Quasi at The Quackadero - Plot

Plot

The short starred Quasi, characterized by one writer as "an infantile duck with buck front teeth, thick glasses and a red cape", voiced by Deitch; Anita, which one writer described as "Betty Boop with a New Wave wardrobe" and whose Mae West-like voice was supplied by Cruikshank, and robot Rollo. They progress through the Quackadero, a Coney Island-esque sideshow with such attractions as the Hall of Time Mirrors, which depict the viewer as he or she will look in "old age" or "100 years from now"; the Roll Back Time Machine, in which Quasi watches a skyscraper's life running backward; the Think-o-Blink Machine, which illustrates one's thoughts; the game show-like act "Your Shining Moment"; Madame Xano's, where the audience can see last night's dreams; and the Time Holes, in which one can lean on a railing and see a live slice of three million years ago unfold. The music, by Bob Armstrong and Al Dodge, of the Berkeley, California band the Cheap Suit Serenaders, used slide flute, xylophone, ukelele, duck call, boat whistle and bagpipe to create what Cruikshank called the "strange, gallopy feeling" of 1920s/1930s dance-band music, of which she is a devotee.

At the end, it is revealed that if you trip over the rail in the Time Hole attraction, you will fall into the Time Hole and never escape from the prehistoric land three million years ago. Quasi ends up running from a Triceratops.

"Quasi at the Quackadero" won awards and was shown at the Los Angeles Film Exposition, and made its first theatrical booking at the Northside Theater in Berkeley, not far from Cruikshank's home at the time at 1980 Arch Street in that city.

In 2008, a portion of it appeared in the opening credits of the direct-to-DVD animated feature Futurama: Bender's Game.