The Ginger Bread Boy

By this point, Lantz used Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as his house mascot, here to introduce the cartoon. And while the story of the Gingerbread Boy as shown in this short takes up six minutes -- a short, if standard length for a cartoon -- here we have about half of its length used in an introductory bit as Oswald's attempt to listen to the story of the radio is interrupted by the human toddler he is minding.

The technical details of this cartoon are very good for the era: a nicely detailed layout and backgrounding, although the animation is still in the 'rubber hose' style that would remain standard until the following year. The script, however, although peppered with a goodly number of well-executed gags, is nothing special.

Despite Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and his cartoons being popular and well received at the time, they have been vastly overshadowed over time by succeeding animation characters. It is a shame as, while not cartoon masterpieces, they are fascinating for anybody wanting to see what very old animation looked like.

Oswald in the Disney years saw mostly good to very good cartoons, and while the Winkler years had some duds there were also cartoons as good as the best of the Disney years. The 1929-1930 batches of Walter Lantz-directed Oswald cartoons were a mixed bag, with some good, some forgettable and not much special and a few mediocre. The 1931 batch was mostly underwhelming, with only 6 out of 18 cartoons being above average or more. The 1932 batch had a few not so good, though the cartoons in question were nothing compared to the worst of the previous 3 years, cartoons, but most were decent to good and some even very good. The 1933 batch is one of the most consistent, with the weakest 'Beau Best' still being decent.

Where there are certainly much better Oswald cartoons, 'The Ginger Bread Boy' is decent. It is light on plot, with the thinness of it actually that's putting it mildly, and the first part of the cartoon doesn't have the same momentum of the rest of the cartoon oriented around the story of 'The Ginger Bread Man' and a bit too cutesy.

However, the animation is very good. There is the looser and more elaborate look of many of the previous Lantz era Oswald cartoons, revelling in the rubbery style seen in the Oswald cartoons made around this time.

Love the music too, which is very characterful and beautifully orchestrated and performed.

'The Ginger Bread Boy's' gags are well-timed and amusing, if not hilarious and fairly restrained for Oswald for those used to the more chaotic nature. Oswald is likable enough and the toddler is sweet and not a brat.

In conclusion, decent. 7/10 Bethany Cox