The "Fresh Vegetable Mystery" Mystery

Any of you remember Fresh Vegetable Mystery? That old 30s cartoon short about the kitchen full of sentient vegetables, but a shadowy creature with metallic clamp-like claws swoops in and kidnaps a family of carrots, and potato police with Irish accents torture the innocent vegetables (and an egg) for information until the shadowy creature shows up again and causes a lot of trouble?

Whenever you look it up on Youtube, every upload of the short ends the same way; the potato police ride a mechanical whisk that pulls the cloak off of the shadowy creature, revealing it to be 4 mice carrying around a set of pliers, and the potato police throw the mice into a cage and rescue the carrot family. Well, the copy I used to have on VHS didn't end that way. In fact, the outcome wasn't so happy. Here's how it went.

While the potato police were distracted with popping the corn man in the toaster, the shadow creature slipped in silently and kidnapped them one by one. Then, it turned off the toaster and took out the burnt unconcious corn man and took him away too.

When the shadowy creature got to the potato police that were juicing the orange man, it swooped in and kidnapped the interrogating potato, who was too out-of-breath to escape its grasp, but the other two potatoes were too focused on juicing the orange man to notice the shadow creature return and kidnap them both too. The orange man panicked and tried to run away, but he was tired and sluggish from being juiced, and the shadow creature easily caught him too and took him away.

The two pickled onions, drunk as skunks, stood no chance against the shadow creature's speed and stealth, and it kidnapped them with ease as well.

Finally, the shadow menace snuck up on the potato police torturing the egg on the frying pan. Just like before, it slipped in silently and picked out each potato one by one while they were too distracted laughing at the egg's misery. Then, once it picked off each potato, rather than turning off the burner, it turned it up and cooked the egg into an admittedly delicious-looking miniature omelette, which it immediately proceeded to eat in its entirety.

Eventually, the shadowy creature went on to swiftly and silently pick off every last vegetable in the kitchen. When it was all done, it crawled into its hole behind the bottle, dragged the bottle back over the hole, and somber music plays as the cartoon irises out, giving way to a black screen with white text that reads:

"YOUR VEGETABLES ARE NEXT!"

When I rewatched this ending as a young adult in the early 2000s, I thought the downer ending was perhaps a little eerie for a cartoony 30s short, but ultimately, I laughed it off. It's still a pretty cheesy ending, and it's just vegetables, after all!

Oh, how I should have heeded their warning.

A racket woke me up in the middle of the night. Taking a flashlight with me, I carefully tiptoed from my bedroom to my kitchen, and I saw that all of my food was gone!

I was looking for the phone to call the police on a burglar, when a shadowy figure appeared in my living room. It looked just like the one from the old cartoon, except it was as big as a human being! I tried to run, but it was too fast for me, and it caught me.

I fell unconscious while it was dragging me away, but I woke up in a box of carrots in the backroom of a grocery store. I got out and walked around the produce backroom until I found a telephone. I picked up the phone and called the police, and I heard a familiar Irish accent respond with, "A hostage, eh? We know right where you are! Sending help immediately!"

In less than five minutes, several police officers entered the backroom. They all had eyes all over their body, but they seemed affable enough, and led me out of the grocery store safely. They assured me with, "See there, m'aam? We've got 'em under control!" as they pointed at what appeared to be four giant mutant mice locked in a cage, with giant 5-ft pliers laying nearby.

I waved the many-eyed officers goodbye and made my way back home.

I went into my bathroom only to look in the mirror and see...

I was as orange as an Oompa Loompa!

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