Sherm Cohen - CartoonSNAP

Please don't read on until you watch the cartoon. ...I don't wanna spoil it for you!
A LOT of Dan Gordon's Famous Popeye cartoons have a character contemplating suicide...in this one The Hungry Goat comes right out and SAYS "suicide" right after failing at offing himself!

The thing that really stands out for me is that Popeye is the BAD GUY in this cartoon...and Popeye doesn't even show up until two and a half minutes in! The cartoon opens with the hungry goat, and goes from sympathetic to completely manic in only a few short moments. By the middle of the cartoon I realized I was rooting for the goat!

This is my favorite line: At 3:19, in the middle of scarfing down a gigantic anchor chain, The Hungry Goat gleefully stops and looks at the audience and asks,"I'm normal...ain't I ?" Reminds me of those moments in Clampett cartoons when somebody stops and says, "I'm only three seconds old!"
Also---no spinach in this one. It could just as easily be Bluto or any other comic foil in the role that Popeye's playing. I'm guessing that Dan Gordon just wanted to make this cartoon and found the Popeye series to be an opportune place to put it.

Dan Gordon's got a thing for goats.

The image at the top of the post is a close-up of a cover that Dan Gordon drew for Ha-Ha Comics #54 in 1948 -- just a short time after this cartoon was made.

Also, one of Dan Gordon's early Terrytoons cartoons, "Pink Elephants" starred a hungry goat. You can watch "Pink Elephants" at the Asifa Hollywood Animation Archive. http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/01/filmography-al-falfa-in-pink-elephants.html

The Hungry Goat is just one heckuva fun cartoon! The voices, the music, the timing are all crazily amped-up animated insanity. Watch it and enjoy!