CUBBY’S STRATOSPHERE FLIGHT (1934)
Article 4131 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-13-2013
Directed by Vernon Stallings
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Cubby the bear cartoon

Cubby the bear decides to take off for the stratosphere, but he ends up at the North Pole at a walrus night club.

Van Bueren was one of the more obscure cartoon studios of the thirties, and Cubby the Bear wasn’t a particularly memorable character. Still, there are a few decent moments in the cartoon; I like the means of locomotion Cubby uses to rise to the stratosphere (think of the old “horse-and-carrot” trick only using a pelican and a fish), and at least one gag got a laugh out of me (what happens to a fisherman’s can of bait after a giant snowball makes off with him). The rest is pretty typical early thirties animation, with things coming to a dead halt at one point when a quartet of walruses warble a song.