Welcome to Flashback Friday, where every week we take a look at a piece of media from decades past. Today we’re watching “Clock Cleaners,” a 1937 Disney cartoon that features Mickey, Goofy, and Donald as three clock cleaners struggling to finish their job. Mickey fights a stork, Goofy keeps getting the daylights knocked out of him, and Donald comes to blows with an anthropomorphized spring. You can watch it here.
This short was actually the subject of controversy when, in the 1990s, a conservative Christian organization got Walmart to pull the VHS tape off the shelves. They claimed that, during Donald’s fight with the mainspring, he says “F*** you!” and later calls the spring a “son of a b****” (he actually says “Says who?!” and calls the spring a “snake in the grass,” but his trademark voice rendered the phrases near-incomprehensible).
When it was later released on a DVD set in 2001, these lines were redubbed (which you can easily tell in the aforementioned YouTube clip–notice how Donald says “Aw nuts!” instead of “Says who?” and you can hear Pluto barking in the background, despite the fact that Pluto isn’t even in the short).
Thankfully, some heroic soul uploaded the original version of Donald’s argument, alleged curse words and all. You can watch it here.
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Media Madness 