"Weemite"

Hello, children young and old! Time for some Holiday cheer. We bloody well need it after the year we've had. This year's theme is: "Barks stories I haven't covered yet." There are five such, unless I'm forgetting some. And guess what? We're going to cover them, at irregular intervals starting now and leading up to the twenty-fifth. Good for us.

We begin with one of those stories that uses Christmas as a setting but isn't really about the holiday in any significant way. That's a pretty festive opening panel there, but it's really just the jumping-off point. Let's not waste any time talking about how it's weird that ducks eat turkeys. That's just covering old territory.

Donald's hand gestures really sell this. I think it's charming that he's so eager to explain the physics of the thing that he just takes the (goofy) context for granted.

There are quite a number of precursors to this. The general premise is too obvious for there not to be. The biggest one is "The Mad Chemist," of which this is a loose-ish remake, but we also have "Donald Duck's Atom Bomb" and--just for the general idea of accidentally getting powerful chemicals to work with--"Super Snooper."

Note that the storytelling doesn't quite work here, as there's no way Donald could know that a truck--and specifically a truck from Fitz's Fission Factory, no less!--was responsible for this whole plot being set in motion. He ought to think that he just lucked into a super-powerful formula from the chemistry set itself. Unless, perhaps, he really doesn't know, and he's just making up FFF and inserting it into the story. That would be an interesting unreliable-narrator thing. What ELSE in this story never happened? I mean, the whole premise is pretty far-fetched, so the whole THING could be a fabrication! Oh no!

Weemite 'cause it's small but powerful. I have always referred to the whole story as "Weemite," but inducks calls it "Rocket-Roasted Christmas Turkey," which is certainly descriptive. Well, not that the other title is any great shakes either. Whatever! In "The Mad Chemist," it was called "duckmite." Also, in that story, he invents it purely from a chemistry set with no unwitting outside help.

The turkey is somewhat awkardly shoehorned into the whole thing. Do they have "visitors' days" at army bases? Sure, probably. Doesn't seem like a security risk.

I do think it's funny that Donald earnestly refers to the general as "admiral" like that. And...that's all. The arc of this story is pretty predictable.

I'm not risking any soldiers, but YOU, duck, we can easily do without. Well, fair enough, in the sense that he IS providing the fuel. And yet, NOT fair enough, in the sense that they probably have a basic responsibility not to do something like this with absolutely no prior knowledge or testing or anything.

Note Senator Muttonchops, a nineteenth-century legislator who has apparently come unstuck in time.

Hmph. Yep, that's Gladstone-level happenstance there. Also, remember how the kids had previously said they were going to call Grandma for advice? Well, I guess we can only assume that she advised them to take the turkey to this world-famous bakery, because we don't get any OTHER information on what she said. Why isn't she invited to dinner, anyway? Maybe she's eating with Scrooge, Gus, and Gladstone instead. And Gyro, maybe. Boy, THERE'S a party for you.

Yeah so this is the basic idea. My new cooking technique is unstoppable!

Ending kinda humanizes the general. I like it. But yeah, I guess it's reasonably merry. There's really nothing in the story that works thematically with the idea of Christmas festivity (that'll be the case in a number of this year's stories), but it's still perfectly fine. I dig it.

AND NOW, thanks to Disney-comic stalwart Elaine, a special treat for all you Weemite fanatics out there! One thing you may have noticed about this story is that it takes place on Christmas and not on the Dutch feast of Sinterklaas, on December 6. Does this fact...bother you in any way? If so, you and some Dutch editor somewhere are on the same wavelength. Also, now you know why I posted this entry today!

Here's the cover of a Dutch printing of the story. And yup, there's Sinterklaas, along with his, uh, friend Zwarte Piet, guaranteed to make you feel uncomfortable! Note that "Zwarte Piet" means "Black Pete," which gives us a meaningless Disney-name-related coincidence. Good for us.

What's that...thing on the rocket? It's sure not a turkey. That, my friend, is a Sinterklaas cookie:

YES, this image is clipart. YES, there is clipart of Sinterklaas cookies. Any further questions?

So that's kinda weird. But that's just the cover, yeah? They certainly can't have expanded this concept into the story itself?

Ha ha, OF COURSE they did. Yup, this is SUPER weird, but the turkey has been replaced with a giant flippin' cookie throughout. Doesn't really look that appetizing, does it, just sitting there limply? Certainly doesn't make it seem more festive, I'll tell you that! It doesn't help that the Christmas tree and candle have also been removed, along with all the cutlery, making the whole scene look oddly barren.

Also, can someone confirm that "taaitaaipop" means both "gingerbread man" and "tough guy?" That's what I'm getting from google translate. Excellent if true.

I mean, I like how it kinda looks like a guy being stabbed, but boy, even if you're a big fan of cookies, that does NOT seem like a satisfying dinner.

Anyway, that's about that: a bizarre thing about "Weemite" that you almost certainly did not see coming. It would be irksome for Dutch people if this were the ONLY Dutch printing of this story, but I'm pretty sure others are normal, so it's just a fun little oddity.