Bosko's Store

The story opens with Bosko scatting and whistling a happy tune as he cleans the window of his general store. A telephone rings and Bosko answers; a voice on the other end makes a fairly unintelligible request that Bosko interprets as one for bologna. Bosko turns on a small electric fan after retrieving a sausage from which he chops thin slices using the spinning blades. As the slices fall onto a scale, Bosko's dog, wafted thither by the scent, approaches master and meat. The naughty canine paws the empty balance of the scale, reversing it and flipping the cold cuts into his salivating maw. This repeats as the whistling Bosko absent-mindedly further depletes the bologna. The dog's shape reflects his gluttony, becoming more sausage-like as he devours more of the delicacy; once Bosko realizes that his meat has disappeared, the animal cannot disguise his guilt. He dances, making accordion-like sounds as he hops away; pursued by Bosko, he runs carelessly through another fan, slices of his body being cut off in the process, rejoining at once upon hitting the other side of the floor. Having enjoyed the run, our laughing hero forgets his trouble and begins to dust the shop as he dances about: he dusts eggs out of which live chicks pop and a lady in an advertisement who smacks him with her rolling pin (for the affront).

A small mouse uses the pulley of a window blind in order to reach a telephone, whereat he rides the rotary dial as though it were a merry-go-round. It seems that the mouse was dialing the store's number, and a telephone rings across the room. Bosko answers it; the mouse's mouthpiece having fallen, he must slide down the wire in order to speak and climb up again to hear Bosko's response. "Have you got any dry fish?" he asks; Bosko says that he has. "Well," the mouse replies, "why don't you give 'em a drink?"

Bosko steps out and sweeps his porch while dancing, his broom his partner; he lifts up a large, sleeping dog in order to sweep under it. Enter Honey with a frilly umbrella and Wilber. Greeting her beau, Honey requests of him a nickel for a nearby player piano; eating Bosko's coin greedily, the pianola starts the music. The lovers dance together, Honey scatting, Bosko stopping only when he spots Wilber picking and eating his bananas. Wilber plucks another and fires its soft yellow fruit square at Bosko's reprimanding face. Stumbling back into the store, Bosko falls into a basket connected to a pulley; Wilber pulls it, raising Bosko high into the air and across the room and, eventually, into the wall, whereupon he tumbles down to the floor.

Staggering about, Bosko comes to a rest at a cash register whose keyboard's being depressed by Bosko's hand releases its drawer, which strikes Bosko, knocking him backwards again. Back, back he stumbles into a barrel of molasses which falls over, drenching him in its miry, brown former contents. Stuck as in quicksand, the irate Bosko cannot free his feet to chase Wilber, who taunts him accordingly. Wilber climbs a nearby hanging thread to a high shelf only to find that the thread is on a spool; once it has run out, he falls toward a store-counter and onto the crank of a meat grinder, spins about on it, is flung into the air, and falls into the grinder, coming out on the floor in droplets that transmute at once into tiny clones of himself and which then rejoin to the victim's bewilderment. Bosko is helpless until he frees his feet from his shoes; that done, the stocking-footed Bosko pursues Wilber, as he ascends and rides a wheeled ladder, knocking over cans from a high shelf as he does so, which cans, falling, strike poor Bosko's head.

Cornered at last, Wilber spies a large spool of woolen thread: reaching for the counter on which it sits, he, taking the end, slyly slips between Bosko's legs and runs, scorching Bosko's rump with the quick-withdrawing thread as he does so. The beaten Bosko holds his pained posterior as the iris unceremoniously shuts.

• Bosko's Store at IMDb