The Isle of Pingo Pongo
1938 film by Tex Avery
The Isle of Pingo Pongo is a 1938 American animated comedy short film directed by Fred Avery. The short was released on May 28, 1938. It is the 95th film in the Merrie Melodies series and the second cartoon to star Elmer Fudd. It is the first of a series of travelogue spoofs directed by Avery, where each vignette is punctuated by a moment of blackout. It was re-released as a "Blue Ribbon" reissue in 1944, rendering the original film and credits to be lost.
Because of the racial stereotypes used against black people throughout the short, United Artists chose to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. As such, the short was placed into the so-called Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people.
Plot
A cruise ship travels from New York to the Isle of Pingo Pongo, presumably located in the South Seas. The ship sails past the Statue of Liberty, who acts as a traffic cop. The ship makes unnecessary twists and turns through the Canary Islands, depicted as literally an island full of caged canaries, the Sandwich Islands, depicted as a giant hot dog, as well as the Thousand Islands, depicted as a jar of Thousand Island dressing.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Isle of Pingo Pongo” is 1938 film by Tex Avery. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Isle, Pingo and Pongo, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7742732. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1944 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Isle of Pingo Pongo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.