Junk in the Trunk

"Junk in the Trunk" is episode number 12.3 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

HTF Episode Description
A run-away elephant sends Lifty and Shifty on another crafty mission! A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Lumpy's pet elephant runs away. (DVD)

Plot
While doing the laundry, Lumpy overloads the machine and keeps the lid down with a small piece of Scotch tape. He then grabs a large bag of peanuts and empties it out into a giant dog dish. He calls on his pet elephant, who is running in a giant hamster wheel inside a giant cage with a giant tube running all throughout the house. The elephant crawls through the tubes and eats the peanuts, nuzzling Lumpy affectionately. Lumpy then takes his elephant out for a drive, taking it out a giant swinging door that moves almost an entire wall of the house.

Elsewhere, Toothy cheers on his turtle, which is crawling up a board propped on a cinder block. Lifty and Shifty see this and Shifty distracts Toothy while Lifty steals his turtle. They throw the turtle into their van, which is filled with numerous other stolen animals in cages. Meanwhile, Lumpy waits for his elephant to come out of a carwash and then has to wait for the elephant to go to the bathroom. Realizing the size of the problem, Lumpy uses a garbage bag to clean up the mess.

Back at home, Lumpy tells the elephant to sit on the couch while he goes to get a snack. When he returns, however, he finds the floor is all wet. Assuming the worst, Lumpy yells at his elephant for relieving itself in his house and locks it in his cage. As Lumpy gets to work cleaning up the mess, he finds out that the water on the floor is actually from the overloaded washing machine from earlier. Realizing his mistake, Lumpy sheepishly walks over to his elephant's cage to apologize, only to find that it has broken out of its cage and ran away.

Sadly walking on its own, Lumpy's elephant smells some peanuts and runs over to Mime, who is enjoying a snack. Afraid, Mime pedals away on his unicycle, eventually going up a tree for safety. The elephant follows him and eats the peanuts before licking him as a token of friendship, alleviating Mime's fears. Elsewhere, Giggles sadly puts up a poster for her missing kitty on a wall with many other posters of missing animals. Lumpy unknowingly puts a giant poster of his elephant over her body, which suffocates her to death. Back at the tree, the elephant decides to get down. The tree bends with the elephant's weight and when it exits the tree, the tree shoots back the other way, throwing Mime into the ground where he is splattered into a small puddle of blood.

As Lifty and Shifty toss Giggles' kitty into their van, they see Lumpy's elephant walk by. They try to push it into their van to no avail. Next, they try lifting the elephant into the van via a rope and pulley. The elephant proves to be too heavy for them, so they ask Cuddles, who plays with a pet mouse on his shoulder, to help. With Cuddles' assistance, they lift the elephant off the ground. The brothers let go to get the van and steal Cuddles' mouse at the same time. Cuddles can't hold up the elephant anymore, however, and he is forced through the pulley where his body is sliced and crushed. As a last ditch effort, Lifty and Shifty spend the next two days disassembling their van and rebuilding it under the elephant.

Lumpy arrives on the scene as soon as they finish, but the brothers drive off before Lumpy can do anything, then he looks around for something to help him catch the two thieves. He spots a pogo stick, then a motorcycle, and finally a Formula One car. As is to be expected of Lumpy, he gives chase on the pogo stick. Lifty begins throwing animals out of the van to slow Lumpy down, including a cat that latches onto Lumpy's face with its claws.

Lifty holds Cuddles' mouse up to throw it, but the elephant gets scared and backs up. This forces Shifty out of the driver's seat, through the windshield, and to the bottom of the car, where his skin is torn off and he slowly gets wrapped around the drive axle. Lumpy jumps into the van just before it hits Toothy and launches off the ramp he built earlier. The van flies off a cliff and Lifty, Lumpy, and the elephant, along with many other animals, all fly out. Lifty grabs onto the ledge and the elephant wraps its trunk around Lifty's body and Lumpy, still on the pogo stick, grabs the elephant's tail.

Lifty's arms are torn off from the extreme weight and all three fall down the cliff. Lumpy and Lifty bounce off a haystack and land safely, narrowly avoiding being crushed by the elephant which also bounces off the haystack. The pogo stick falls, however, and pierces Lifty in the head, crushing his body as it bounces several times. Back at home, Lumpy pours some milk in a glass (with the carton showing Giggles' picture); it is revealed that he has adopted all the animals Lifty and Shifty had stolen. Lumpy's elephant is once more frightened by the mouse and runs away, forming holes in the walls of the house. Lumpy sighs and chases after the elephant on the pogo stick with Lifty's body still attached. Back at the ramp, Toothy's turtle finally makes it over where its shell hits the ground.

Moral
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!"

Deaths

 * 1) Some bugs are splattered on Lumpy's windshield.
 * 2) Giggles suffocates after being covered by a lost poster for Lumpy's elephant.
 * 3) Mime is splattered against the ground when Lumpy's elephant gets out of a tree he's sitting in.
 * 4) Cuddles is forced through a pulley, tearing him to pieces.
 * 5) Shifty is mangled in his van's axel.
 * 6) Toothy is hit and splattered by Lifty and Shifty's van.
 * 7) Lifty is impaled by a pogo stick.

Goofs

 * 1) Lumpy's antlers change directions numerous times throughout the episode.
 * 2) Some of Cuddles' blood that splattered on Lumpy's elephant disappears.
 * 3) Cuddles' remains disappear from under the van when Lumpy arrives.
 * 4) When Giggles died, her body goes limp (all her limbs facing downwards), but when Lumpy checks to see if the elephant Lifty and Shifty are stealing is the one similar to the one on the poster Giggles died in, her body is erect (her arms and legs are raised).
 * 5) When Lifty grabs onto the cliff, his stomach marking isn't visible.
 * 6) It would physically be impossible for Lifty to hit the haystack before Lumpy's elephant as he was above the elephant before they begin falling.
 * 7) Lifty & Shifty were more of starring characters than featuring, while Giggles had more of a featuring role.
 * 8) Similarly, Lumpy's pogo-stick should have reached the bottom before anyone, but it came after the elephant.
 * 9) The elephant on the poster is differently colored than Lumpy's Elephant, though this probably is intentional.
 * 10) The elephant's eyelashes appear and disappear constantly.
 * 11) When Giggles got covered by the poster, she on the far left side. But when Lumpy realizes that his elephant is the one Lifty and Shifty are trying to steal, she's a little closer to the center.
 * 12) When we see the wall of missing pets, there are many posters on the wall. When Lumpy arrives and sees Lifty and Shifty stealing his elephant, a lot of the posters disappeared.
 * 13) Giggles stapled a poster on a brick wall...
 * 14) Despite Lifty's arms falling after they got ripped off, they are never seen falling to the ground at the bottom of the cliff.
 * 15) The design for Giggles on the milk carton is from the first two seasons despite this being a TV episode.

Trivia

 * The meaning for the phrase "junk in the trunk" means to have a prodigious butt.
 * This is one of only four times Lumpy isn't seen living in a trailer, the other three times being Dunce Upon a Time where he's a giant in a castle, and Aw Shucks! and Peas in a Pod where he lives on a farm.
 * Cuddles' body decomposes as Lifty and Shifty take their van apart and put it over the elephant.
 * A small nod to the Mario Kart games was featured in this episode. It was the scene where Lifty threw a shell (Toothy's tortoise) at Lumpy, who was chasing after them. In the Mario Kart games, you can use shells to hurl at other racers ahead of you in an attempt to slow them down. Also, if you're quick to notice, the shell Lifty threw was blue, making it a blue shell, as in the Mario Kart games, a blue shell is considered to be the strongest weapon in the game, as it flies towards the racer in 1st place and immediately strikes upon reaching its intended target.
 * Shifty falling beneath the van and grabbing onto the drive axle may be a reference to the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark where a similar thing happens to Indy. Here, however, the results of grabbing onto a moving drive axle are a little more realistic.
 * This episode marks the first of two instances in the series to date that Lifty and Shifty are not killed simultaneously or one right after the other. The second time this occurred was in Buns of Steal.
 * A milk carton with Giggles on it appears at the end of the episode, likely because no one knows that she was smothered when Lumpy put out a missing elephant poster, and thought that she was missing.
 * Whistle is among the animals that Lifty and Shifty stole, though his design is a lot different.
 * Nobody dies in the first part of this episode except some bugs.
 * When Lumpy's elephant ends his "shower", Lumpy puts a freshener similar to Petunia's onto his elephant.
 * The elephant bears a similar design to a heffalump in the Winnie-the-Pooh series also named Lumpy. The only difference is that Lumpy's elephant is an adult elephant and the heffalump in the Pooh series is a baby.
 * This marks the second time Lifty and Shifty have stolen animals for profit. They did this first in Doggone It when they stole an innumerable amount of puppies.
 * Shifty has shown not to be as mechanically inclined as Lifty, for he grabbed the axle of the moving van without thinking.
 * This is one of the episodes where all featuring and appearing characters die while the starring character survives.
 * This episode was released on TV along with In a Jam and I've Got You Under My Skin. When the conglomeration of these three episodes aired on YouTube, the alternate title for it was named "Twelfth Night". Lumpy appears in all three and dies twice.
 * Giggles' death is similar to Flaky's death in the Gum option in her Smoochie.
 * Toothy's death is similar to Flippy's death in Autopsy Turvy.
 * Giggles appeared on a milk carton at the end of this episode. She will reappear on another milk carton in All In Vein.
 * If one notices, Cuddles' remains decay to bone overtime as Lifty and Shifty disassemble and reassemble their van.
 * This is the longest time interval between Lifty's and Shifty's deaths in the series (40 seconds).
 * Lumpy's Elephant was responsible for every death in this episode, but Lumpy was indirectly responsible for Giggles' death.
 * It is unknown who asked for the Lost Giggles to be on the Milk carton, It could be possibly Giggles' Mother