- Not to be confused with The Tom and Jerry Show 1975 episode
Triplet Trouble is a 1952 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 67th Tom and Jerry short.
Plot[]
Tom has Jerry tied to his tennis racket and is bouncing him off it, until Mammy Two-Shoes arrives and Tom hides Jerry in a drawer. Mammy has adopted "three little fluffy kittens"; a brown kitten named Fluff; a black kitten named Muff; and an orange kitten named Puff, and asks Tom to look after them while she is out. Once Mammy leaves, these kittens proved to be evil to the core, behind Tom's back Muff and Puff light a match and dynamite into him and Fluff knocks Tom out with a slingshot to explode them. After the trio frame Tom, Mammy hits him on the head with a broom and scolds him and threatens to "pulverize" him if he does not take good care of the trio.
After seeing Mammy leaving out of the room, Tom angrily confronts the kittens. But the kittens pretend to nuzzle against Tom, making him feel guilty. Fluff and Muff then quickly put Tom on roller skates and Puff slams a door into him, revealing that Fluff, Muff, Puff are extremely mischievous kittens. Jerry then pokes out of the drawer as Tom chases the trio. The kittens hide in a green suit and Tom continues to pull them out until Puff makes Tom grab his tail and Tom flips over onto his head. Jerry starts laughing, accidentally drawing the attention of the kittens. Jerry flees, but the trio follow him inside a drawer. Muff grabs Jerry's tail and throws him onto a grate as the drawer flattens him, turning Jerry into a waffle.
Jerry tries to run through his hole, but Puff blocks it with a glass pane. Fluff then catches Jerry in a grinder and shapes him into a hot dog, and Muff stuffs Jerry into a hot dog bun. Puff covers it in mustard, but Jerry escapes through a window. Tom laughs at the kittens, but Fluff fires an umbrella into Tom's mouth, shaping Tom's head into an umbrella. Tom chases the trio, but they stand on each other and slam Tom against the ceiling to wipe his memory. Tom then accepts handshakes from Fluff and Puff, but Muff tricks Tom into grabbing a window shade's string, making him fly out of the house.
Tom and Jerry both look out from the window. Realizing now the kittens need to be punished for their misbehavior, the cat and mouse agree to work together. Tom harnesses a serving cart, loaded with three pies and a watermelon, while Jerry lures the three kittens by drinking from their milk bowl and spitting it into their faces. Annoyed, the three kittens chase Jerry, but Tom cuts the cart string and he and Jerry chase the three kittens through the house. The three kittens hide behind the sofa, but Jerry whistles and the trio get pies hurled at them by Tom. Tom then flies out of the window and enters through the other side to trick the three kittens. The trio chase Jerry, but Tom returns in time and inflates Fluff, who swallows the watermelon after Tom hurls it at the trio.
Tom then scoops up the three kittens in the cart and drops them onto a clothesline, where they land one at a time bent over a type of clothesline, called Hills Hoist, with their short tails sticking straight up unable to cover their bottoms. Jerry uses a carpet beater to give the bratty kittens a spanking on their bottoms. The force of each whack rotates the clothesline so that the next three kittens is in position for his whack. Tom then uses paper, scissors and string to cut out angel wings, ties up each pair and puts them onto each kitten. Mammy returns with a bottle of cream for the three kittens, describing them as "three little angels". However, she looks out the window and finds the three kittens being constantly spanked as they are being spun around on the clothesline with throbbing red bottoms while wearing angel wings.
Characters[]
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Notes[]
- This was the last Tom & Jerry cartoon to use the 1946-1952 all red MGM Cartoon title.
- This episode marks the first episode Fluff, Muff and Puff have a main role.
- This is the second of their two appearances in the classic Hanna Barbera/Golden Age era with the first being Heavenly Puss.
- This cartoon marks one of the rare moments where both Tom and Jerry team up to defeat a common enemy.
- This cartoon shares nearly identical plot and cast of characters of a Disney cartoon aired in 1935, "Three Orphan Kittens", where a trio of kittens enter the house to cause mayhem, only to be kicked out in the near end by the caretaker (who also appears be a nearly identical character of Mammy Two Shoes).
- Several analysts concluded that this series were based on World War 2, which Fluff, Muff and Puff representing the Axis Powers (Imperial Japan as Fluff swallowed the watermelon which was a reference to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Italy, and Nazi Germany respectively), Tom and Jerry representing the Allied Powers (USA and Soviet Union respectively). This also explains why Puff was doubled at the end of the scene, representing post-war West Germany and East Germany.
Errors[]
- At the end of the episode, the kittens are spanked on a rotary washing line with four arms. Despite the fact that there are only three kittens, only one revolution of the rotary line has an empty arm. After that, each arm shown to go around has a kitten on it, and the rotary line revolves at least twice. This makes it look like there are two orange kittens.
Gallery[]
