Cartoon Laws of Physics Authorship Unknown Cartoon Law I Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over. Cartoon Law II Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease. Cartoon Law III Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the specialty of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction. Cartoon Law IV The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.
I'm pretty sure the object was caught on at least one occasion. After a big sigh of relief the character was promptly hit by a Mac Truck, leaving a cookie cutout perfect hole in the front of the truck. Or maybe I'm making that up...
You can't beat the animation of the older loony toons or merry melodies cartoons - most of them were shorts that were put on at the theater before the movie and written for adults. When Hanna Barbara took over the cartoons in the 60's and 70's the animation was garbage. We all know the fateful end of the Flintstones, when Gazoo entered the scene. I still marvel that there were Fred and Barney cigarette commercials. Flintstones and the Jetsons were originally prime time shows...also aimed towards adults. Gotta say the detail in today's CGI 'cartoons' is really something..
Tom and Jerry - the old cartoons, the original were the best.....the animation, the story lines - the Thanksgiving cartoon was a classic.