The Solid Tin Coyote

In this cartoon the Coyote builds a large iron version of himself, after he has fallen into a dump where he picked up the idea. With this robot he chases the Road Runner who seems scared for the first time. The iron thing even manages to catch the Road Runner at one point but how that ends I will not reveal.

Although they use the same footage over and over again, the chasing robot for example, the main gags work good enough. From the opening sequence that doesn't involve the iron giant jet the cartoon was able to make me smile, despite the flaws it has. The animation is quite poor. Even with the low budget it must be possible to make it look better.

Dreadful Rudy Larriva-directed Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote short; one of the last produced during the classic era. This is a mess. It's Road Runner and Coyote in name only, as it has nothing in common with the characters I recognize that Chuck Jones spent years bringing to life. In this cartoon we have Wile E. Coyote building a giant robot version of himself which he then uses to capture the Road Runner. Yes, he does actually capture him this time (briefly). He doesn't even use an ACME robot kit or anything either. He builds the robot out of scrap metal he finds after falling off a cliff and landing in a junk pile. The animation is poor but sadly not the worst I've seen from the DePatie-Freleng years. At least the colors are bright. Annoying canned music plays throughout. None of the gags are funny and the pacing is the worst. The ending just happens with no decent build-up. Dumb lazy garbage.

This reviewer enjoys the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons greatly on the whole, but of the Rudy Larriva-directed cartoons, where the series saw a significant decline, only 'Out and Out Rout' and 'Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner' are watchable, though 'Just Plane Beep' has its average moments.

'The Solid Tin Coyote' is for me down there with 'Tired and Feathered', 'Highway Runnery' and 'Shot and Bothered' as the worst of the lot. The rest are pretty weak too, 'Boulder Wham' is also almost down there but the opening sequence and hypnotism gag saved it from being so. For somebody who tries to see the good in anything that's poorly done, 'The Solid Tin Coyote' is memorable for two things only, Roadrunner's expression of fear in a rare occurrence and the sight of Coyote with a giant iron robot.

Coyote always has been a funny and interesting character, and it is effortlessly easy to feel empathy for him. However, his material on the whole is weak, he is poorly drawn and his trademark personality is underplayed and pretty wasted actually. His dynamic with Roadrunner is barely there and bland, while Roadrunner continues to be an annoyance. The story does nothing imaginative with the premise, so is very predictable and repetitive for a formula series, and is paced poorly with a lot of tedium and not much energy. The cartoon ends on a very abrupt whimper too.

Another huge problem is that there is nothing funny here. Everything is over-familiar, some of it pointlessly recycled even, and feels very tired. The gags at best are forgettable, with only two small moments being memorable. Bill Lava's music grates on the ear, sounds cheap and is a completely ill fit for the cartoon. A contender for the worst asset of 'The Solid Tin Coyote' is the animation, which is frankly awful and some of the worst of the series. It's not just cheap, it's amateurish and looks like there was little effort put into it at all. Everything looks flat, static, sparse and choppy, both Coyote and especially Roadrunner look ugly.

Overall, one of the worst of the series apart from two small memorable things. 3/10 Bethany Cox

When Warner's animation department hit the bottom of the ravine in the early sixties, after the studio closed and reopened they produced mainly Road Runner shorts on the cheap. This way they never had to think up any new plots, nor hire Mel Blanc or any other voice actors. Finally they started cutting down on the amount of gags per short, and so "Solid Tin Coyote", perhaps the cheapest of them all, focuses on just one big trap.

To be fair, there are two recycled bits featuring hot tar and a mirror, but these are just variations of better gags from "Guided Muscle" (1955) and "Zoom and Bored" (1957). Wile E. soon ends up in a dump and decides to build a big iron giant based on himself. A lot of time is wasted while Wile E. is working on this monstrosity behind a rock. The only thing remotely interesting in this part of the cartoon is that the Road Runner is seen to express fear. At least that much was new.

But the lousy animation makes it difficult to sit out the full six minutes. When the solid tin coyote is finally activated, we only see one foot moving in close-up. Is this thing playing hopscotch? Every time the big machine is chasing the Runner, the same footage is used, and the ending is not exactly a big bang either.

2 out of 10

This episode is memorable for only two elements: The Road Runner showing fear of the Coyote on multiple occasions and the Coyote finally capturing the Road Runner.

On paper, that sounds like an interesting idea that the Road Runner finally meets a challenge, but in execution it doesn't really work. For this to work, the Tin Coyote needs to be REALLY good at what it does and not be a super clunky machine that seems vastly inferior to many other contraptions the coyote has built. You can't simply break the rules of a Wile E Coyote short with something as basic and boring as this. There's no reason for THIS to be the thing that scares Road Runner. For example, what if the tin coyote was smart enough to build its own contraptions and that's what scared the road runner? Or what if the tin coyote was so good and advanced that it learns that Wile E Coyote is the source of the problems and tries to kill him? There's a lot of potential for this to work, but unfortunately the idea is wasted.

To add to that, none of the gags are funny, timed properly, or even clever. It really is a bit impressive as to how poorly most of the gags are executed and how slow all of the actions feel overall.