Disney’s animated war movies, ranked

In the history of Disney animation, it was a bizarre time in 1940s. The decade kicked off with three all-time classics — 1940’s Fantasia, 1941’s Dumbo, and 1942’s Bambi — but the balance of the ’40s was devoted to so-called “package films,” six anthology features that bridged the gap before the classics picked up again with 1950’s Cinderella.

Why haven’t those package films been remembered in the same breath as the animated Disney films that bookend them? The answer is mired in the history of Disney’s financial affairs, and World War II’s impact on the animation industry. Financial underperformance has led to Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, The limitations World War II placed on worldwide box office potential Disney’s financiers at Bank of America would only continue supporting the studio’s animated projects if Walt Disney stuck to the less costly work of producing shorts.

So Disney shelved Peter Pan, Alice in WonderlandFrom 1943 to 1949 the studio made 31 shorts that were combined into six feature films. These films range in length between a few seconds and half an hour, with a variety of subject matters ranging from Mickey Mouse’s adventures to social propaganda to abstract jazz interpretations. The most disturbing aspect of these collections, if viewed from 21st century perspective is the fact that many involve in cultural and racial stereotypes. This was probably what led to their largely forgotten existence.

What is the best way to approach packages films? Perhaps it’s best to treat them as Bank of America preferred: Not as features at all, but as 31 short films of wildly varying effectiveness. Here’s a full ranking of these shorts, to help you sift through the problematic muck on your way to the treasures within.

31. Pecos Bill (Melody Time).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Several of Disney’s package films on Disney Plus open with the same disclaimer, which begins: “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.” The final short in 1948’s Melody Time earns the classification for one specific moment that’s startling enough to land Pecos BillThe bottom of this list. In this “tall tale straight from the chuck wagon,” the eponymous cowpoke startles a group of “redskins” happily slapping war paint on each other, and their comic terror is so extreme that the paint flies off their bodies and onto the rocks around them, lending the painted desert its name. It’s stomach-dropping. The material around it isn’t strong enough to distract from its ugliness — though a cartoon Western can be good fun, the storytelling in Pecos BillIt feels repetitive and the animation lacks imagination. This one might rank higher without the war-paint moment, but it’s just too egregious.

30. El Gaucho Goofy (Saludos Amigos)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

1942’s Saludos Amigos is one of two Disney package films “celebrating” Latin American culture. (And celebrating Donald Duck’s sexuality.) These films were part of America’s “Good Neighbor” campaign, which sought to build bridges between Latin America and the United States. If only the efforts weren’t so ham-fisted, as demonstrated by this disappointing entry. You are here: El Gaucho GoofyWe learn the life of gauchos, Latin American horsemen. Throwing a wrench into the works, though, is the fact that we learn about them through the device of Goofy, who’s depicted as a southwestern cowboy plucked from his environs and dropped in Latin America, where he demonstrates dress, cuisine, and various other aspects of the gaucho life.

Goofy is the only demonstration we’re offered of the gaucho — he has no local guide or associates. We only see this classic fool modeling a culture he’s entirely ill-equipped for, implicitly mocking the idea of gauchos via his presence. By the time Goofy is dancing to “the song of the farmer’s daughter” with a horse wearing a dress, any arguable merit in this short has flown out the window. It’s a crass pantomime of cultural insensitivity.

29. The Flying Gauchito (“The Three Caballeros”)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

1944’s Three Caballeros is the second of the “Good Neighbor” package films. (It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that the bottom half of this list is dense with entries from those ham-fisted features.) This short tells the story of a “little gauchito” — a boy who befriends a young donkey born with a condor’s wings, an association that lets him win a gaucho race before ascending to the sky, never to be seen again. Though it’s more benign than El Gaucho Goofy, it again portrays gaucho culture through a caricature, and the short is narrated by someone identified as “an old gaucho from Uruguay” — but the credits reveal the voiceover is from Kansas City native Fred Shields, doing an egregiously false accent. This alone makes it a worthy land. Flying GauchitoThis is a pseudo-Uruguanian folktale that was written by Americans and placed at the bottom of the list.

28. Blame It On the Samba (Melody Time).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Melody TimeFeatures one piece of shorts that appears to have been pulled straight from Three Caballeros, with the Aracuan Bird — something like Disney’s answer to Woody Woodpecker — teaching Donald Duck the art of the samba. While the Aracuan is a charming character and deserves center stage treatment, his co-star, Ethel Smith is a famous musician from Pennsylvania. Smith is dressed in a prototypical Latin American costume, representing the concept of the “samba” via casual brownface.

27. Lake Titicaca (Saludos Amigos)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Saludos AmigosThis film is an amalgamation of impressions that the Disney animators made during their research trips to Brazil and Chile. Donald Duck plays the role of their tourist, as he goes to Bolivia/Peru to trade clothes with a young boy. Then he encounters a llama that can be trained to play flute music and leads to lots of musical hijinks. There’s some classic cartoon comedy to be found here, but even the most seemingly benign shorts found in the “Good Neighbor” films tend to caricature the native populations and exoticize the cultures. Even a seemingly straightforward gesture like Donald Duck changing clothes with a Peruvian boy’s outfit is fraught with cultural connotations.

26. Las Posadas (“The Three Caballeros”)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This traditional Mexican Christmas story, in which a group of children reenact Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter on the night of Jesus’ birth, is presented as a storybook, and the illustrations are lovely. While this story offers an authentic glimpse at Mexican culture and is only one minute in length, it has enough impact to be worth mentioning.

25. Aquarela do Brasil (Saludos Amigos)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Translate the title into English: Brazil WatercolorThat sums up most of the contents. This one is framed as a basically loving tribute to a nation foreign to many in the U.S. audience, but, by virtue of being among the few examples of Brazilian culture likely available to many viewers in a pre-digital age, there’s a flattening effect in making that culture appear exceedingly gorgeous and magical. As lovely as the animation may be, there’s more to Brazil than loveliness, and Saludos AmigosIt is determinedly against letting you know.

24. Baía (The Three Caballeros)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Now accompanied by the parrot José Carioca, Donald Duck visits the Brazilian state of Bahia, here spelled Baía. Very similar. Aquarela do BrasilThis is an allegory of a magical place, but Donald finds himself in a book pop-up about Bahia. Donald is drawn into this talebook world by Aurora Miranda (a Brazilian singer). She plays the role of a cookie seller who falls for Donald. The blend of live-action and animation is startling and effective, but the “Good Neighbor” films are inherently pretty ugly.

23. The Three Caballeros: You Belong To My Heart

Image: Walt Disney Animation

In another animated short, Donald falls in love again with Dora Luz, a Mexican singer, and sees her in the heavens. These are the same issues that this video has. Baía, and in spite of some appealing fantastical touches — notably, the dancing cacti, which feel straight out of Alice in WonderlandOder Fantasia — there’s something dispiriting in seeing Donald again lusting after an exoticized, sexualized woman meant to stand in for an entire culture.

22. Mexico: Pátzcuaro, Veracruz and Acapulco (The Three Caballeros)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Alongside the Mexican rooster Panchito Pistoles, Donald and José Carioca (who goes by Joe, since Donald can’t pronounce José) ride a flying sarape through documentary footage of Mexico City before landing at a Mexican dance. The pair land on a beach where they are blindfolded and thrown around by sunbathing ladies in swimsuits. The mixture of live-action and animation is truly impressive here — when Donald is tossed in a beach blanket, he seems to carry genuine weight — but again, Latin culture is summed up as exotic and sexual. The documentary footage lands this one slightly higher up the list than the other “horny Donald” shorts, but it’s a relief to now mostly leave the “Good Neighbor” films behind and turn our attention to other matters.

21. Casey at Bat (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s classic comedic poem is read by the outrageously voiced Jerry Colonna (the March Hare from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland(), whose delivery makes the words almost unintelligible. Although the text was simple enough to transition onto the screen, animators added a lot more fidgetiness: Every maneuver that the baseball players do involves four to five physical tics or quirks. That breaks the flow of the story, complicating things to the point where it undermines the poem’s momentum. A animated Casey at The BatThis could have the potential to be a big hit, but because it’s too silly, it fails.

20. Without You (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Make Mine MusicIt is possible that this package film, which has not yet been streamed on Disney Plus, might be the one. FantasiaThe effects can vary greatly for pop music. The low-end of the animation spectrum is this animated short to the 1946 Andy Russell ballad. We see trees, stars, and some intriguing liquid effects dripping down the screen, but there’s nothing like a narrative.

19. Two Silhouettes (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Again, there’s no concession to narrative here, only two rotoscoped ballet dancers against an animated backdrop. There are impressive effects that add depth to the rotoscoping, but this one’s more showpiece than short film.

18. Bongo (Fun and Fancy-Free)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Some of the package films feature longer shorts, including this loose, roughly half-hour adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ short story “Little Bear Bongo.” This “musical story sung by Dinah Shore” tells the story of a little brown bear who works as a death-defying circus performer, but longs to “answer the call of the great open spaces,” leading him to escape from his circus train as it travels across the untamed wilderness.

Bongo falls for a cub, after he has spent many hours frolicking. Problems arise when another bear vies for the affection of Bongo’s beloved, leading to an extended mating dance, and a duel between Bongo and the aggressor. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough material here to sustain nearly half a feature-length film, and it’s decidedly uncomfortable how Bongo and his beloved are coded as cubs, while Bongo’s rival seems to be a full-grown bear. There’s an appealing strangeness to some elements (we learn that bears express their affection not by kissing, but by slapping each other around), but for the most part, BongoIt is hard work.

17. Trees (Melody Time).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This short does what it says on the tin: It is, according to the narrator, “a simple tribute to a tree.” While Joyce Kilmer’s classic poem (“I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree…”) plays over a musical accompaniment, we see various images of trees. There is nothing more and nothing less. The animation is lovely, evocative of the Little Golden Book tradition of children’s literature, but there isn’t much here to linger in the memory.

16. After You’ve Gone (Make Mine Music)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This interlude is approximately three minutes long and features anthropomorphic instruments of music, hands playing on a floating keyboard, as well as other light psychedelica. Although the animation is quite striking, it is only a brief glimpse of an idea.

15. Melody Time: Johnny Appleseed’s Legend (Melody Time).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This tale is allegedly taken from a book entitled American Folk Lore, we meet America’s legendary patron saint of apples. Around the turn of the 19th century, Johnny longs to head west with the pioneers, but doesn’t feel cut out for the lifestyle, until his “own private guardian angel” appears in the form of a frontiersman who tells him (in song, naturally) that the apple trees he loves so much will be much more useful out west than the muscles or traveling gear he lacks.

Johnny, an obsessive apple-grower who’d seemingly never realized apples were useful before, goes west planting trees, leading to some hijinks with a pack of mistrustful animals, who send a skunk to scare Johnny off. Johnny’s adventures with the Skunk and their misadventures form the story. The narrative ends at square dancing, where Johnny enjoys apple treats. Johnny passes away after his shadow covers all of the West. The frontiersman angel calls his spirit to Heaven. There’s a profound oddness to the shape of this story, with only a couple of plot beats. Similar Casey at The BatThis seems to be a straightforward enough story that you can adapt it, but perhaps the title should have been Johnny Appleseed and The SkunkThis seems to lose something of what the Appleseed legend is all about. (It’s worth noting that the real-life story was whitewashed in Disney’s telling: The real Johnny was more shrewd businessman than secular saint, and more interested in hard cider than tasty nutrition.)

14. Little Toot (Melody Time).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This short concerns the trials and tribulations of mischievous young tugboat Little Toot, who’s exiled to the open ocean after disgracefully impeding the work of his father — the unsurprisingly named Big Toot — and triggering an accident that destroys the coastline of a major city. Little Toot rescues a ship that is in danger and brings it to safety. It’s a slight thing, but Little Toot is an appealing protagonist, if a lesser creation than the similar character of Pedro the mail plane, coming up shortly in this list.

13. Blue Bayou (Make Mine Music

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This “tone poem” was originally intended as a segment in Fantasia, and it’s easy to imagine it being slotted into that more accomplished feature. It’s beautiful, and has amazing light-on water effects. There is one thing that could be a problem with this animation: Nothing in particular HappensSave for a wading bird that is taking off, It’s not much to hang a short on narratively, but the strength of the animation elevates this one above the various other tone poems found in the package films.

12. Pedro (Saludos Amigos)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

In the introduction to this short, we learn that cameras were not allowed during the animators’ visit to Chile (no reason is given), so the team had to work from memory and imagination. This led to the creation the tiny plane that could. Pedro is the son of a brave mail plane, but when his papá comes down with a cold, Pedro must fly his mail route for him, leading to some aerial antics.

Pedro has the same character design as Little Toot but is more powerful than the villain, Mendoza. If there’s one wrinkle to Pedro’s effectiveness, it would be the fact that Chilean cartoonist René Ríos Boettiger took exception to this being the chosen representation of his homeland, leading to the creation of his own character, the bird of prey Condorito. Although it may take some shine from Pedro, you can still say that the tiny plane indirectly inspired a popular alternate character.

11. The Martins and the Coys (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Although some package shorts can be problematic, one of them has been produced entirely using home media. It was blacklisted because it featured two families fighting each other. Given the contents of the article, this ruling is absurd. Romeo and Juliet-inspired short. The two families that are the title of this short may be stereotypes. Pecos BillIf the full extent of this can be done, then why not do it in a milder way?

A family war breaks out when an intoxicated grandfather accidentally collects eggs from the wrong chickenhouse. Every Martin and Coy is left dead except for one: a buxom girl and a hunky ladhead. This causes the feud to end. Approximately a third of the short’s run time is then afforded to their wedding reception (it’s unclear who the wedding guests are, given the annihilation of both families), but the honeymoon is over quickly — it turns out husbands and wives fight a lot, and so the feud between the Martins and the Coys is reignited. The battle-of-the-sexes comedy here is stale, but there’s an appealing energy to the proceedings. It’s not the most appropriate program for all ages due to the alcohol-fueled violence. But what about the 1940s cartoons?

10. The Cold-Blooded Penguin / The Three Caballeros

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Three Caballeros opens with this fable concerning Pablo, a penguin who hates the cold and decides to head to “the land of the sun.” After a few false starts, he carves a boat out of ice and sets sail up the South American coastline, toward the Galápagos Islands, “the isle of his dreams.” What do you know, though: Pablo ends up missing home. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? This is the highest-ranking short from either “Good Neighbor” film, primarily for its comparative lack of exoticization — this is the most benign short in either Saludos AmigosOder Three CaballerosPablo should be commended for his generosity.

9. Once Upon a Wintertime, Melody Time

Image: Walt Disney Animation

“Romance is the theme,” we’re informed at the start of this short, which traces the lovelorn odyssey of a sleighing couple. After passing through winter scenes, the central young man and woman embark on an ice-skating trip gone wrong — the ice cracks and breaks, sending the young woman careening downriver toward a waterfall. Rescued in the nick of time, she returns to the sleigh alongside her beloved, and even grants him a kiss — though it takes place during a trip through a tunnel, saving us the scandalous image of a woman kissing a man’s cheek. There’s a pastoral appeal to this short, along with a cute Greek chorus of paired-off animals (two besotted rabbits mirror the central couple), and — a surprising rarity among these shorts — the three-act adventure is well paced.

8. Johnnie Fedora, Alice Bluebonnet (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Disney’s wartime shorts take a turn for the decidedly bizarre with this love story between the two titular anthropomorphic hats, who fall for each other while on display in a store window only to be separated by the cruel whims of commercial fate. We follow Johnnie Fedora on his journey of despair, which matches the downturning fortunes of his owner, who visits a speakeasy that’s promptly raided, another bizarre image for an ostensible all-ages feature. In Drunkenness, comedy is gold Make My Music.) Johnnie and Alice are reunited when both become hats for a pair of carriage-drawing horses, but even this happy ending can’t make up for the horror of the central implication: any time we don a cap, we’re cramming our head into the voiceless maw of a living, sentient creature. Don’t think too hard about Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet. This is where horror lies.

7. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This adaptation of Washington Irving’s classic short story may well be the most iconic entry in any of the package films. Its distinction is earned — Ichabod Crane’s climactic ride through the Sleepy Hollow woods, pursued by the gruesome Headless Horseman, is timelessly chilling, a perfect blend of comic caper and genuine dread, with almost psychedelic horror animation. This closing sequence is accompanied by a lengthy and tedious preamble. Irving’s story just doesn’t seem like an appropriate fit for the Disney animation treatment. The story’s comedy — mainly to do with the romantic rivalry between Ichabod and the lunkhead Brom Bones — is dry and satiric, appropriate fare for grown-ups, but likely to bore children. Disney chose to skip synced dialogue. Instead, the story was told silently, which can quickly become tedious. The Headless Horseman sequence has been proven to be extremely effective. All that is before? Deniable at best.

6. The Whale who Wanted to Sing At the Met (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

The finale is another short film that delivers exactly what it promises. Make Mine MusicThe tragic story of Willie, the singing whale is told with the voices of Nelson Eddy (procedural debate over). The procedural debate is where the bulk of the time is spent. HowA whale might learn how to sing. It is possible that the whale swallowed an opera singer. The concept is imaginative, if odd, and maybe most memorable for its shock ending — the whale’s entire opera career takes place in Willie’s mind in the moments before he’s harpooned to death by a jealous “impresario,” twisting this comic short into a morality tale about humanity’s failings: “People aren’t used to miracles,” we’re informed. There’s nothing miraculous about this one, but it explores its comic premise thoroughly, and features maybe the most adventurous structure of any short surveyed here, giving it an edge.

5. Mickey and the Beanstalk – Fun and Fancy Free

Image: Walt Disney Animation

Mickey Mouse makes his sole appearance across the entirety of the package films in this telling of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” narrated by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his puppets, who appear in live-action throughout the narrative to goose things along. That hackneyed color commentary acts against the effectiveness of what’s otherwise a solid cartoon fairy tale, starring some of the most beloved faces in animation. It’s hard to complain about Mickey, Donald, and Goofy enacting such classic cartoon business as splitting a single bean three ways, in a classic shorthand for starvation. Like with BongoThis is the second half.Fascinating and FunThe material feels too long, but Mickey and Co. are your guide. And this package film entry is worth points for its appeal to kids.

4. Bumble Boogie (Melody Time)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

In this jazzy reinterpretation of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” “a confused little character tries desperately to escape from the hectic harmony of an instrumental nightmare.” That manifests as a hallucinatory journey that blends the biological with the musical — the bee must contend with carnivorous flowers, a keyboard turned serpent, and malevolent horns with fiendish eyes. It’s all reminiscent of “After You’ve Gone,” but the presence of a central character keeps things from devolving into abstraction. It’s short and intensely absurd, which keeps the story alive and adds some humor to the otherwise dull material. Melody Time.Although there is a lot of package shorts out there to excuse whirling dervish chaos, this is by far the best and most original. Boogie on.

3. The Wind in the Willows: The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This adaptation of a segment of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s novel is another example of a short that weighs in at half a feature run time, allowing for ample depth of characterization to the justifiably iconic character of Mr. Toad. The short appropriately evokes the particular oddness of Grahame’s book, in which humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist. And there’s a dazzling variety to the cartoon creations. Neben den recognizable animal characters like Rat and Mole we also have the antagonist Mr. Winky. He is sort of a devilish cousin for the Pringles mascot.

The camera angles during moments of tension evoke German expressionism, while the story and themes, appropriately carried over from the book, may stretch children’s attention span. This is an essentially legal drama for long periods. The comic chaos at the end comes down to who gets the deed. This package is what feels the most Disney animated. It’s enough to make one wish for the full adaptation of The Wind in Willows we might have gotten, if not for Bank of America’s shorts-focused bias.

2. All Cats Participate (Make Mine Music)

Image: Walt Disney Animation

It is one of the most beautiful places in all of FantasiaThis is a list of entries that include pop music. All Cats Are Invited to Join in is a classic example of the “pencil is seen drawing the cartoons as they move” trope. The animation shows a teenage girl sock-hop coming to life in front of our eyes. We also see the frustration expressed by the cartoon characters who sometimes consternate the creator. Stretch-and-squash animations are lively and animated, while jazz music adds a lot of life to the scene. There isn’t much to All Cats Are Invited to Join inIt is, however, what It isThere is something thrilling about its ingenuity. You’ll want to join in, too.

1. Peter and the Wolf (Make Mine Music).

Image: Walt Disney Animation

This adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev’s musical fairy tale is a sort of pure ideal of what one might look for in a Disney animated anthology film. Sterling Holloway is the narration. Most well-known as Winnie The Pooh’s voice, this animated short follows the original score perfectly. A young boy named Peter sets off to chase the evil wolf, along with his many animal sidekicks. But things get out of hand when the wolf actually arrives and punctures Peter’s fantasies.

For a better counterpoint, Casey at The BatThis is Disney doing the right thing by telling a timeless tale. It keeps it simple, clear, creatively staged and doesn’t overstay its welcome. There might have been another Disney classic if more package films had taken this approach.

These five top shorts could still be used to make an entertaining playlist. You can call it Package Films at Their Best — you might be leaving 26 works of animation in the dust, but you wouldn’t be losing much. There’s a reason these packages have largely been forgotten by history. When they’re operating at full power, though, there are enough sparks of the old Disney magic to keep the flame alive across the nearly decade-long break between Disney’s feature-length animated classics.