Two Gun Turtle

When I was a kid I loved watching this cartoon and enjoy watching turtle tooter screw up the job and then get beemed into another fiasco. Little did I know at the time that would be my life. I go from one job and a catastrophe occurs then I call get a new consulting job and its off to the next Fiasco. Now I can completly relate to this cartoon. If I want to describe my life to someone I can just have them watch a few episodes of Tooter Turtle and they will understand. I am going to have to get the top hat and cane that tooter wears and maybe a strap on turtle shell. If a movie ever comes out I should play the part of Tooter Turtle I have alot of applicable experience.

I remember watching it as a kid, and I still clearly hear Mr Wizard saying "Drizzle, Drazzle, Druzzle, Drome. Time for this one to come home! Crude animation, but brilliant in it's simplicity!

Tooter the Turtle was my favorite cartoon when I was growing up. The animation was cheesy and Tooter was WAY stupid! My favorite was when he wanted to be a Highway Patrol man. I crack up every time I heard him say "Help me Mister Wizard... I don't wanna be a High Way Petrol Man.... They just don't make cartoons like this any more.

Tooter is a turtle. But, turtles lead boring lives. I mean, eating bugs and crawling around with an occasional swim. Tooter wanted to try something more challenging for an occupation. Like being a taxi cab driver in New York City. The job always starts out going smoothly. But then minor difficulties crop up. Soon everything goes to pot. The lesson is; be yourself.

I never liked "Tooter Turtle", even though I enjoyed most of the other cartoons made by Leonardo TTV. I was willing to forgive their poor animation in view of their interesting stories, but "Tooter Turtle" had bad animation WITHOUT any interesting stories. The "Tooter Turtle" cartoons are depressing because they all have the same plot and always end in failure. Tooter Turtle goes to visit Mister Lizard the Wizard, a lizard who lives in a hollow tree in the woods and who wears one of those high cone-shaped wizard caps with cabalistic symbols on it (like Mickey Mouse in "The Sorceror's Apprentice" ... but don't expect anything of that quality here). Tooter Turtle has chosen a career: he wants to be an engine-driver, or an astronaut, or a lumberjack ... it's different in every cartoon, but you won't care because the results are always the same. Mister Lizard (speaking in a phony German accent, like Ludwig von Drake) always predicts that Tooter will fail at this new job, but Tooter has to find out for himself, so Mister Lizard reluctantly utters the magic words to send Tooter off to his new career. Tooter always fails in his new job ... always in violent ways that cause tremendous physical injury to Tooter, but which never manage to be funny at all. The disasters escalate (without ever getting funny), and at the end of every cartoon Tooter calls out "Help! Mister Lizard!" Then we hear Mister Lizard's disembodied voice reciting the magic spell to bring Tooter home, and there's some vaguely original animation (exactly the same in every Tooter toon) as Tooter is whisked home in a magical vortex. It's all so arbitrary. Why is the turtle named Tooter? He doesn't TOOT anything . (At least Bugs Bunny was "bugs", meaning "crazy".) And why is Tooter a turtle instead of some other species? The animators have several chances to do turtle-oriented gags (when the tree falls on top of Tooter, he could pull his head into his shell just in time), but they never take advantage of this. The "jokes" would work just as well (I mean, just as badly) if Tooter was a dog or a cat or a penguin. Even if you're just now seeing your very first Tooter cartoon, there's still no fun for you because — at the beginning of every Tooter toon — Mister Lizard always predicts that Tooter will fail, so you know what happens before it happens. There's just one minor interesting footnote here: in Jay McInerny's best-selling novel "Bright Lights, Big City" he made an oblique reference to the Tooter Turtle cartoons, without actually mentioning Tooter by name. This is Tooter Turtle's one shining moment in American literature.