Inside Cackle Corners (1951)

Sponsor: Harding College
Production: John Sutherland Productions
Distribution: MGM
Directed by: George Gordon, Carl Urbano.
Producers: John Sutherland, George Gordon.
Animation: Arnold Gillespie, Phil Monroe, Armin Shaffer, Bob Bemiller.
Music: Darrell Calker.
Released: 1951 (estimate).
Running time: 8:37 minutes.

Anthropomorphic bird animation produced to show how the profit motive in a competitive system stimulates competition, resulting in new products and better services for the consumer. Another of the short films produced by John Sutherland at the dawn of the cold war singing the praises of capitalism.

Inside the Chicken Coop is a Cold War-era cartoon series produced by John Sutherland and sponsored by Harding College with the aim of introducing students to business concepts and convincing them of the superiority of the American way of life. The theme of this cartoon is the importance of research and development (although that phrase is never used).

The cartoon's setting is the small town of Cackle Corners, which is populated entirely by talking chickens and ducks. This utopia has almost everything: cars, banks, televisions, etc. But somehow they never invented toaster technology, which leads to the story's central conflict.

There are two shop owners who have shops down the street: a duck named Mr Pop Webfoot and a rooster named Mr Redcomb. Both are rivals for the deep pockets of a Margaret Rutherford-like hen named Mrs. Consumer. Pop almost sells her some old-fashioned toasting contraption when Mr. Redcomb takes her away with an electric toaster.

Crazed by constantly losing out to Redcomb's technological advances, Webfoot sneaks into Redcomb's shop to learn his secret of success.

The purpose of the design is to present ideas such as competitiveness, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, as tools for motivating profit and for achieving success and prosperity, with the achievement of customer preference.