Don't let the title card fool you — the canary does not actually look like this in the cartoon itself.
A landmark 1947 Tex Avery cartoon made during his MGM tenure during The Golden Age of Animation, said to have been one of his personal favorites of his own. This oneshot short revolves around a hungry cat who, in an attempt to get more meat out of a pea size canary snack ("Well... I've been sick."), pours a bottle of Jumbo Gro Plant Growth formula on him - only to make him grow to gargantuan proportions. The tables keep turning and turning as one of the other keeps drinking more of the formula as their battle continues. Obviously, Hilarity Ensues.
The plot was recycled for the Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird short Hyde and Go Tweet in which Tweety Bird accidentally drank Dr. Jekyll's formula, much to Sylvester's confusion. It was also recycled in an episode of Darkwing Duck, when Darkwing and a villain fought over a growth ray and grew so huge they were bigger than the planet they were on.
Tropes Used In This Short:
- Angry Guard Dog: Atom.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
- Balloon Belly: All the animals end up looking like blimps or parade floats after taking the growth potion.
- Born in the Theater: The mouse tells the cat that he will save his life. He knows because he's seen the cartoon before!
- Canis Major
- Chekhov's Gunman: The mouse the cat meets early in the short, who promises to save him later. He does.
- Dirty Coward: The mouse telling the cat to eat the canary in the next room just to save his own skin. The mouse says the canary is quite the big, juicy meal the cat craves - but it turns out the mouse was terribly exaggerating.
- Dumpster Dive: The cartoon opens on the cat rummaging through trash cans looking for food. He uses a lid from one of the cans as a tray as he picks out fishbones like at a buffet.
- Empty Fridge, Empty Life: The fridge in the house the cat finds is void of anything edible.
- Enemy Eats Your Lunch: The cat finds 3 fish skeletons while digging through garbage, before 3 other cats eat them up, making the cat angrily smash their heads in with trash can lids.
- Escalating War: Between the cat and the canary. And then between the cat and the dog. And then between the cat and the mouse.
- "Eureka!" Moment: The canary has one once realizing now (she?) has the chance to pulverize the cat as payback for trying to eat her.
- Gone Horribly Right: The cat's plan to fatten up the canary using the growth potion.
- Kilroy Was Here: The cat opens a sardine can, but the only thing inside is a sign reading "Kilroy was here".
- Mega Neko
- Mouse Hole: A train tunnel is used as one later on in the short.
- No Ending: See No Fourth Wall.
- No Fourth Wall:Mouse: Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna have to end this picture. We just ran out of the stuff. Good night. (the cat and mouse, now big enough to be standing on top of the Earth, wave to the audience until the Iris Out)
- Oh, Crap!: The canary has one when she realizes the cat is much bigger than her (again).
- Packed Hero: The cat finds the mouse inside a can of cat food. How the mouse stayed alive inside that can for who knows how long is anyone's guess.
- Personal Raincloud: The cat gets a literal brain storm over his head as he figures out how to fatten up the canary.
- Reading Ahead in the Script: The mouse already saw the very cartoon he's in, so he knows he'll save the cat in the end.
- Rodents of Unusual Size
- Serial Escalation: By the end, the characters have grown so massive that they are bigger than the planet they're standing on!
- Shout-Out: The mouse reads Lost Squeakend. note
- Simpleton Voice: The cat speaks with one, voiced by Pinto Colvig using his Goofy voice.
- So What Do We Do Now?: Occurs when the cat and mouse run out of the formula and are stuck at the exact same size as each other.
- Tiny-Headed Behemoth: As the characters get bigger from drinking Jumbo-Gro plant food, their bodies become huge and bloated while their heads and limbs remain relatively small.
- Trivial Title: The canary isn't really the focus of the short and in fact disappears from the plot early on.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The cat tries eating the mouse anyways even after the mouse scared the dog away for him, and then handed over the growing potion to the cat.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The canary disappears when the bulldog scares off the cat and the bulldog disappears when the mouse scares him off.
- Your Size May Vary: The Mouse gets big enough to fill the grand canyon and hop from mountain tops, but then fits inside a train tunnel. This would have to be one very big train tunnel.
