Six Days a Week - An 'Animaniacs' Retro Recap: 'HMS Yakko'

​Written by Mike Cervantes

Episode 3:
Animaniacs has pretty much hit its stride at this point. We know pretty much what to expect with each episode: a segment with the Warners, a segment with a supporting character, and possibly a song. This episode follows the formula perfectly as we get the first cartoon of yet another well-used if not popular character: Slappy Squirrel.


HMS Yakko
This is the first in a VERY long series of musical parodies that the series did in Season 1. We’d eventually get The Goodfeathers spoofing West Side Story, Rita and Runt doing Les Miserables, and The Goodfeathers AGAIN doing Fiddler on the Roof, but in this episode we get The Warners, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the HMS Pinafore. An interesting thing about this short is that in most of the series, the large orchestra performing the score for these cartoons had to use slant octaves, essentially creating parody music to go along with the parody lyrics of the cartoon, but Gilbert and Sullivan is pretty much public domain at this point, so while the Warners are singing parody lyrics, the music stays in the same key as the original production.

The Warners have a rather generic cartoon nemesis: Cap’n Mel. He’s essentially a Yosemite Sam: he’s short, he’s a cutthroat, and he wears two peg legs which force him to hop everywhere. The Warners dispatch with him in exactly the way Bugs Bunny would, distracting him by singing songs, and firing cannons at him, which leads them to a slant on “Modern Major General” called “Cartoon Individual.” The short ends at the conclusion of this song. We can only assume Cap’n Mel gave up after being so thoroughly pummeled.

Slappy Goes Walnuts
The story goes that Slappy was created when her voice actress Shari Stoner, off a large peel of voicing teenage characters, complained that “she’s gonna play teenagers until she’s an old woman.” The animators obliged the idea and created an octogenarian cartoon squirrel for her to voice, with Shari adding in the running gag of Slappy “having the dirt on all the classic cartoon characters." Skippy Squirrel is voiced by producer Tom Ruegger’s son Nathan in his first full role after previously voicing Baby Plucky on Tiny Toons.

The presence of Slappy further muddles the origins set forth by characters since the beginning to the series. It’s odd to think that Slappy, a character who likely had her heyday in the 1940s of ‘50s is an old woman, while Yakko and Wakko and dot have their origins in the ‘30s, but are still considered to be small children. This is where one has to remind themselves that this is only a cartoon, which Slappy frequently does through the duration of this cartoon.

So, Slappy is disgusted by the heavily-manufactured snack foods Skippy seems to be getting hyper from, and wants to pick walnuts off a tree guarded by her arch-enemy Dug the Dog in order to make her Walnut fig-dough surprise. Dug the Dog is also a rather generic cartoon nemesis: a non-speaking dog with vocal effects by Frank Welker. This works in Slappy’s favor though, as she gets to show off the full range of her own character while subjecting Dug to various effects of cartoon violence.  The climactic gag involves a re-imagining of the xylophone gag featured in many Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes cartoons. When Slappy hits the two key notes of “Those Endearing Young Charms,” Dug inexplicably explodes instead of Slappy.

Yakko’s Universe
A discussion in song of how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe. For people who are too young to watch Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life. Randy Rogel originally wanted to end this song with the ironic line “It’s a small world after all!” But the Warner Bros. executives shot that idea down right away. 

Adult Jokes and Neat Moments:
-In the middle of “Cartoon Individual” we see portraits of Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Babs, and Buster Bunny.
-Slappy really rips into the Disney Afternoon: “No wonder you like that Bonkers show: that junk’s rottin’ out your brain there.”
-"We’re just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney!”

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