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YMMV / Silly Symphonies

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  • Accidental Aesop: From "Moth and the Flame": Never leave a flame unguarded, no matter how small. At best you'll have fire damage, at worst you could end up losing your home or business.
  • Adorkable: Toby Tortoise in both of his appearances. Hopelessly outclassed by Max Hare and afraid of his own shadow, but he's just so darn sweet about the whole thing. His hat's penchant for flipping above his head helps.
  • Awesome Music: "The Carioca" from "Cock o' the Walk".
    • Also the music in "Music Land", especially that used during the great battle between the Isle of Jazz and the Land of Symphony.
  • Broken Aesop: The moral of "The Flying Mouse" is to Be Yourself, but really the only reason the little mouse's wish didn't work out for him is that the fairy gave him bat-like wings that made him look scary to the other mice, instead of the bird-like wings that he originally wished for.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Donald Duck, who made his first appearance in "The Wise Little Hen". Not only his distinct voice singled him out for stardom, but he is one of the most recognized Disney characters of all time.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: "The Pied Piper" has the children taken away from their parents forever, but it's treated like a happy ending thanks to their parents being jerkasses who made them work all the time, with the Piper arguing that the children probably would have grown up to be as bad as them if he didn't.
  • Heartwarming Moments:
    • The Ugly Duckling in the 1939 version of The Ugly Duckling, after being put through some misery for the few minutes in the film, is found by a family of baby Swans and their mother. The mother even hugs him when they accept him.
    • The Disneyfied ending to The Ants and the Grasshopper is sweet all the time. When the Ants see the Grasshopper starved and frozen at their door, they immediately break from their feast and nurture him back to health. The Queen reminds him only those who work may stay....so he can play for them. Cue a happy dance ending.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "The Cookie Carnival" features a poor girl in rags being transformed into a queen with a beautiful dress, 15 years before Disney would adapt Cinderella to feature film.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • King Midas is a fat greedy Adipose Rex who thinks only about his gold. However when he realizes that with his newfound power turns even his food into gold, he fears he'll die of starvation and desperately begs Goldie to free him from his curse. In that moment it's hard to not feel a little sorry for him.
    • The former of "The Grasshopper and the Ants" is a cocksure Lazy Bum, but when winter kicks in and he is left cold and starved and begging for help as a result of his irresponsible behaviour, it's not hard to feel sorry for him. Being a Disney adaptation of course, the ants take pity and the Grasshopper survives to learn his lesson.
  • Moment of Awesome: The second half of "Babes in the Wood". To save Hansel and Gretel from the witch, the elves pull off a flawless attack plan with arrows, pumpkins, trip wires, and pies, while the two kids easily free themselves and the other children. A vine lasso thrown by one of the elves knocks the witch off her broom, and the children get the cauldron with the stone-potion and pull it outside, and she falls right into it, putting an end to her crimes — forever.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • The witch in "Babes in the Wood" has a potion that can turn living things to stone and lures children into her house so she can use a potion to turn them into ugly animals.
    • "The Skeleton Dance". The entire short is creepy, but especially the two shots where the skeleton jumps at the camera and seems to devour it.
    • "Birds in the Spring'': The rattlesnake trying to eat the baby bird.
    • "Hell's Bells'': A 1929 cartoon about Hell. In the opening scenes a big fat spider with teeth swings back and forth and snaps at the viewer. Still pretty creepy...
    • The Three Little Pigs: The Big Bad Wolf. In his 1st movie, his single desire is to eat the pigs, and he has an awesome Evil Laugh. In his 2nd movie, he tries to eat Little Red Riding Hood. And in his 3rd movie, he's training his kids note  to eat the pigs to a song about what you can cook pigs into. In the 4th movie the Wolf came this close to eating the pigs, having them tied down with apples in their mouths and everything.
  • Sequelitis: "The Three Little Pigs" inspired three continuations. While none of them are hated, not one reached the popularity levels accomplished by the original. Walt even felt the same way, stating that "You can't top pigs with pigs".
  • Sweet Dreams Fuel: "The Night Before Christmas", and "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" are full of this. The epitome is "Lullaby Land," thanks to the Sandman.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley: "Goddess of Spring" was made to see if the animators could handle a realistic human character. When Persephone makes her entrance, dancing like she was made of rubber, it's made clear that they still weren't ready.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • The plethora of racist caricatures of Africans, most notably in "Broken Toys", "Cannibal Capers" and "Three Orphan Kittens".
    • In the ending to "Birds in the Spring", the baby bird who wandered off gets spanked soundly by his mother. This was considered questionable by some even back then, but now spanking is much more unacceptable.
    • The Stepin Fetchit-inspired bird in Who Killed Cock Robin?.
    • The message of the "The Flying Mouse" comes across as very backwards these days. The mouse wants to fly like the birds, so when a fairy grants him a wish, he asks for wings. She tells him that "a mouse was never meant to fly", but he insists, so she obliges. The birds are not impressed, and his family locks him outside and throws pots and pans at him, despite the fact that he did nothing to harm them, or anyone. When he finally encounters a group of bats, they bully him for not being one of them, even if he looks like it. The mouse regrets ever making his wish, and the fairy returns to take away his wings, telling him to Be Yourself. Nowadays, most viewers would consider "being yourself" to mean doing what you truly want, regardless of what others think – which is what the little mouse was doing already.
    • Incidentally, most of the shorts actually avoid the ethnic stereotyping common to contemporary cartoons, (including Disney's main line of shorts) , mostly because the series was trying to be more "cute" instead of "funny". However, this makes the examples above stand out even more.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Hand-drawn 3D opening in "Egyptian Melodies". Impressive, not to be missed by anyone who loves well-crafted animation.
  • The Woobie:
    • The cookie girl in "The Cookie Carnival", who can't be in the parade because she doesn't have any pretty clothes to wear, starts out as this.
    • The Ugly Duckling in both versions, rejected by his mother and siblings.
    • The blonde mermaid kidnapped in “King Neptune”. She looks absolutely terrified when the pirates reel her in, constantly abused by them and pulled by her tail to be locked into a chest.

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