Butterscotch and Soda (1948)
Article 5756 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-29-2020
Directed by Seymour Kneitel
Featuring the voices of Mae Questel and Amanda Randolph
Country: USA
What it is: Little Audrey cartoon

When Little Audrey is caught neglecting her regular meals in favor of gobs of candy, she is locked in her room with all of the candy removed. Then she starts to go into ….withdrawal.

At one point in this cartoon, Little Audrey is desperately hunting for candy in her locked room, and she looks up at the light fixture on the ceiling and sees the shape of a bag of candy in it. Immediately, a whistle went off in my head, and I found myself heading to IMDB to see if my suspicion was true, and indeed it was; this cartoon was referencing THE LOST WEEKEND, which also explains the hallucinations Little Audrey starts having. This bit of cleverness is the high point of this cartoon, which in other ways is very similar to the Little Lulu cartoon A BOUT WITH A TROUT; in each one, the main character has a bizarre fever dream in which they learn the error of their ways. Actually, the similarity between the two characters may not be a coincidence; Famous Studios made Little Audrey the replacement for Little Lulu when they decided to not continue purchasing the rights for the latter. This cartoon is actually fairly good, but it is marred by the presence of a racial stereotype with the black mammy character on display here.