For nearly as long as cartoon characters have existed, animators have been sticking them in the wrestling ring. Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Woody Woodpecker all found success in the squared circle, but so did some obscure characters lost to time.
Characters like Willie Whopper, who appeared in 14 shorts by MGM. Each episode revolved around Willie, a compulsive liar, bragging about his many fictitious exploits, like winning an air race or going to hell (which wasn’t true at the time).
In the 1934 film, “Rasslin’ Round” (now the oldest item inducted into WrestleCrap, beating the previous record-holder’s four-week run on top), Willie steps into the ring… or so he’d have you believe.
Willie is shining shoes when he sees a news story on the Masked Marvel (perhaps the same Masked Marvel who inspired lucha libre’s entire enmascarado culture). This prompts our young Edward G Robinson soundalike to launch into another big whopper…
…and also tap dance. By law, cartoon characters of the time had to either dance or sing about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a.
We get a flashback to a wrestling gym, where a racist caricature punches Willie in the gut.
Willie then steps into the shower, manned by another racist caricature. You know it’s bad when a boy’s bare ass isn’t the most offensive thing in a frame.
Meanwhile, the Masked Marvel eats a barbell.
Now it’s match time. The Marvel, seconded by yet another blackface trainer, enters the ring…
…followed by Willie the babyface.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” says the ring announcer. The crowd boos. They must really not like that he’s reading off a roll of toilet paper.
If you think the ring announcer is unpopular, wait till you see the referee, whom the wrestlers inexplicably beat nearly to death to start off the match.
Willie puts a leg lock on the Marvel, which has him begging for mercy.
Inexplicably (there’s that word again!), Willie releases the hold…
…then hides under the canvas, popping out of the ring post.
In the crowd, a barefoot Mexican stereotype in a sombrero shouts, “Geeeve it to heeem, Willie!”
Before Willie can geeeve it to heeem, The Masked Marvel piledrives him around the ring like that recent invention, the pogo stick.
Willie eventually escapes and gives Marvel an airplane spin (so called because the helicopter had not yet entered large-scale production).
Yet again, the Mexican guy tells Willie to geeeve it to heeem while another fan cranes his neck down to gaze at his ass in complete awe.
Willie grabs Marvel’s foot and, seeing a hot dog vendor, helps himself to some mustard and what is clearly a hamburger bun to make a foot burger. It’s the original Whopper sandwich.
After being bounced around the ring like a ball….
…Willie retreats to his corner. There, his sweetheart gives him cold cream, which he uses to coat his entire body.
This Michael Nakazawa s**t works, letting the lubed-up Willie slip out of his opponent’s grip.
The exact same clip of the sombrero man plays a third time…
…and Willie knocks the Masked Marvel right on his butt. His mask falls off…
…at which point Willie snaps out of his tall tale to find that his customer is the Masked Marvel himself.
An irate Masked Marvel suddenly turns gay or something, lisping, “Youuu nasty man. Huh-uh-uh-uh!”
I’m sure this ending made more sense in the 30s.
Wacky and Packy – “Wacky’s Fractured Romance”
1975, Animated Short
Our next cartoon comes from the 1975 kids’ series, Uncle Croc’s Block. “Wacky and Packy” were, respectively, a caveman so wacky that it was his name…
…and a wooly mammoth whose unfortunate name is short for “pachyderm”. And while this cartoon obviously never aired in Britain, few Americans remember it, either.
The premise was that the caveman and his pet were buried by an earthquake and somehow transported two million years forward in time, ending up in a modern American city…
…where he learns to quote Ralph Kramden’s catchphrase. You’ve got to admire the audacity of this show not only plagiarizing The Honeymooners even more blatantly than The Flintstones ever did…
…but using a caveman to do it.
At least Wacky can form complete sentences; his mammoth is incoherent and prone to outbursts of tears whenever Wacky mentions “home”. It doesn’t sound like he’s drunk, so much as his brain itself has fermented in the ensuing two million years.
As in every single episode, this one begins with the Wacky and his subterranean homesick elephant complaining about being hungry, what with the lack of brontosaurus, etc. When they try and and fail to eat the steak on a TV display, the TV salesman invites them in.
On the TV is wrestling. “And now, back to today’s wrestling”, says the announcer, as the writers never bothered writing a second draft.
Watching two guys wrestle, Wacky is smitten with the blond one. Hey, they don’t call him Homo habilis for nothing!
The salesman, never having heard of a gay caveman, tells him he’s “nuts”. “That’s Horrible Herbie, the wrestling champion of the world.”
“I don’t care what her name is,” insists Wacky. “She’s my kind of woman!”
Our pansexual hero decides to pursue Herbie at the arena, where he awaits his opponent, “Caveman Kowalski”.
Unlike the more famous Killer Kowalksi, Caveman Kowalski looks exactly like Wacky, is terrified to wrestler, and never joined a cult.
Kowalski’s manager therefore pulls a switcheroo, putting Wacky into the match instead. Do you think he knows his ringer is just trying to get laid in the squared circle?
Wacky, under the influence of love, is able to fly…
…but ends up tangled in the ropes.
Herbie uses the same bouncing ball trick as the Masked Marvel…
…until Packy does a run-in, spinning Herbie around with his trunk and flinging him off screen.
This somehow makes Wacky not only the winner, but the new world champion. The whole match lasted 30 seconds — even a caveman would be ashamed of that short a performance.
Herbie runs away, throwing away his wig and quitting wrestling. That’s what a prehistoric sex pest will do to you.
“I guess she didn’t like me, old pal”, laments world champion Wacky. “But boy, could she ever hug!”
And because the writers realized Wacky still hasn’t said his catchphrase, his idiot mammoth jumps in the air for no reason and squashes him.
“One of these days, Packy, POW! Right in the kisser!”
At least the live studio audience found it funny.