Cookin' with Gags

Cookin' with Gags is a Popeye the Sailor theatrical animated short produced by Famous Studios (the original animation unit of Paramount Pictures) and released on January 14, 1955.

Olive Oyl fixes up a picnic basket to take on a picnic with Popeye and Bluto, who arrive at her house to pick her up. After Popeye offers Olive a box of candy to take along on the picnic, Bluto hands Popeye a cigar box under the pretense of offering him a cigar - but when Popeye opens the box, he gets hit in the face with a spring-loaded boxing glove that knocks him into a wall. Bluto has a laugh at a chagrined Popeye's expense, but Popeye eases up when he discovers the current date on the calendar - April 1, also known as April Fool's Day.

Things go downhill from there as Bluto escalates his pranks (to the point of sheer maliciousness and cruelty) against Popeye at the park where they and Olive go for the picnic, starting by fooling Popeye into thinking his car has blown out a tire and then blowing car exhaust into his face when he goes to check, then sticking a spring onto the blade of the axe Popeye uses to chop wood for a campfire and causing him to hammer himself into the ground, pouring gasoline onto the campfire to cause an explosion when Popeye tries to light it and substituting a wasp nest for a lemonade jug and causing Popeye to get chased by wasps. Bluto laughs riotously at each of his successful pranks and tauntingly yells "April Fool!" at Popeye each time, but whenever the sailor threatens to retaliate, Olive admonishes him for not having a sense of humor, playing right into Bluto's hands as he and Olive both laugh at Popeye.

Bluto soon sets up a prank with an explosive hot dog that ends up catching Olive, then he frames Popeye for the prank and the gullible Olive, showing herself not to have a sense of humor when she becomes the prank victim, wrongly chastizes Popeye for it as Bluto again laughs loudly. Popeye finally has enough and pulls out a can of spinach to eat to get his revenge, but Bluto, knowing in advance what would happen, had switched cans on him as a spring-loaded snake pops out of the fake spinach can in Popeye's hand, prompting another taunting "April Fool!" from Bluto before the fickle Olive invites him to go rowing on the lake. Popeye gets the last laugh, however, when he uses an inflatable sea serpent in a revenge prank on Bluto and scares him off, allowing Popeye to go rowing with Olive.

• Cookin' with Gags is one of a number of Famous Studios-produced Popeye the Sailor cartoons in the public domain in the United States.
• Associated Artists Productions, which had acquired the Popeye the Sailor shorts from Paramount Pictures for TV distribution in 1956, was requested by Paramount to remove all references to Paramount (including the company logo) from the shorts, which AAP replaced with new front-and-end title cards bearing the AAP logo. In Cookin' with Gags, however, a plastering error by AAP left the Famous Studios logo (which incorporated the Paramount logo) visible for a few seconds after cutting from AAP's Popeye the Sailor title card. Warner Bros., which now owns the AAP catalog, has since restored the original front-and-end Paramount credits to newer releases of Cookin' with Gags and the other classic cartoons.

• Cookin' with Gags public domain cartoon at the Internet Archive