The Crunch Bird

The Crunch Bird
Directed byTed Petok
Produced byTed Petok
StarringLen Maxwell
Animation byJoe Petrovich
Production
companies
Maxwell-Petok-Petrovich Productions
Regency Films
Distributed byRegency Films
Release date
  • 1971 (1971)
Running time
2 min.
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish

The Crunch Bird (El pájaro crujiente) is an animated short by Joe Petrovich, Len Maxwell, and Ted Petok. It won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Joe Petrovich animated the cartoon. Len Maxwell provided the voices for the husband, wife, and pet shop owner. It was followed by the sequel Crunch Bird II in 1975. It is based on an old joke called "crunchy bird" which concludes in a similar way. The film softened the victim's fate by changing "crunchy bird, my eye" to "crunch bird, my ass", despite the language itself being coarser.