BOSKO’S MECHANICAL MAN (1933)
Article 5248 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-13-2016
Directed by Hugh Harman
Featuring the voices of Rochelle Hudson and Johnny Murray
Country: USA
What it is: Early Warner Brothers cartoon

Bosko creates a robot in the hopes it will help do the dishes, but the robot goes wild and wreaks havoc.

Warner Brothers earliest star was Bosko, who could perhaps be described as a black boy, but he’s best approached as a human variation on Mickey Mouse, which was probably what was intended. This cartoon is from the days before Porky was created, so it’s not up to the level of their classic era. However, for one of their early cartoons, it’s not too bad; though much of the humor falls flat, the robot itself is a pretty wild creation, and it’s very well animated. It also adds the fantastic content to this cartoon; given that Bosko and Honey or more-or-less human, it can’t get in genre-wise by the anthropomorphic animal route. Furthermore, when the robot goes wild, Bosko describes it as a “Frankensteen”. This one is no classic, but it may be one of the better cartoons from this studio during this era.