Muzzle Tough is a 1954 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated cartoon short.
Plot[]
Tweety Bird moves into a city brownstone with his mistress, Granny. A stray Sylvester Cat watches them move in and delights on seeing Tweety. Another of Granny's pets is a bulldog who, as usual, complicates Sylvester's plan to sneak up close enough to make a grab for Tweety.
Synopsis[]
The story begins with Granny and two moving men in their truck (which reads "Checker Movers, It's Your Move") searching for her new house, which they soon find. The movers walk Granny's belongings past Sylvester as he is napping on top of the wall surrounding the house. Sylvester suddenly wakes up when the movers parade Tweety in his cage past him, and Tweety says: "I tawt I taw a puddytat!" Immediately, Sylvester starts to pursue Tweety atop the wall, but then crashes into a lamp post and falls off the wall.
Sylvester climbs back up as Tweety is carried into the house, while another mover sets Hector's doghouse down on the ground. Sylvester steps down upon the roof of the doghouse as he comes down from the wall, and when Hector sees him, he likewise says: "I tawt I taw a puddytat!" Hector then bites Sylvester's tail and chases him back out to the street.
Plotting to get past Hector and finagle his way into the house, Sylvester disguises himself as a lamp, putting a shade on his head. After a mover carries him in and sets him on the table next to Tweety's cage, Tweety plugs Sylvester's tail into the outlet, giving Sylvester a massive electric jolt. Hector bites Sylvester and also gets zapped, then chases him out of the house and back to the street again.
Sylvester then tries posing as one of the movers...and gets Granny's piano loaded into his arms! Tweety guides Sylvester all the way up the stairs to the top floor and through a doorway, which sends Sylvester plummeting with the piano to the street below, prompting Tweety to remark: "Ooooh, dat wast step was a wuwu!"
Making another attempt, Sylvester hides under a bear rug to sneak up on Tweety and climbs up to his cage. Granny, frightened at the sight, thinks the bear had been "playing 'possum for twenty years" and fires several pistol shots at Sylvester (a partial reference to "The Fair-Haired Hare") before Hector chases him out again.
Finally, Sylvester goes to the costume shop and dresses up full-body as a voluptuous female dog to lure Hector away from the front steps. As the instantly lovestruck Hector approaches, Sylvester is preparing to knock him out with a mallet, but before he does, a dog catcher captures Sylvester in his net and locks him in his truck. Outraged, Sylvester furiously pounds on the window, demanding the dog catcher to let him out, but the dog catcher isn't listening to a word. He then removes the rubber dog mask from his costume yelling, "I'm not a dog, I'm a cat! K-A-T!"—a fatal error, as all the dogs in the truck notice immediately and begin to attack him as the truck disappears down the street. Tweety then says: "Dere won't be no more puddytats awound to chase me now.", before he sees two cats in the room with lamp shades on their heads, to which he says: "Of tourse, I tould be wong."
Cast[]
- Mel Blanc as Sylvester, Tweety, Hector the Bulldog, and Dogs
- Bea Benaderet as Granny (uncredited)
Gallery[]
Transcript[]
Trivia[]
- Several clips of this cartoon are seen in the beginning of Space Jam, particularly the scene where Sylvester gets electrically charged by Tweety.
- The scene where Granny fires several pistol shots at Sylvester is a partial reference to "The Fair Haired Hare".
- At the beginning of the cartoon, Hector the Bulldog quotes Tweety's catchphrase, "I tawt I taw a putty tat", which is also Hector's only line of dialogue in the cartoon.
- Sylvester would once again disguise as a female dog in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode "Yelp", though the female dog disguise is colored pink instead of yellow. In addition, Sylvester's reaction after unmasking and seeing the real dogs glaring at him is also the same in both: turning white and melting into a puddle.
- This is the only cartoon where both Sylvester and Tweety lose in the end. A similar cartoon where the two both win in the end would also be made in 1960, titled "Trip for Tat".
- It is also the only cartoon where Tweety loses in the end.
- The music that plays when the movers are bringing everything into the house is played again in "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" when the IRS confiscates Daffy's belongings.
- When Granny's piano crashes, it makes the same pressing all keys at once sound from "Canned Feud", just like in that short, Sylvester gets piano key teeth even though the dangling key plays the D note instead of E.
- The lobby cards of the cartoon (pictured in the gallery below) seem to depict Tweety using Hector the Bulldog as a shield against Sylvester when roaming free outside his cage in the house. This scene, however, does not exist in the actual cartoon short itself.
- MeTV aired this short January 29, 2021 on Toon In with Me; however, this airing uses the 1998 "THIS VERSION" print without the dubbed notice, as seen on both Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition: Volume 10: Canine Corps VHS release as well as Boomerang Streaming Service.