Tiny Troubles

This M-G-M comedy short, Tiny Troubles, is the one hundred seventy-seventh entry in the "Our Gang" series and the eighty-ninth talkie. Alfalfa and the gang are at a police station with the little adult criminal "Light-Fingered Lester" (Jerry Maren) and his tall female accomplice. They're mistaken for part of Lester's gang so Alf tells in flashback how his baby brother was constantly crying and since the infant originally came from behind a tree, he decides to trade for a "quieter" model from the same place where Lester was hiding in baby clothes. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a ridiculous plot for an Our Gang comedy concerning the use of midgets disguised as children even though it was used successfully before in previous series entries like Free Eats and Shrimps for a Day. The idea that 11-year-old Alfalfa and 10-year-old Spanky would mistake Lester for an infant just didn't wash. So anything that follows doesn't hold water, either. At least when the lesson does come, it's not too heavy handed so there's that. So in summary, Tiny Troubles isn't very funny but it's not completely embarrassing to the point of no return yet, either. P.S. Maren would later in the year become one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.