How Do I Know It's Sunday? (Why Should You Care It's Edited)

 

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: It’s a “products/label mascots come to life to sing the title song and perform in a closed store” cartoon, but, instead of taking place at night, it takes place on a Sunday during daylight hours, when most, if not all, stores would be closed so people can go to church and rest.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, because where else would this air? I think I would have remembered it on the daytime version where it was nothing but the post-1964 Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales cartoons, the post-1964 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons made without Chuck Jones’ involvement, the redrawn- and computer-colorized Porky Pig cartoons from the 1930s, the Pepe Le Pew shorts made after 1949’s “For Scent-imental Reasons”, and the semi-forgotten, “underrated gems” shorts -- both one-shot and with established characters --  that aired between 1949 and 1963).

Part(s) Edited: Just two scenes of outdated black/African-American stereotyping:

• The black chef on the Scream Wheat (Cream of Wheat) box singing along with the mammy caricature on the box of Aunt Eliza (Aunt Jemima, now known as Pearl Milling) during the title song. I don’t know if the shot of them in the background was cut too, but, for the purposes of the approximation, I’m going to leave it in because I feel that that’s what Nickelodeon did.

• The kid mascots using the ceiling fan as a merry-go-round -- not because it’s dangerous behavior that can easily be imitated by young, impressionable viewers, but because there are two black caricatures riding on the ceiling fan blades.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: As I've mentioned before: cartoons like this don't lose much in terms of story or plot when it comes to being edited for either time or content (mostly content). With this one, however, I'm amazed there weren't more cuts to outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes. I'm guessing it would have led to a very choppy and incoherent cartoon if Nickelodeon went in that direction. If I wanted a musical cartoon that's severely edited to get rid of outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes, I can watch the Cartoon Network cut of "September in the Rain" (and I have. Thanks a lot, Acme Hour). Here's the approximation compare and contrast video:

Availability Uncut: If you can believe it, this actually has a home media release -- two of them, in fact. It was first released on the Looney Tunes Collector’s Edition VHS (volume 5’s “Musical Masterpieces”) in 2000. Eight years later, it was released on DVD as part of the sixth and final Looney Tunes Golden Collection set (it’s on disc three, which is dedicated to the Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot musical black and white cartoons).