Mr. Bug Goes to Town

On an empty lot in the middle of a city there is Bugville. When a grasshopper called Hoppity comes back from a long journey he finds the town in danger: people are going to put up a skyscraper on the lot. Hoppity and Honey, the daughter of Mr Bumble who sells honey, like each other, but the rich C. Bagley Beetle wants the girl and is also trying to get hold of the lot. The town has nowhere to move to. The film is the second and last feature from the Fleischer studio. It opened in December 1941 and two days later came the attack on Pearl Harbor; nobody was in any state to think about a town of insects. Made for a million dollars, it did not bring back even a quarter of that. Paramount then dismissed Max and Dave Fleischer and took over the studio. It is one of the breaks that changed the direction of American animation.