"Three Little Pigs" (1933) is one of Disney's older Silly Symphony cartoons and it features each pig building their house while singing and dancing and the Big Bad Wolf blowing down each house in an attempt to get to the brothers. Probably one of the most memorable parts of this cartoon is the song the pigs sing, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." This cartoon is followed by "The Big Bad Wolf" (1934) which returns to those same three pigs, but this time, they are going to help Little Red Riding Hood through the woods to her grandmother's house. Once again, the classic tale is put to music and the action on-screen fits with the beats and rhythm of the song. And while this collection doesn't have the last of the Three Little Pigs cartoons ("The Practical Pig from 1939), it does contain the second-to-last one, "Three Little Wolves" (1936) which plays through the events of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. In this short, the two younger pigs keep sounding the wolf alarm and cause the older (brick-housed pig) to come running with his new invention. But when the wolf and his three pups actually capture the two pigs and start to prepare them for dinner, the sound of the wolf-alarm doesn't bring their big brother and they might be in some real hot water.
Disney Animation Collection Volume 2: Three Little Pigs continues with "Lambert the Sheepish Lion" (1952). In this cartoon, the stork from Dumbo mistakingly delivers a baby lion to a herd of sheep. While Lambert should be the leader of the pack because of his claws and teeth, he doesn't know how to use them and actually ends up being the butt of the other sheep's jokes. That is, until a wolf shows up and starts to threaten Lambert's mother.
In "Chicken Little" (1942), the title character is a rather dopey one and doesn't quite have all his marbles. He lives on a farm with everyone from hens that like to spread gossip, to turkeys that talk about the more refined things in life and ducks and geese that like to talk over the watering hole. This all comes to play when a sly fox tries to come up with a way to convince the farm animals to leave their coop. He convinces Chicken Little that the sky is falling, and through the use of the different talkers inspires panic in the little community.
"Three Blind Mouseketeers" (1936) is a cute tale that blends the stories of Three Blind Mice and The Three Musketeers. Here, three blind mice spend their day trying to gather food and inadvertently avoid the many traps set for them by the sly Captain Cat. While an amusing cartoon, I felt it was one of the weaker ones in the collection, much like the volume's last cartoon, "Elmer Elephant" (1936). This last short features a young tiger's birthday party where the title character gets horribly ridiculed by the other attendees because of his long nose and big ears. But when a fire breaks out, he shows that he can be very useful in a pinch.
While I didn't love all of the shorts in this collection, there were several I hadn't seen before and for the most part, I enjoyed them all on some level. The volume starts off on a high note with the Three Little Pigs series, but it was a bit disappointing to see that it didn't have the last of the shorts. I'm pretty sure I have never seen "The Practical Pig," and would have loved for it to be included in this collection instead of one of the more off-beat ones like "Three Blind Mouseketeers" or "Elmer Elephant." Either way, this DVD should be a win for any Disney family, or anyone who grew up watching these cartoons.
