A cold war between two lands over a ridiculous dispute leads to a perilous arms race.A cold war between two lands over a ridiculous dispute leads to a perilous arms race.A cold war between two lands over a ridiculous dispute leads to a perilous arms race.
Charles Durning
- Grandfather
- (voice)
Miriam Flynn
- Yookie-Ann Sue
- (voice)
- …
Clive Revill
- Van Itch
- (voice)
Joseph Cousins
- Grandson
- (voice)
Jim Cummings
- Various Yooks
- (voice)
Hal Smith
- Various Yooks
- (voice)
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsWhen the Yook soldier first starts the walking machine, it has four goop-spraying attachments behind it. While he is en route to the wall, when the band is playing, there are only three attachments. When he confronts Van Itch at the wall, there are four again.
- Quotes
Grandfather: I marched to the wall with my Triple-Sling Jigger. I marched to the wall with great vim and great vigor. Right up to Van Itch with my hand on the trigger. "I'll have no more nonsense," I said with a frown, "from Zooks who eat bread with the butter side down!" Van Itch looked quite sickly. He ran off quite quickly.
- Alternate versionsBetween the VHS and DVD releases there are some mild differences in the typesetting of the end credits, such as different spacing and character width from a slightly different font, a few changes between upper and lower case, etc.
- ConnectionsEdited into In Search of Dr. Seuss (1994)
Featured review
Simplistic and misguided
Butter Battle is an entertaining story about two fictional cities and their arms race. It is also as misguided allegory about the Cold-War and arms races in general. Yes, it is a children's book, but like so many of Theodor Seuss Geisel's works it hits people over the head with its moral.
And that moral is what, exactly? Sure it is laudable to encourage us to concentrate more on what unites us than what divides us. It is even a good thing to encourage international cooperation. But to equate the differences between the Warsaw Pact nations and the Nato west to a difference in butter application is just plain wrong. To point out the obvious, many Warsaw Pact nations enjoyed intermittent periods of shortages of butter and bread -- they would have been happy to eat it butter sideways if it were available. On a less literal level, and whatever your political inclination, Soviet socialism versus Western (particularly Anglo-American) democracy is not a mere question of preference and custom.
To make the point even clearer, nuclear weapons were not developed in a Cold War with the Soviets, but in a hot war with the Axis powers. There is no doubt that Germany was developing nuclear capability during the war. Should the US have refrained from nuclear weapons research putting their trust in their (less than inevitable) victory in the conventional war? Once the weapons were developed they were used against the enemy who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. What does a nation do at this point when the genie is out of the bottle? Furthermore, hindsight is 20-20, which is to say that there was no way of assuring another half crazed dictator wouldn't crop up with his eyes on developing nuclear weapons. The second Gulf War has shown the incredible difficulty in ascertaining credible threats and neutralizing them.
In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children.
And that moral is what, exactly? Sure it is laudable to encourage us to concentrate more on what unites us than what divides us. It is even a good thing to encourage international cooperation. But to equate the differences between the Warsaw Pact nations and the Nato west to a difference in butter application is just plain wrong. To point out the obvious, many Warsaw Pact nations enjoyed intermittent periods of shortages of butter and bread -- they would have been happy to eat it butter sideways if it were available. On a less literal level, and whatever your political inclination, Soviet socialism versus Western (particularly Anglo-American) democracy is not a mere question of preference and custom.
To make the point even clearer, nuclear weapons were not developed in a Cold War with the Soviets, but in a hot war with the Axis powers. There is no doubt that Germany was developing nuclear capability during the war. Should the US have refrained from nuclear weapons research putting their trust in their (less than inevitable) victory in the conventional war? Once the weapons were developed they were used against the enemy who attacked us at Pearl Harbor. What does a nation do at this point when the genie is out of the bottle? Furthermore, hindsight is 20-20, which is to say that there was no way of assuring another half crazed dictator wouldn't crop up with his eyes on developing nuclear weapons. The second Gulf War has shown the incredible difficulty in ascertaining credible threats and neutralizing them.
In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children.
helpful•29
- unichux
- Aug 7, 2007
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was The Butter Battle Book (1989) officially released in India in English?
Answer