User Reviews

In this 9-minute cartoon, Donald enters a museum exhibiting the latest inventions, such as robot butlers, robot hitchhikers, robot nannies, robot barber chairs...basically all robot stuff. And still, 70 years later, we have no robots. Weird.

Anyway, Donald, being as irritable as he is, quickly becomes angered by the inventions and ends up getting slapped around and tormented in the usual ways. It serves him right for scamming himself into the museum for free. It's funny without being thigh-slappingly hilarious. And some of the robots will probably remind you of Bender and his pals from Futurama.

I really liked this cartoon, it is inventive and very funny. The animation is nice and colourful, though the character animation of the robots was a little stiff. And the cartoon does start off a little slow. The music is top notch, very playful and pleasant. Donald is as cantankerous as ever, especially when voiced by Clarence "Ducky" Nash, who captures the character perfectly.

On the whole, the cartoon is very funny, from the ongoing joke about the robot(voiced by Billy Bletcher, original voice of Pete) taking Donald's hats, to the part when Donald disguises himself as a baby and gets more than he bargained for. Modern Inventions is an inventive and fun cartoon, and for fans of the cantankerous quack, this is definitely worth the watch. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Donald Duck in his first single appearance. He visits a museum of modern inventions. He is not supposed to touch anything but of course he does. The use of the modern inventions are quite funny. The most funny thing is a robot who keeps asking Donald for his hat. Donald put on a new one and there the robot is again. Very funny. 7/10.

Donald Duck visits a modern inventions museum, where he runs into a wide range of unique machines, including a robotic butler, an automatic baby carriage and a mechanized barber and shoe-shiner. However, Donald realized that he has gotten more than he bargained for in visiting the place when the butler starts taking every hat Donald wears, the baby carriage feeds Donald too much milk and the barber doesn't quite cut Donald's hair like it was supposed to. Donald doesn't quite following directions like the "do not touch" signs at the museum and the butler taking every single hat he has hidden in his clothes; he would stick he should leave his hat off while inside the museum.

This cartoon consists of classic Donald humor, from his quacky voice to his frustrated innuendos. It's just funny seeing everything going wrong for him at the museum as the resulting mishaps pile on one after the other.

It's obvious that Donald is prone to bad luck, but they are just hilariously portrayed here!

Grade A-

"Modern Inventions" is a cartoon inspired by World's Fairs...such as the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. This is because at the various fairs, all sorts of modern and futuristic inventions were showcased in the various pavilions...much like the place Donald goes to when the cartoon begins. There, he finds all sorts of robotics--as folks in 1937 apparently thought robots would become our butlers and do a lot of other time-saving things for mankind. Unfortunately, Donald is a nasty jerk and each time the robots try to help, Donald loses his temper...and he clearly deserves all the bad things that happen to him. Still, despite Donald being a total jerk (or perhaps because of it), it's very enjoyable and well made...nicely animated and funny.

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

A marvelous collection of MODERN INVENTIONS contrive to give Donald a very bad day.

This is a wonderful little film, full of good humor & topnotch animation. The robotic butler (voiced by Billy Bletcher) and its penchant for appropriating headgear is especially funny. This was Donald's first solo star assignment and it also marked the arrival of the legendary Carl Barks as a story writer for the Duck's films. For the record, Donald runs foul of four inventions in the Museum Of Modern Marvels (the Hitch-Hiker's Aid, the Automatic Bundle-Wrapper, the Robot Nurse Maid and the hilarious Barber Chair - voiced by Cliff Edwards) while being deprived of six various hats (his sailor's cap, a silk top hat, a Napoleon cocked hat, a Civil War military cap, a baby bonnet and a derby) Clarence "Ducky" Nash supplies Donald's unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

Watched this recently after so many years! Still makes me laugh!

Donald Duck is one of my favourites of the classic Disney characters with his short temper and funny voice. And seeing him entering this museum of modern inventions is a whole lot of fun.

He is welcomed by this robot butler who asks him for his hat, but Donals just puts on a new one. That's a hilarious running gag through the short. How Donald ends up in trouble when he interacts with the inventions in the museum is just as funny as you can think.

Love this Donald Duck short. Good laugh every time.

We might interpret Disney's "Modern Inventions" as society's idea of what the future would be. Back in the '30s, people were probably hoping for a future of conveniences, continuously reducing our physical exertion. Obviously some of the novelties that did come about in the ensuing decades were nothing like those depicted in the cartoon; I doubt that the average person in 1937 could've envisioned artificial intelligence, let alone a handheld device that can access all the world knowledge.

I'm probably over-analyzing. It's an OK cartoon. I've always preferred the Looney Tunes over the Disney cartoons.