'Round & 'Round (1939)

★★★★ · Round and Round · Christine Hennig · 2002-12-05

Capitalism is explained extremely simplistically via primitive puppet animation. Little toy workers make little toy widgets in a little toy factory. Other little toy puppets buy the widgets with large coins, then those same puppets sell little toy raw materials to the factory, so it can make more widgets. It's hard to tell who this movie was made for. I don't think it's a children's educational film, but it's certainly on a kindergarten level. Again, it tries to convince us that capitalism is a perfect system that makes everybody happy. But if that were so, why did they need films like this?…

★★★★ · Where it stops, Jem Handy knows! · Spuzz · 2004-06-20

A well-deserved classic of Jam Handy's, the widget film never ceased to amaze me with it's animation, the very low key kid music and of course it's totally over-simplified thinking of economics, eg, Any money you get will only be used to pay the employees and get more goods. What about maintenance? Profits? Upkeep? etc? I have no idea of who thought up the concept of this film, but it works amazingly well, and is highly reccomended!

★★★★ · Early Gumby! · RedAliCat · 2003-04-13

This film, hopefully made for very young children, has a Gumby-like animation feel (though there is an obvious lack of clay). It does avoid the concept of profit, supply and demand, etc. However, by using the generic term "widget" for the product, it demonstrates how today's society will buy poorly made junk that they don't understand how to use nor have a viable reason to use it (think the hysteria of Cabbage Patch Kids or Beanie Babies).