In postwar America, nothing smelled of success as strongly as plastics.


In an age when PVC pollutes the environment and gives factory workers cancer, BPA and phthalates mess with our kids' hormones, and we're filling up landfills with products whose life cycles are shorter by the day, it's hard to be nostalgic about the miracle of plastic. We've rounded up five cartoons shaped by the mid-century miracle to help remind us of what was (and remains) so fascinating about this problematic material, inspired by a highlight of the first video in our set, "The Plastics Inventor," yesterday on BoingBoing.

1. Donald Duck: "The Plastics Inventor" (1944)

This 1944 cartoon lacks the psychological tension that makes Donald so great to watch - it could just as easily be Mickey or Goofy in that plane - but is just great visual fun. It's interesting to try to watch this film without the knowledge we now have about safety issues involved in plastics.

2. Gumby: "Robot Rumpus" (1956)

Many people believe that Gumby is made of clay, but plasticine isn't clay - it's a combination of calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. Clokey's first foray into Slavko Vorkapich's wacky "Kinesthetic Film Principles," the classic "Gumbasia," explores the material qualities of plasticine (you can watch it on YouTube here), but I'd rather showcase "Robot Rumpus," which pits 19th- and early-20th-century technologies (the electrified robot) against the postwar wonder of plastics. The Clokey police routinely pull down or disable embedding of their content on YouTube, and their strategies on copyright enforcement are constantly evolving, so we'll go with a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 take, which may last longer online. In the Internet age, plastic wins every time!

3. Barbapapa: Everything (1970 on)

Barbapapa was born with an eponymous book published in 1970, created by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor in Paris. Books and cartoon series span all of the decades since, and while "Babysitter" might be the perfect Barbapapa episode for our age, we've featured it on Punnybop before. Here's another good one, in which the Barbapapa family visits America.

4. The birth of Baby Plas (1980?)

Plastic Man was a pretty terrible cartoon, even before they brought on Baby Plas. You might assume that Plastic Man was an inspired ripoff of Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, but his creator, comic artist Jack Cole, created him in 1941, where he debuted in Police Comics, predating Mr. Fantastic by fully two decades. Plastic Man also isn't above shaping himself into the form of a toilet plunger if it gets the job done. In 1980 or '81, he had a baby. Sounds like trouble!

5. Ivan Maximov's "From Left To Right" (1989?)

In addition to working as an animator, director, and screenwriter, Maximov spent several years in the 1980s working as an engineer for the Russian Space Research Institute. This short animated film, was released (I think) in 1989, and Maximov is still active today; he showed up recently on Punnybop in "Rain Down From Above," featured at this year's New York International Children's Film Festival. "From Left To Right" feels heavily influenced by the general properties of plastics, in addition to being just plain freakish. A great bit of visual exercise for kids and adults alike!



Know of any other plastics-inspired cartoons to add to our list? Share them in the comments!

Above: Photo by pulpolux, shared via Flickr. - Jeremiah