Bosko's Soda Fountain is weirdly mean-spirited and I kind of liked it

Should you watch it?

If you have seven minutes to kill and you like looking at crusty old animation that feels like a fever dream, then yeah. It is a neat little time capsule.

But if you hate characters who bounce for no reason or cartoons where the music literally never stops, you will probably want to throw your laptop out a window. 🪟

I caught this one late last night and it’s just... odd. Bosko is supposed to be the hero, I guess, but in this one he’s kind of a jerk.

He works at this soda shop and he’s basically just messing with everyone. It’s 1931, so the physics make zero sense and everyone looks like they are made of wet noodles.

The first thing that got me was the mouse. This tiny little mouse just wants a drink, and Bosko treats him like garbage for a laugh. 🐭

It’s not even clever slapstick, it’s just Bosko being a bully. It reminded me of those early Mickey shorts like The Gallopin' Gaucho where the characters hadn't really found their souls yet.

There is this one shot where Bosko is mixing a drink and his arms just stretch across the room. It’s that classic rubber-hose style that looks cool but also slightly gross if you think about it too much.

The background looks like it was drawn on a napkin during a lunch break. It’s very flat, but that gives it a weird charm that modern stuff doesn't have.

The teacher and the cat

Then his old schoolteacher walks in. She’s huge and has this very stiff way of moving that contrasts with Bosko’s constant wiggling. 💃

She asks for a soda and he basically ruins her life with a fountain of bubbles. It’s kind of funny because of how aggressive the animation gets suddenly.

But the real star—or the real villain—is Honey’s kitten. Honey shows up (she’s Bosko’s girlfriend, sort of) and she has this kitten that is just a menace.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Bosko's Soda Fountain (1931) through its definitive frames.

The kitten starts eating everything and causing a mess. At one point, the kitten gets soda in its eyes and it’s actually a bit sad to watch? 😿

Early sound cartoons like this have this hollow, echoey audio. You can tell they were still figuring out how to record voices without everything sounding like it was underwater.

It’s definitely not as polished as something like Whoopee! which came out around the same time. This feels more like a rough draft of what cartoons would eventually become.

Specific things I noticed:

• Bosko’s hat seems to have a mind of its own.
• The way the soda bubbles look like little black dots of ink.
• There’s a weirdly long sequence of Bosko just dancing while he works.
• The kitten’s face when it’s eating is genuinely creepy.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely a story. But it has this manic energy that makes you keep watching just to see what weird shape Bosko will turn into next.

I found myself wondering if people in 1931 actually found this hilarious or if they were just impressed that the drawings could talk. Probably a bit of both.

The ending is very abrupt. Like, they just ran out of paper or time and decided to stop. 🛑

It’s much weirder than Alice in the Alps, mostly because Bosko is so much more expressive (and annoying).

If you’re into the history of Looney Tunes, it’s a must-see just to see where it started. If you just want a laugh, maybe look elsewhere.

One reaction shot of the mouse looking defeated actually stuck with me. It’s a tiny bit of real emotion in a movie that is otherwise just chaos.

The music is catchy, though. It’s that bouncy, jazzy 30s stuff that gets stuck in your head for three days straight. 🎶

Anyway, it’s fine. It’s a seven-minute distraction that feels like a fever dream. Sometimes that’s all you need on a Tuesday night.