Buy Jippo! It's Betty Boop approved.
If you're feeling wealthy
And want to be healthy
Now's the time to buy Jippo!
A Betty Boop cartoon by Max and Dave Fleischer released on September 2, 1932.
Betty Boop, Bimbo, and Koko the Clown sell an all purpose health tonic called "Jippo", which has some rather strange effects on it's consumers.
Tropes Used In This Short:
- Artificial Limbs: One customer pours Jippo on his peg leg and it changes into a mild improvement of a tiny arm holding a cane downwards.
- Body Pocket: Being a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, Bimbo pockets their earnings into body pockets on his sides.
- Dem Bones:
- One customer who drinks Jippo has his skeleton briefly jump out of his body from the back of his shirt's neck-hole.
- When Betty uses a pointer on a picture of a skeleton, it gets tickled and laughs.
- Everything Talks: Not surprising since this is a Betty Boop cartoon. A bottle of Jippo catches a cork using it's peeled off label like an arm to re-cork itself. A fire hydrant grows an arm to wipe off some excess water where the hose is connected. After an old man creates an Instant Gravestone, the grave and flower on it scat to the song being sung. Also see Living Currency.
- Fountain of Youth: Jippo changes an old man into a baby, but his size remains unchanged resulting in an adult sized baby.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you pay attention while Betty and Koko are exchanging Jippo for money and handing the money to Bimbo, instead of going into his pockets, Bimbo keeps dropping the money back into the crowd.
- Gainax Ending: Between all the crazy transformations towards the end and the last image of a baby transforming into a Mr. Hyde look-a-like, this ending definitely confuses all who watch.
- Human Knot: Koko the Clown does this to warm up the crowd, but it starts to get complicated as he somehow untangles himself with multiple copies of his limbs and even an extra torso and head.
- Instant Gravestone: An old man drinks Jippo and throws off his wheelchair to dance on his bandaged feet, only to create a grave by draping the asphalt from the ground like a blanket over himself to resemble a plot of land and a tombstone just grows behind him. His arm comes out to place a flower on his own grave.
- Living Currency: When a person pays Betty a dollar for some Jippo, the Eagle on it comes to life and hands the customer his change.
- Magic Pants: When the old man and baby transform into.. a baby and old man, their clothes also transform to match their new forms.
- Medicine Show: The whole cartoon is one big medicine show for Jippo.
- Mind Screw: Even when compared to other Betty Boop cartoons, this one is absolutely nuts. The only cartoons in the same league are Bimbo's Initiation and Minnie the Moocher.
- Noodle People:
- The first person to try Jippo is a unbelievably skinny rubber limbed man who after drinking it, goes from skinny to obese in seconds.
- Towards the end, a whole crowd of Jippo consumers marching behind Koko keeps shifting from stretchy and thin to short and fat.
- Panacea: Supposedly there's nothing that Jippo can't cure, from baldness, injuries, aging, youth...
- Placebo Effect: Since Jippo is shown just to be water from a hydrant, either the crazy effects on the townsfolk fall under this or there's something seriously wrong with the water.
- Rapid Aging: Jippo turns a baby into an old man, without changing his size.
- Rapid Hair Growth: A man rubs Jippo on his bald head and hair instantly grows, but at the same time his beard recedes.
- Shout-Out: The monster the baby transforms into at the very end is Dr. Jekyll from the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) film that Paramount Pictures made just a year before this cartoon was first released.
- Snake Oil Salesman: The Jippo that Betty, Bimbo and Koko sell turns out to be nothing but water from a nearby fire hydrant, but it's effects still work, (to a degree).
- Stock Visual Metaphors: When Koko first asks if the crowd wants to buy Jippo, big locks appear on their pockets.
- Throwing Off the Disability: An old man with two bandaged feet drinks Jippo and throws off his wheelchair and happily dances around; right before he lays on the ground and buries himself in a grave.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: While examining an old man, Betty retrieves a stethoscope from the front of her Little Black Dress.
- Visual Pun: A giraffe who drinks Jippo has an apple tied to a string slide up his neck and come out of his mouth. Apparently, this is his Adam's Apple.
