To Spring is a 1936 Happy Harmonies cartoon directed by William Hanna in his directorial debut.
When the leader of a tribe of underground dwarves awakens to learn Winter is over, he quickly rouses the rest of his fellows from their slumber while singing 'Time for Spring! Time for Spring!'. The dwarves quickly go to work mining underground colorful rock deposits and distilling them into the substance to give the plants above ground their Springtime life and color. Unfortunately, they soon find their work encountering an obstruction when the stubborn Old Man Winter is determined to keep Winter going, leading to a clash between the elements to see which season will win out.
Tropes appearing in this cartoon:
- Big Bad: Old Man Winter, who wants to keep winter going even though it's supposed to be spring, and the dwarves have to overcome him to bring spring and color back into the world.
- Big Damn Heroes: The younger dwarf with the short black beard, after spending most of the cartoon struggling to get his long trousers on, gives up on trying and instead runs down into the flooding workshop to help the head dwarf finally force the color feed lever into place, filling the world above with so much color that Old Man Winter at least admits defeat and lets spring come.
- Big Word Shout: When Old Man Winter causes the dwarves' color factory to experience back up, resulting in colorful fluid exploding everywhere, the head dwarf gives out a loud "STOP!".
- Coloring in the World: An underground dwarf awakens to a clock chiming in the vernal equinox. This fellow rouses his comrades, whereupon they mine lodes of color from the earth, boil it in cauldrons, then pump the colorful fluid through tubing into the surface world, which is still in the grip of a monochrome winter. Thus begins a push-o'-war contest between the dwarves that want springtime color in the world, and fierce winter that aims to keep the world gaunt and drab.
- Endless Winter: Old Man Winter wants to invoke this trope, attempting to deny the oncoming of spring to let winter continue for longer than it should.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The head dwarf chastises the still-slumbering dwarves in the start of the short by declaring, "Gol'darn sleepy heads you be!"
- Have a Gay Old Time: When Old Man Winter starts trying to kill all the plants that the dwarves are feeding, the head dwarf rallies them to keep working, exhorting them to "blast that blowing bugger back!"
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The dwarves of the short are quite different to the stereotype, and might instead be intended to be gnomes. They're small humanoids with big feet and long, pointy ears who live deep in the depths of the earth, where they harvest colorful underground crystals and minerals. Which they boil into liquid and feed into the plants above to give them the color and energy they need to bloom and bring about spring. While they do seem to all be men, most of them run around naked except for a set of underpants, and they have a gamut of beard and hair lengths and colors, from completely hairless, young-looking dwarves to classic dwarves with long white beards.
- Painting the Frost on Windows: The dwarves are responsible for turning the world to spring by harvesting colorful underground minerals, boiling them up into paint-like sludge, and then pumping this muck up into the roots of all the plants and trees above, causing them to blossom and flourish.
- Rhymes on a Dime: The head dwarf speaks exclusively in rhyme as he exhorts for his fellows first to wake up and get to work, and then to keep fighting against Old Man Winter.
- Running Gag: Throughout the cartoon, one dwarf struggles to get his pants on so he can join in the work, only to keep falling on his keister in his impatient clumsiness. Eventually, he decides the heck with it and races to help the head dwarf.
- We Will Meet Again: When the dwarves' determination to bring forth Spring wins out against him, Old Man Winter takes it in stride and vanishes, but declares that he'll be back one day.