From the golden age of Hollywood cartoons, here’s a Tex Avery MGM classic about a typical American taxi household, One Cab’s Family.

Frederick Bean “Tex” Avery (1908-1980) might be most famous for his work at Warner Brothers Cartoons, where he pioneered a zany, wide-open style of animation that featured frantic, implausible action, fast-moving gags, and memorable characters including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. But in 1941 he moved to Metro-Golden-Mayer to create an equally imaginative Technicolor world with far-out cartoon personalities like Droopy and Red Hot Riding Hood. Both the Warner and MGM cartoons by Avery are regarded as blue-chip classics by the animation fan community.

This 1952 Tex Avery gem, One Cab’s Family, is a gentle spoof on the popular and long-running radio soap opera, One Man’s Family, of 1932-59. Here we meet a very typical American family—except that it happens to be made up of taxicabs. To kids of the 21st century the premise might seem weird, bizarre even, but to a whole generation of us who were raised on the classic Hollywood cartoons, in which even skyscrapers and ocean liners could take on humanized form, it all makes perfect sense. The theme is a familiar one, teen rebellion. It seems Junior wants to be a hot rod. Enjoy the video.