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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 4/29/2025: Pui Pui Molcar [1]

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Date: 2025-04-29

Tirzah Garwood: The Springtime of Flight (1950)

Good evening, Kibitzers!

We had a very warm and sunny day today, or at least, 80F used to be “very warm” for not even May yet. Tomorrow it’ll cool down a little until Friday — it’s not much, but I’ll take it.

I have a situation with popcorn here. I never buy microwave popcorn, because it’s not a healthful thing to eat and yet, it’s so easy. It’s hot and crunchy and smells tasty; for me, it’s entirely too easy to have popcorn for supper all week.

I had some groceries delivered a few days ago. I put away the perishable stuff, then left the bag of cans and boxes sitting on the counter until long after the fact. Not that Instacart comes and retrieves stuff they give you by mistake anyway, as far as I know. So when I finally got to the bag, as you’ve already surmised, my lagniappe was a big box of store-brand popcorn. I’m about halfway through it, but I swear I haven’t eaten it for supper!

So, I was innocently reading the excellent Wonkette, and I opened a piece by Doktor Zoom, because he was mocking Thomas Friedman and I am always there for that. But lo, here was a fascinating gif at the top of the page, and instructions from the Doktor to go find something called “Pui Pui Molcar”, which he described as “Trippy perfection in an imperfect world.” I try to take Doktor Zoom’s advice when I can, so off I went to YouTube and environs.

Pui Pui Molcar is a Japanese series of short anime that first aired as part of a kids’ program on TV Tokyo in 2021. It concerns a race of giant guinea pigs who are somehow also motor vehicles. Sometimes they have little human drivers who climb in and out of their doors, but more often they seem to function as autonomous live guinea pigs who happen to have wheels for feet. (Apparently “molmot” is Japanese for guinea pig, and “pui pui" is meant as an approximation of the sound they make — I think they’re going for something we might spell more like “pwee pwee”.)

This could, of course, be done so as to be horrifying, but the stop-motion guinea pig figures are made of felt and they’re super-adorable, so in practice, these are some quite odd yet suitable-for-children wordless stories in which the characters get into scrapes but their caring for others shines through.

To show it to you, I looked around YouTube and found the official Italian Pui Pui Molcar channel. It seemed to have a complete collection of the first season, and I also loved that the Italian term for guinea pigs is “porcellini d'India”. I’m including many of the episodes here, with their lovely Italian titles. Some of the earlier ones can’t be embedded — you can see them on the channel. They all run two minutes and 39 seconds.

Gran Premio Pui Pui/Grand Prix Pui Pui: The Molcars participate in a race. The human driver of one of them has ambitious plans to win, which seem to fail badly but then… there are twists. (Wait for the ending after the little blackout.) [2:39]

Missione Molcar: Some episodes have movie callbacks that are clearly pitched at adults. In this Mission-Impossible-like tale, a couple of commandos (note: they are the two female characters) parachute in to rescue a kidnap victim from some supervillains. [2:39]

Facciamo Festa/Let’s Party: The beauty of driving a Molcar is, when you are worn out after work, it puts you to bed. It’s true that it then throws a party in your house, but you can’t have everything. [2:39]

Uno Scherzo Splendente/A Brilliant Joke: The Indiana Jones of Molcars is intrepid, but badly needs a bath and doesn't want one. [2:39]

Gnam! Gnam! Ma Che Mal de Pancia/Yum! Yum! What a Stomach Ache!: Here’s one of those “what were they smoking” scenarios: a Molcar is frightened by hearing meowing, because he’s a guinea pig and scared of cats. On examination, he finds the cat is his tiny passenger and is sitting inside him on the back seat. Work through that, and you’re ready for what happens when he realizes it’s a hot day and dangerous for the cat to be left inside the car. [2:39]

Viaggio nel Tempo/Time Travel: In this Back to the Future parody, Doc Brown has traded in his DeLorean for a Molcar. [2:39]

Sorpresa Romantica/Romantic Surprise: Winter weather has made the streets a literal skating rink, but one of the tiny humans won’t be deterred from proposing marriage to another. [2:39]

Voglio Essere un Eroe/I Want To Be A Hero: The youngest Molcar (that green and yellow chevron is a “beginner driver” mark) has been training to become a macho superhero car, so he’s horrified when he gets painted pink and adorned with a graphic of a sparkly anime girl. But it turns out sparkly girls have some magic up their sleeves. [2:39]

[END]
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