Disney Animation Collection Vol. 2: Three Little Pigs (2009)

For a good quote to support why the Disney company shouldn't rely heavily on sequels, fans can point to something Walt himself said several times over the years: "You can't top pigs with pigs." The statement refers to a lesson learned in the early days of Disney animation, when the studio followed the hugely popular 1933 Silly Symphony Three Little Pigs with three successors over the course of the '30s.

Two of the three sequels -- 1934's The Big Bad Wolf and 1936's Three Little Wolves -- are gathered alongside their Academy Award-winning predecessor in Walt Disney Animation Collection: Classic Short Films - Volume 2: Three Little Pigs. Accompanying those pig cartoons are a quartet of somewhat memorable talking animal stories first released as one-reel shorts from 1936 to 1952.
Elmer Elephant, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and 1943 Chicken Little may not be as familiar to people as Dumbo, Simba, and the 2005 Chicken Little, but Disney has nonetheless deemed those characters worth marketing to audiences as part of the introductory wave of this new DVD line.

Like nearly anything worth mentioning in Disney's vast catalog of animated shorts, all seven of these have previously appeared on DVD in the collectible Walt Disney Treasures series. Even if that quickly-disappearing, tin-housed line intimidated you, you could have already encountered up to four of these cartoons on DVDs like Timeless Tales, Volume One, The Fox and the Hound, Melody Time, The Rescuers, and Dumbo. But now they're gathered in one place, to give you a pleasant sampling of the quarter-century when color Disney cartoon shorts thrived, or simply to serve as a moderately-priced, hour-long babysitter.

"Three Little Pigs" (1933) (8:44)
It's not hard to understand why this became Disney's most successful cartoon to date. Part of the credit belongs to the solid, well-known source fable, and the rest goes to the studio for bringing it to life in such fun fashion. Two carefree pigs build their houses quickly using straw and sticks, respectively. A third takes his time to construct his from bricks. When the cunning Big Bad Wolf shows up, he has little trouble blowing down the first two residences with his patented huff and puff method. The brick house, however, poses more of a challenge.

Chosen by the Library of Congress for US National Film Registry preservation in 2007, this short features the first popular original Disney song in "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", which has been covered by the likes of Duke Ellington, Barbra Streisand, and LL Cool J in the 76 years it's been around.

Unsurprisingly, what's seen here is not entirely true to the original short; the Big Bad Wolf's Jewish peddler disguise as part of him pretending to be the Fuller Brush Man is gone, as is the presumably more Yiddish voice he originally used. The animation was revised long ago, dating back at least to the short's 1984 home video debut, and even affects the normally unedited Walt Disney Treasures' release of it.

"The Big Bad Wolf" (1934) (9:23)
Little Red Riding Hood is on her way to bring cakes and wine to her sick Grandma. Though Practical Pig warns against it, Red decides to take the shortcut through the woods, with Fifer and Fiddler accompanying her. As feared, they encounter the Big Bad Wolf, who uses disguises to fool his prey. Freer in form than the prior year's hit, this one still finds room to reprise "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" even with the pigs in supporting roles here.

"Three Little Wolves" (1936) (9:21)
This second sequel provides a twist on the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf and his three trained young sons target Fiddler and Fifer Pig by posing as Little Bo Peep and her lost sheep. The pigs, who have already lost Practical Pig's trust by jokingly sounding the emergency wolf alarm, seem destined to become the main course of a family dinner. An Italian stereotype harking back to the perceived anti-Semitic gag in the original, remains intact here.

"Lambert the Sheepish Lion" (1952) (8:18)
Sterling Holloway narrates this Oscar-nominated short as his Dumbo character Mr. Stork mistakenly drops off a South African lion cub named Lambert among a brood of lambs.

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Embraced by a mother sheep but taunted by his "fellow" lambs, Lambert grows into a timid adult who reluctantly proves heroic when a wolf hunts the herd.

"Chicken Little" (1943) (8:47)
A far cry from the studio's DreamWorks-inspired 2005 CGI feature and a strange twist on the familiar fable, this short lets Foxy Loxy use psychology to wreak havoc on a farmyard of fowl. After trying to convince Chicken Little that the sky is falling, the fox starts spreading gossip about leader Cocky Locky. That psychology book Foxy Loxy quotes was going to be Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and the short is basically World War II anti-propaganda propaganda, although decisions were made during production not to code it so explicitly. Still, it's surprising for this dark and troubling cartoon to surface on a DVD that purports to "have you laughing, singing and creating wonderful, lifelong memories!"

"Three Blind Mouseketeers" (1936) (8:44)
A lighter tone is found in this cartoon, which pits three blind, cheese-craving musketeer mice against an eye-patched cat who wants them trapped. Captain Cat awakens to interrupt the mice's nighttime feast and comic pursuit ensues.

"Elmer Elephant" (1936) (8:34)
After Elmer Elephant gives Tillie Tiger flowers for her birthday, other young anthropomorphic animals pick on the pachyderm boy. When raging fire threatens the community, it's up to Elmer and his ridiculed trunk to save the day in a sequence prescient of Dumbo's climax.