Lupi

Originally Aired: March 17th, 1973
Written by: Bob Dorough
Performed by: Grady Tate

Shel's Review

Music: 🎵🎵🎵
Animation: 📺 📺 📺 📺 📺
Pedagogy: 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓
Accuracy: 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬

Grady Tate is back and he once again does an excellent job performing. Unfortunately he hasn't been given quite as good material to sing. I mean, for adults this is pretty OK jazz improv, but as a kid I found this song very slow and hard to stay engaged with musically. I think Bob forgot who these songs are for with this one. That said, it's still very pleasant and well-sung. I love the character design and animation in this one. For some reason, despite the song, I do remember watching this one a lot.

The kinky dynamic between the cat and mouse is, uh, formative for many readers and I'm shocked at how sexy lovingly drawn the titular cat is. Somehow, nobody else agrees with me on that. Still I think the gags are fun and it's got nice engaging visuals that do a good job illustrating mathematical concepts. I think that they did a really smart move here to not focus on trying to help you memorize the times table with this one, and to instead just focus on teaching your tricks for understanding what the results are going to be. It's 10 times X minus X; add the two numbers together and it should equal 9. I like the part where he says "If it doesn't add up, you've made a mistake!" Even when they do go through the times tables, it's reminding you of these tricks the whole time visually. They also stick to talking about math here so they lose no points for accuracy.

Two years before this short came out the Public Health Cigarette Act prohibited advertising cigarettes and cigars on television. Because of that, ABC initially rejected this short, but relented because Bob argued that they weren't advertising smoking children simply depicting a character in a children's educational program smoking a cigar to make him look cool and that's different.

Only two more math songs left!

June's Review

Music 🎵🎵🎵🎵

Yeah, like... this is a really cool song, and I'll get into the lyrics a bit more when we get to the pedagogy section. It's fun to listen to and sounds real cool, the slow jazz beat is fun. Having said that it's nowhere near the fast paced fun that Schoolhouse Rock! needs in it's best songs, in my opinion. Grady Tate's impeccable style saves this from being a lot worse. And also the aside about "the digits sum to nine" please schoolhouse rock you cannot go "haha here lets just quickly say the thing since we can't sing it" please stop.

Animation 📺 📺 📺 📺

I mean, it's Tom and Jerry but Tom is someone I'd see in a friend's porn commission where they wanted to be fucked by the meanest cat guy possible. What's not to love? The little jokes like him getting tied up are great; in a way I'd say this is a smarter cartoon then you'd realize because it relies on the Tom and Jerry tropes you already know to kinda... skip through a Tom and Jerry episode while teaching you math. You don't need to know that the mouse is giggling at the end cause they fooled the cat, you just know that's what it means because you know this setup.

Pedagogy 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓

Okay, here's where I really gotta give this song credit. This song's entire gimmick is based on the idea that memorizing your 9 times tables is really hard! That's fucking smart as hell, why didn't they do that for 7 or 8. Thus, while the song does have the obligatory "here's the memorization", it also has a bunch of stuff about "here's some tricks you can use", and that's so much smarter then just doing like... The Elementary, My Dear episode. I could take points away for a lot of minor reasons, but I'm just really in love with the gimmick of the song; literally saying that the number 9 is meaner then the other numbers

Accuracy 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯

SKIP

Yikes

I don't really think "big cat guy in a suit and colorful tie smoking a cigar while he toys with a mouse" is so much yikes as it is like. "this will do some things to some kids brains they won't realize till they're 23 or something." Or maybe not, as the header image shows. Either way, we'll save this episode's yikes points for next episode when we need em.

Up Next: Uggggghhhhhh shut uuuuup