Portuguese dubs that air on Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Tooncast in Latin America alter the opening music in the Blue Ribbon opening; the 1945-1955 Merrie Melodies music is replaced by the cut-short version of the 1941-1945 Looney Tunes opening music in the old Brazilian Portuguese dub.^{[dead link]} Note that the altered opening track could only be heard on the Brazilian Portuguese audiotrack, not on the English audiotrack of the cartoon airing on these three channels.
• Unlike the USA Turner dubbed 1995 version which kept the original 1941–55 Merrie Melodies ending music (the slightly distorted variant in the ending of "The Wacky Wabbit"), the European Turner dubbed 1995 version has the generic 1941–55 Merrie Melodies ending music replacing the original ending music cue.

Gallery

Production background

Production drawing

Production drawing

External Links

• "Booby Hatched" at SuperCartoons.net
• "Booby Hatched" at B98.TV