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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Taking a break for a week. Will hopefully be back Monday.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Honk Honk! Skeeter Valentine is your Toon of the Day! Jam out to Killer Tofu while you read the ALT text.

Skeeter Valentine, a green-ish blue pre-teen with spiky hair, wearing an reddish-orange shirt with a yellow stylized lightening bolt and collar, as well as matching baggy pants and shoes. He looks a little surprised sitting on the sidewalk with his skateboard, implying he just tumbled off.

Multi-talented voice performer Fred Newman provides Skeeter with his voice in both iterations of the series Doug. Fred also composed and performed the memorable theme song in the Nickelodeon version and voiced Doug's dog Porkchop.

Everyman characters NEED good supporting characters to bounce off of, it's a comedy trope as old as theater itself. Doug Funnie's insecure nature and vivid imagination can carry his show pretty far, but runs the risk of becoming melancholy without some wackiness to punch the material up. Skeeter is great for this purpose, with his combination of upbeat attitude and eccentric sense of humor. It takes a certain sort of quirk to say he found a tooth in his best friend's mouth that looks like his aunt and it doesn't feel like such a line comes completely out of nowhere, after all!

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

In honor of #TheDayTheEarthBlewUp, Petunia Pig is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text is one ingredient short of the perfect flavor.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Your Admin is severely rethinking using this account as a promotional tool for his podcast, because it means Q*Bert has to be Toon of the Day. Swear in longhand with us in the ALT text.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Geri, one of the most memorable characters in a Pixar short, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text got squicked by the exchange of dentures.

Geri, a Caucasian senior citizen with rounded spectacles, a dark grey suit jacket, off-white shirt and red necktie. What little hair is left on his head is grey with age, and a clever smirk is under his prominent nose. He sits in front of a chessboard outside a city park on a fall day.

Pixar animator Bob Peterson did what dialogue the character has in here, mostly laughs and other audible noises. Character actor Jonathan Harris voices him in his Toy Story 2 cameo.

Geri began life as a means to improve Pixar's process in animating fabric and designing convincing looking skin. Writer and director Jan Pinkava wanted a human character, but had to conceive the idea around that one individual. Drawing upon his older relatives' love of chess, he conceived Geri playing chess against himself, leading to a masterpiece of character animation in 5 minutes. It was the first short subject Pixar created since 1989's Tin Toy, and when it was paired with the 1998 release A Bug's Life, it began the tradition of pairing shorts with Pixar's feature films.

Geri was unexpectedly drafted into Toy Story 2 when the story called for one more character but the time and budget wasn't available for it. Somebody suggested the existing Geri character model, and he was brought in, chess pieces and all.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Emmitt Nervend is your Toon of the Day. When asked about it, he had no verbal response. He just handed me the ALT text then went back to cutting Dan Riba's hair. Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else on Freakazoid!

Emmitt Nervend, a Caucasian man of apparent middle age with his neck stuck out to a ridiculous angle, his hair standing up on end and his smile stuck in a wide, tooth-clenched smile. (?) He's wearing a brown sports coat, yellow shirt, skinny black tie and grey pants, and is standing against a blue backdrop.

He is credited as being his own voice actor. This is to say, as a silent character he has none. He is also credited at varying times as "Our Mascot," "Weird Guy," "Giggling Fool," "Annie Award Winner," and "Raccoonnookkeeper!"

He began life as a sketch in Mitch Schauer's office that Tom Ruegger saw, liked, and asked to use in Freakazoid, and that's the beginning and end of his character development! He's basically the ultimate inside joke for Freakazoid fans. This electrocuted-looking man just... shows up. Sometimes he's barely relevant to the plot, and sometimes he's just there. Explaining him would make the joke less funny. I think.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Beachcomber, from Transformers, is your groovy Toon of the Day. A brief reflection on action cartoons and how they portrayed pacifistic characters is in the ALT text.

Beachcomber, a blue and white robot with a visor designed to look like sunglasses that's alight with analysis of the green parakeet on his shoulder. The scene takes place against a forest backdrop.

Alan Oppenheimer, Skeletor himself, voiced this particular Transformer. To date, Oppenheimer is the only person to perform the character in English, with his appearances in Transformers Animated continually getting cut.

Said appearances were to involve the character getting killed.

Yeah, Beachcomber isn't precisely one of the best loved Transformer amongst the literally hundreds of them out there. He was intended to be a pacifist, disliking violence and preferring to study and enjoy the natural world. In an animated series where action and thrills were top priority to sell toys to impressionable kids, this made him a tough sell. So in it, Oppenheimer voiced him as a hippie, and his spotlight episode where his concern over the destruction of a peaceful forest didn't do him many favors with parts of the fandom. That included Derreck J. Wyatt, who was the art director and lead designer on Transformers Animated, hence the attempted "deactivation" of the character more than a few times. Personally I find this a shame, but Beachcomber has a new lease on life in the Energon Universe comics, which I need to make a point to read.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

I wonder what has our Toon of the Day, Norbert of the Angry Beavers, so excited? Today's ALT text was written from a bachelor pad in a river damn based in Wayouttatown, OR.

Norbert Foster Beaver, older brother of Daggett Doofus Beaver by four minutes. He's a beaver (of course) with spiky light brown hair, a purple nose, buck teeth and white cartoon eyes. He's trying to get his brother in the foreground excited about something, I imagine.

Nick Bakay is Norbert's VA, and he's best known as the voice of Salem the Cat in the ABC live action series Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, which he also served as a writer for. He's also notorious in pro wrestling circles for narrating Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets which gave the world "she's a stunt granny!"

I enjoyed this cartoon a lot in college. The rapid back and forth dialogue between Bakay and Richard Horvitz was brilliant when both scripted and ad-libbed. Norbert isn't the best older brother, frequently condescending to the easily peeved and mixed-up Daggett, but just as frequently they're trying to get themselves unstuck from some bizarre situation and the personality clash just adds to the humor. It's a shame the show was just getting really good right when that yellow monolith in brown pants arrived and started overshadowing everything...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Sypha Belnades, co-protagonist from the Netflix Castlevania series, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text wasn't handed down from centuries of oral tradition, it was just written by a very bored person.

Sypha Belnades, an adult Caucasian woman with dark blonde hair cut short, blue eyes and a serious expression on her face. Her hands are focused into a warding position, perhaps about to cast a spell. Standing behind her with his back to her is Trevor Belmont, and the two are in a gloomy interior typical of the Castlevania setting.

Her English voice actress is Alejandra Reynoso, also known for Flora on Winx Club and multiple video game roles. In Japanese, she's performed by Ayaka Shimoyamada of Studio Ken.

While I can understand people finding the Castlevania series on Netflix being a little too dark for their tastes, as someone who grew up with the games and played the living daylights out of the Metroidvania style games in the franchise, I was pretty pleased with how they distilled gameplay elements and enemies into the setting. Sypha was the most pleasant surprise for me, a character with tremendous agency, great wit and holds her own opposite the two male leads without dipping into "rote action girl" territory. The team hooked me with her introduction mirroring that of how you meet her in Castlevania 3 on the NES, and Alejandra's performance kept me on the line. God might hate her, but I simply ADORE her.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Sleepy of the Seven Dwarfs is your Toon of the Day. Yawn... ALT text, you know the deal... zzz...

Sleepy, a dwarf with a long grey beard, a green stocking cap, darkish grey shirt and brown pants with a belt. He's yawning in the Dwarf's cabin, right next to his bed.

This is the other Dwarf that Pinto Colvig, along with Grumpy, voiced for the movie. Bill Farmer has performed the voice since 1994, with Hal Smith doing a quick appearance as him before that.

Honestly I'm not sure how much there is to say about him and the other two Dwarfs I haven't written. He's exactly what he's named as: sleepy, and he mostly exists to nod off at funny times and fill out the ensemble of Dwarfs to match the number in the original story. But yet, despite being the drowsiest, he's the one who comes to the conclusion that the animals are trying to warn them that Snow White is in danger. Maybe the fact he's so relaxed helped him not panic and figure out what was wrong?

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Uh-oh, hide Tobias, because Daisy is the Toon of the Day. Read the ALT text before the big guy sneezes fire on all of us!

Daisy, a young blonde Caucasian girl with big innocent eyes, a sweet smile and a small hand full of daisies. She's wearing a pink dress with white collar and gold button, and a blue ribbon in her hair. The flowers are for Tobias the Dragon, the titular Reluctant Dragon from Rankin Bass' 1970s output.

Donna Miller provided the saccharine voice for this demure character, and it seems this was her only reoccurring series altogether.

Daisy's kind of a flat character when you get down to it. She exists to bring the object that triggers Tobias' fire breath, daisies, to him when none are readily available. In the episode this screenshot was taken from, she appears via a subway train in a tunnel freshly dug by hapless antagonists Olaf and Irving where none existed just a moment ago, just so the duo could be roasted and their latest scheme be foiled. The joke becomes the sheer unlikeliness of how she gets down there in the first place, really.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Sally Brown, one of the most unpredictable and funny characters in the Peanuts canon, is your Toon of the Day. She tells me the ALT text is her new philosophy. Good grief...

Sally Brown, in the pink version of her classic polka dot dress, seen dancing in the 2015 CGI feature The Peanuts Movie. She's a Caucasian first grade kid with blonde hair in a truly unique style, with a curly "poof" in front and doing something akin to Wolverine's look in the back. She's happily leaping while other kids look on in a grade school gym lit up like a dance hall.

Cathy Steinberg originated the vocal interpretations of the character for A Charlie Brown Christmas, with a long line of kids jumping in as actresses inevitably age out of the role. Amongst these kids has been Linda Jenner in the 1970s, Stacie Ferguson (yes, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas) in the 1980s, and Mariel Sheets for the 2015 movie. Also, Kristen Chenowith performed the character on stage, linking her to the franchise in ways that would be revisited a few times since.

We all love Snoopy, we all can relate to Charlie Brown, and we all know a Lucy, but seriously, is any character in the strip as consistently FUNNY as Sally is? Her new philosophies, which are usually such blase statements as "Who Cares?" or "How Should I Know?" are taken to silly extremes, she hates school but talks to the school building as if it were a person (and it has its own thoughts on the matter!!), and her misunderstandings of concepts like Forest Rangers into Forest Strangers made for great weekly fodder. And this isn't even getting into her crush on poor Linus! Sweet Baboo, indeed...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

100 Toons, 100 entries. On this momentous occasion, we have a momentous toon who I suppose needs no introduction to anyone reading this. Hot dog! A very brief history on the mouse that roared is in the ALT text.

Mickey Mouse, as he was first introduced in the cartoons Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy on the left, and how he's typically depicted today on the right. Either version is a cartoon mouse with round black ears wearing shorts with two buttons on them. The modern Mickey's shorts are red and he's wearing white gloves which presumably are not present on the original's design like how they weren't in those two mentioned cartoons.

No less than Walt Disney himself would be Mickey's first ever voice actor for short subject cartoons, with Jimmy MacDonald taking over barring a few spots here and there in 1947 until 1978. Wayne Allwine entered the picture just before then on television before inheriting the role full time until his passing in 2009, with Bret Iwan capably filling his shoes after that. And those are just the main performers!

Seriously, is there anything left to say about this danged mouse?!? From a mischievous music maker to a wannabe sorcerer to a humble everyman to a corporate mascot and so many things in-between, the story of animation itself and American culture as a whole would look vastly different if Mickey Mouse wasn't the smash hit character that Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks wasn't the smash hit of the late 1920s. The only thing I can really add is to go back and watch shorts like The Brave Little Tailor, Clock Cleaners or Thru the Mirror. The real secret to Mickey's endurance is the genius of those original cartoons, which were nothing like anyone in the 1930s had seen before and only the Fleischers out in New York could truly rival at that time.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

In loving memory of George Lowe, Space Ghost is your Toon of the Day. Please do not aim your battering ram ray at the ALT text, I just rebuilt it.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Kevin, shown here in a rare state of not being annoyed by the Eds, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text isn't for dorks. I think. Is it?

Kevin, a pre-teen Caucasian kid with a few whisps of red hair peeking out of his red ball cap. He's shown wearing a green long sleeve shirt riding his bike through the suburban cul-de-sac the show Ed, Edd & Eddy takes place in.

Kathleen Barr performs this abrasive fellow, as well as Marie Canker. Her other roles include Queen Chrysalis and The Great and Powerful Trixie on My Little Pony: FiM, Dot Matrix on ReBoot, and inherited the Rankin-Bass version of Rudolph for a pair of feature length productions.

In a neighborhood of greedy con artists, loons who talk to 2x4s and... well, however you describe the Canker sisters, Kevin is ultimately one of the most typical kids in the cul-de-sac. In a sense, he stands out for not standing out by being over the top weird. He's the bog-standard jerk jock, but if we're being brutally honest you'd be at the end of your wits in a neighborhood like this, too, and develop your own not so great traits just as a coping mechanism. None of us were precisely perfect in our pre-teen days, after all.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Bulbasaur, #1 in the Pokedex and in many of our hearts, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT Text was originally written on a stray Razor Leaf.

Bulbasaur, or Fushigidane in the original Japanese. It's a green amphibian with dark green patches, short claws on each limb, red eyes and a large plant bulb on its back. They've got a big grin on their face and are against a diagonally oriented background of various shades of green lines.

Megumi Hayashibara, also the Japanese voice of Team Rocket's Jessie, provides the little fellow's voice in the original. For the English language dub, Tara Jayne Sands performed Bulbasaur and archival audio of her continued to serve as the voice until Michele Knotz, the current voice of several Pokémon breeds, took over.

Bulbasaur, to some fans, seems the "odd Pokémon out" of the original Kanto starters, since a lot of kids either went for Charmander (which evolved into the dragon Charizard) or Squirtle (which grew into the tank turtle Blastoise). Bulbasaur's evolution wasn't nearly as extreme seeming as the other two. But seriously... look at their adorable face! The other two are cute, sure, but this Pokémon's countenance just seems like a friendly puppy, complete with "ears" to give scritches to. What's not to love about that? This really came through in their short but adorable part in the Detective Pikachu movie. Oh yeah, and so many iconic Grass moves in the series are mainstays of this Pokémon's arsenal.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Chapultepec, assistant to Sam Bassett, is your Toon of the Day. We transcribed the ALT text from so much guitar music.

Chapultepec, on the right, a Mexican chihuahua clad in sombrero, white shirt and brown pants, holding a guitar. He's next to his partner, Sam Bassett, Hound for Hire. They're in a gondola in Venice, at the start of their next case.

Chapultepec has no voice actor, and the musician who plays his guitar sounds is uncredited to my knowledge.

It's that guitar communication that makes him so different from the numerous "ethnic sidekicks" that were all over cartoons of the 1950s and 1960s. Chapultepec never so much as speaks a single word in the Sam Bassett cartoons, he communicates through strumming his guitar and Sam just understands it. Chihuahua's being Mexican dogs, there were all kinds of ways a sombrero-clad one could have gone proverbially south in the worst possible way, but we get no accent performed by someone with no business doing it, no tropes associated with laziness, and so on. He's just a little dog with a little guitar, adding yet more quirkiness to an extremely quirky run of 13 cartoons. This is no Speedy Gonzalez where you have to trim out some of the less great aspects to make him viable today, and he's certainly nothing like the embarrassing characters found in the Dick Tracy cartoons in the 1960s. And I think that's kind of cool.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

The Gremlins from the Kremlin are your Toons of the Day, from a point in history where the enemy of our enemy wasn't necessarily our friend, but sure gave that enemy headaches. An brief exploration of 20th Century myth making and propaganda can be found in the ALT text.

Two Gremlins from the Kremlin, both purple. On the left is a tall one with a furry black bat and matching shoes and a comically long black moustache under his bulbous nose, singing dramatically. On the right, a tiny, child-like one with a couple whisps of blonde hair, innocently holding a hammer behind his back.

Mel Blanc performs the voices of the assorted gremlins in the short.

As much as they fit in with old folk monsters like trolls and goblins, gremlins are a 20th century creation of Scottish members of the Royal Air Force. It was their comical way of explaining aircraft mishaps, which spread to pilots of other parts of the UK, including author Roald Dahl. His book on the creatures caught the eye of Disney for an adaptation, one that never came to pass, but prevented this 1943 cartoon here from being called Gremlins from the Kremlin. Russian Rhapsody would just have to do for Bob Clampett.

As masterfully made a cartoon as this is, its time was VERY much 1944. Defaming and humiliating Hitler while portraying Stalin as fearsome were on the mark, but the sheer topicality of how it all goes down makes for a tough sell to modern audiences. Not to mention any instance of being pro-Stalin is, to put it one way, putting yourself on the wrong side of history. Yes, at that moment in WWII he was our ally, but let's not forget his own atrocities. Hence, the cartoon with these otherwise fun and memorable caricatures of the boys from Termite Terrace is best served as a museum piece to learn from, not something to be part of a daily rotation of classic cartoons.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Mamma-Mia! It's the many cartoon faces of Mario! He's your Toon of the Day, woo-hoo! Each ALT text has a corresponding description. Check each one, you might find a power-up!

Mario, an Italian-American man with black hair and a black moustache wearing a red cap, a matching long sleeved shirt, and denim overalls. This is his depiction in the Saturday Supercade's Donkey Kong segments from Ruby Spears, where we see him standing next to a Pauline, an attractive blonde lady in a red dress. They're standing outside a wooden house with a lit window.

Peter Cullen provided the plucky carpenter's voice (he wasn't yet a plumber when Ruby Spears picked up the license). Of course we know Mr. Cullen best as Optimus Prime, Ironhide and others on Transformers, and as one of the best known voices of Eeyore for Disney.

This is the first cartoon production to feature Mario, arguably the single most successful video game character, well, ever. It's a humble begining, doing standard cartoon slapstick while chasing a gorilla that escaped from the circus. It was one of two cartoons, alongside Q*Bert, to survive to the second season of the series. Even then folks knew this Mario guy was sticking around...

Here he is again in Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen! otherwise known in English as The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. Here he's looking at a map with his brother Luigi, depicted here as a thinner man with a different moustache from Mario's, a blue cap and overalls and a yellow shirt.

Tōru Furuya performs our plucky plumber this time. His other famous roles include Gundam's Amuro Ray, Yamcha in the Dragon Ball franchise, Tuxedo Mask for Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya's Pegasus Seiya.

To date, this movie has not been localized into English, and I'm pretty sure Nintendo won't see a need for it to happen, either. They likely don't want to compete with the feature films they're producing with Universal and Illumination. Of course, I could be wrong and have been before, but the Mario franchise has moved forward so much from this point that it feels like a funky relic more geared towards the audience it grew up with, just like...

Hey, paisanos! It's the Super Mario Brothers Super Show! Yup, Mario again, as designed by DiC, at the helm of a spaceship.

Captain Lou Albano performed Mario in animation and in live action for the syndicated series. This, to my knowledge, is Lou's only animated role. In subsequent DiC programs starring Mario on Saturday morning, the voice was picked up by Canadian actor Walker Boone.

Despite the insane popularity of now two games here in the US, the Mario cartoons continue to be such odd beasts, this time dropping the brothers and their supporting casts into parodies of popular movies, fairy tales and even actual historical events on the Super Show. On Saturday mornings, things started to resemble the games a lot more; perhaps this was a Nintendo edict?

Finally, Mario as we've seen him in the recent feature film from Illumination and Universal, here about to square off against Donkey Kong. In a sense we're full circle with where this mini-retrospective started.

Of course, Chris Pratt performs Mario here, as he would perform Garfield shortly thereafter. Sadly we never got a proper cartoon with video game voice Charles Martinet as any of the four brothers, but he did get some supporting roles including as Mario's father.

After so many adaptations that took wild diversions from the source material or were just plain goofy, we finally have a 1 to 1 conversion from video game to animated property, in fact arguably the most direct translation of a source material to date. From the blocks floating in mid-air to power ups granting powers just because they do, the movie embraces everything the games are about today wholeheartedly, even if some of it might fly over the heads of outsiders to the franchise in the process.

Speaking of power ups, have a raccoon leaf. You've earned it after reading all this!

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

This one's in honor of birthday boy Tex Avery. Red, calling out to all the wolves in the audience, is your Toon of the Day. We push the Hayes Code to the limit in the ALT text.

Red from assorted 1940s MGM cartoons directed by Tex Avery. Otherwise known as Miss Vavoom or Red Hot Riding Hood, she's a Caucasian adult woman with orange-red hair, an abbreviated shoulder less red dress, matching high heel shoes and earrings. She's calling out "Hey Pa!" in a rendition of the song Daddy as portrayed in her debut cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood.

The character almost always needed two voice actresses in her original appearances, one for spoken lines and one for singing. Sarah Berner did the majority of her spoken lines with Colleen Collins picking up her final theatrical short in 1949, while singing was provided by Connie Russell, Imogene Lynn and Ann Pickard. More recent appearances of Red have been performed by Teresa Ganzell and Grey DeLisle/Griffin.

This bombshell emerged out of an army instructional film Tex Avery was working on where a sergeant he was working under reacted much like the Wolf in her cartoons eventually did. Amazingly, the Hayes code left her alone but cut out a sequence where the Wolf and Red's Grandma had kids, due to implications of bestiality. Preston Blair's animation of this character is iconic and positively steamy for the period, making her for a time animation's sex symbol after the Fleischers had effectively retired Betty Boop after the Hayes Code had her toned down to a shadow of her former self. Numerous cartoon charmers followed in her wake, most notably Jessica Rabbit and Holli Would.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Ever skeptical, Boo-Boo Bear is your Toon of the Day. There's an obvious joke to get folks to read the ALT text, but Mr. Ranger's not going to like it.

Boo-Boo Bear, a diminutive young bear with light brown fur, a black nose and a blue bow tie. He looks like he's not gotten enough sleep.

This is one of the first massively prominent characters Don Messick gave a voice to, setting up a career that would include Scooby-Doo, Papa Smurf and Hampton J. Pig. After his passing, the role would pass to performers including Billy West, Jeff Bergman, Tom Kenny, Victor Yerrid and CH Greenblatt. In the live action/CGI hybrid movie, Justin Timberlake made many animation fans' jaws drop with his uncanny impression of the original voice.

You'd think sidekicks are supposed to be helpful, but Boo-Boo (at least within the confines of Jellystone Park), but there are times you get the sense Boo-Boo just wants Yogi to leave well enough alone and just have some nuts and berries like other bears. But other times he's perfectly happy to enjoy the feast out of a pic-a-nic basket. There's an ambiguity to Boo-Boo in that sense, as well as an ambiguity to his age. Is he a kid, or a short grown-up? In Yogi's Ark Lark, he's amongst the other kid animals, but he's clearly an adult on the more modern Jellystone show. Some mysteries need more than a group of meddling kids to solve, I guess...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Shonen Red is here to stop evil wherever it's found! Or at least they are in the play our Toon of the Day, Kohran Ri, is starring in as that character. She told me this ALT text won't explode... this time.

Sakura Taisen's Kohran Li, or Ri depending on how it's been Romanized, shown here dressed as Shonen Red, a pulp action hero with a red mask and gloves on a black uniform with yellow highlights. Her trademark purple hair, braided in the back, normally isn't modified for the part.

Yuriko Fuchizaki provides Kohran's voice in the games and anime adaptations. Her other career highlights include Anthy in Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sig in the Puyo Puyo games, and Kaori in the landmark feature film Akira. Kohran's English dub voice actresses have included Bonnie Hester, Samantha Inoue-Harte and Dorothy Ellis-Fahn.

She's not the most well-known pick for the first genki girl scientist type; gals like Washu from Tenchi Muyo come to mind for one if you want someone whose work comically blows up in their face with a good amount of airtime in both the US and Japan, for starters. Kohran stands out, though, for her acting talents. This role pictured here, Shonen Red, reoccurs several times in the games and anime, and lets Kohran show a more heroic side that would otherwise be mostly done from within her mecha (Koubu in the franchise).

Here's a more typical depiction of Kohran, wearing her rounded glasses and a red cheongsam with yellow trim.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

The Number One Dime is never safe when the Toon of the Day, Magica De Spell, is on the loose! Read the ALT Text with your best faux Eastern European accent, or Italian if you're more of a comics Magica fan.

Magica De Spell, a white-feathered duck with black hair and purple eyeshadow, wearing a black dress with red collars and a red amulet. Her appearance is inspired by actresses Sophia Loren and Gina Lollabridga Perched on her finger is her brother Poe, who was transformed into a raven. She's seen laughing against a picturesque Duckburg park backgrop.

Magica's original performer is June Foray, who used a version of her Natasha Fatale voice to perform the sorceress. In the 2017 series, Catherine Tate gives her an English accent...

... and neither of those match the original text of the Carl Barks comics, where she's Italian. Indeed, Magica changes a lot from version to version. In the original comics, she's from the Mount Vesuvius region and wants to melt Scrooge's #1 Dime in its lava to forge the metal into an amulet which would give her the Midas Touch. This carries over into the 1987 cartoon, but in 2017...

... we get a very different Magica, with green feathers and a different shaped dress with purple accessories, hair highlights, and a big amethyst in her staff. This version's physical body is trapped in the dime, and Scrooge is accidentally responsible for Poe's raven transformation. Fitting for the more serialized 2017 series, Magica's arc spans several episodes of subterfuge and manipulation in the first season, and the danger she poses never truly ends, either.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Mussel Mutt of the Houndcats is your Toon of the Day. Enjoy the ALT Text with a sandwich topped with sardines, chopped liver, salami, pickles, sour cream, sauerkraut and chocolate syrup.

Mussel Mutt, an Old English Sheepdog with shaggy fur over his eyes, a yellow short, blue vest, blue pork pie hat, pants and a belt. He's in front of a mountain in an American Southwest setting.

Aldo Ray, a veteran actor by the time he took this role, is your voice actor. His gravelly tough guy voice is perfect for the part, but his best known voice work by a large margin is Sullivan on Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH.

The Houndcats was one the first DePatie-Freleng productions conceived by Scooby-Doo creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and it's their best of the bunch by a longshot, a topic we'll get into on a future post. Mussel Mutt here is an expression of the "ridiculous appetite" comedy the duo did with Shaggy and Scooby, including the sandwich concoction listed in the main post. Calling him the "dumb muscle" oversimplifies the character; he's not bright, but still quick enough on the uptake to keep up with the wildly complex missions and schemes the Houndcats get up to.

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Reposted by Toon of the Day

Jeff Harris @nemalki.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

You ought to know Leo D. Sullivan, a pioneering animator who worked on iconic shows like Beany and Cecil, Fat Albert, The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Transformers, My Little Pony, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs and inspired & guided generations of animators. A great legacy. #BlackHistoryMonth

Beany and Cecil (Bob Clampett Productions, 1962), the first series Leo D. Sullivan worked on moving from cel polisher to artist to animator. He worked on dozens of series for various studios for 60 years, including Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, DIC, Marvel, and Warner Bros.

Hey, Hey, Hey, it's Fat Albert (Vignette Films, 1969) Leo D. Sullivan co-founded Vignette Films in 1966, along with Floyd Norman, Richard Allen, and Norm Edelen. As the first Black-owned animation studio, Vignette worked on various projects including a series dedicated to Black history and an adaptation of comedian Bill Cosby's stories about his childhood and one football game involving a kid lovingly named Fat Albert. Mr. Sullivan would also work on 1972's Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids for Filmation.

Soul Train (Don Cornelius Productions, 1971). The very first incarnation of the Soul Train was animated by Leo Sullivan. While not the familiar design most generations know (that was created by James Smith, who I'll talk about later), this incarnation of the Soul Train had character, power, and, of course, soul.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

"The mayor's on line two, First Bank of New York has what sounds like poltergeists, and you still haven't approved my vacation time, Peter. This Toon of the Day thing better come with a raise." More about Janine Melnitz in the ALT text.

Janine Melnitz, an adult Caucasian woman with stylish red hair, a pink blouse, short blue skirt, angular glasses, long gold earrings and a similarly colored beaded necklace. She's sitting on a staircase looking up from the magazine with a skeptical expression.

In the first two seasons of The Real Ghostbusters, Laura Summer voices the blunt secretary, but the switch was made to Kath Soucie for the third to soften her edges. When the franchise was revived as Extreme Ghostbusters, Pat Musick took up the role.

The changes made to Janine were some of the most noticeable to the franchise as ABC-hired consultants Q5 sought to make the Real Ghostbusters more kid friendly. The story goes that her personality was found to be too abrasive and her pointy glasses were considered "too scary for kids." So around the third season (the second on ABC, but still third overall thanks to the syndicated episodes) her edges were figuratively and literally rounded and her role was more of a caregiver than previously. This gets addressed in the episode "Janine, You've Changed," but doesn't get reversed. By that point, Q5 had done so much damage to the show that reversing the changes would have merely been a silver lining in a grey cloud of severe kiddification.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

The original incarnation of Perfuma from the She-Ra franchise is your Toon of the Day. We hope you go into your day giving as many F's as she is while leading a Horde Trooper conga line through the Fright Zone. Stop and smell the flowers as you read the ALT text.

Perfuma, a blonde Caucasian (or Etherian equivalent) woman wearing a pink shoulder-less dress and matching earrings and flower-shaped headpiece. She's leading a conga line of the robotic Horde Troopers through the Fright Zone, all of which have been decorated with enough flowers to open floral boutiques in all the major cities of the Northwestern United States.

Our "Scent-Sational Flower Maiden" is voiced by Ericka Scheimer, whose other voices on this show included Loo-Kee, Flutterina, Queen Angella and Peek-a-Blue, as well as other voices throughout the Filmation catalog.

Your admin must have been an aberration amongst the boys of my era, because I happily watched She-Ra's cartoon. It was more adventures in a setting I was already invested in via the He-Man cartoons, just with new characters, and a good portion of the cast were being sold in the "boys toys" line anyway. But of all the episodes of that show, this one stood out to me for how outlandishly different and funny it was. Perfuma does not give a single rat's patooie about the danger she's in as Hordak's hostage. She breaks out of her jail cell with little effort, and just starts creating flowers without a single care in the world! By the time she starts this conga line where she's even got the Horde Troopers singing along with her, I was rolling on the floor. And then the show did practically nothing with her after this; a background cameo in season 2, and a speaking part in the Christmas special, and that was that. Did the writers think they harvested all the comedy they could from this character, or was selling her toy a lower priority to those of the main cast?

Discussion of her Netflix continuity incarnation will be a separate post another day; as with much of the She-Ra cast, they're very different beasts with their own trappings to go over.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Call her Muffins, or Ditzy, or Derpy, or whatever name you give her, this unusual pony is the Toon of the Day. The ALT text doesn't know what went wrong...

Officially named Muffins, but this My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic character has been given names ranging from Derpy Hooves to Ditzy Doo to Bubbly Mare to Party Filly to Lazy Fan. Whatever you call her, she's a grey female Pegasus with yellow eyes and blonde hair, with a "cutie mark" of a trio of bubbles on her flank. She's in a post office, sheepishly offering muffins to a frustrated Cranky Doodle Dandy.

Tabitha St. Germain voices this very silly pony. The first go-round in the episode The Last Roundup, she thought the character was male, and came up with a voice with a kid neighbor in mind. When the episode was redubbed, she was provided with a more feminine voice, which the character has retained since. Why the redub? Well...

THERE'S BEEN SO MUCH ADO OVER THIS CHARACTER!! In the very first episode, her cross-eyed expression and scrunched up mouth was there as a gag the animators hid in a background layer, and wound up going into the foreground. A unintended fanbase of internet savvy 20-somethings, after an article bemoaning Lauren Faust working on a toy tie-in show, tuned into the series and latched onto this goofball and gave her the name Derpy Hooves. This just grew and grew until she was given a speaking role and the fandom name in the Roundup episode. Then came the backlash of people thinking the name and voice were intended to mock those with disabilities, since "Derpy" hasn't always been used in a flattering sense, to put it one way. So she got redubbed with a more clearly feminine voice, and the Derpy name was omitted. All that fuss starting with something the animators did to amuse themselves...

Today, she's named Muffins, from a throwaway line in a different Season 1 episode, Applebuck Season, but your Admin always liked the name "Dizzy Hooves" as a replacement.

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Reposted by Toon of the Day

Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Nasty Canasta, wanted for robbery, rustling and square dance calling, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text is aiming to fix his little red wagon...

Nasty Canasta, pictured on the right, a towering Caucasian western outlaw of unique proportions. His eyes are sunken and red, he has messy black hair and a matching moustache and goatee, and though his chest, arms and neck are powerfully built, his legs are comically short. He wears a brown cowboy hat with a light blue band across it, a black bandanna on his neck, a blue collared shirt unbuttoned to show some of his chest hair, jeans and black shoes with spurs. He's aiming a pistol at Daffy Duck, clad in a white sheriff's outfit with badge.

In his first two appearances, Canasta is performed by Looney Tunes' vocal genius Mel Blanc. In his third, final Golden age appearance Daws Butler took up the role opposite Mel as Bugs Bunny. Future appearances starting in the 1990s would be done by Jim Cummings, Eric Bauza, Greg Burson and most frequently Kevin Michael Richardson.

Canasta's best-known appearances are opposite Daffy and Porky in Drip-Along Daffy and My Little Duckaroo, where he's a menacing figure whose stillness gives him some comedic effect even from the first impression. Opposite Bugs Bunny in Barbary Coast Bunny, however, he undergoes a dramatic shift in personality, putting him more in line with the sorts of characters Bugs outwits on a regular basis. The prior characterization opposite Daffy is the one that would reoccur in future appearances, notably on Duck Dodgers and the feature film Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Nasty Canasta, wanted for robbery, rustling and square dance calling, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text is aiming to fix his little red wagon...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Heero Yuy, of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing fame, is your Toon of the Day. If you send the ALT text an invitation to your party, it won't rip it up and say it's going to kill you. It's not real. Your admin's a little sick in the head the way he keeps humanizing it, really.

Heero Yuy, protagonist of Gundam Wing. A teenager with brown hair, blue eyes, a light blue flight suit and a stern expression on his face.

Hikaru Midorikawa is his Japanese VA, and he has hundreds of credits to his name but the one that jumped out to your Admin is Mitsuhide Akechi in the Samurai Warriors games. In English, Mark Hildreth dubbed the character; Mark is also known for dubbing Terry Bogard in the three animated projects during Fatal Fury's heyday. In gaming, Heero would be voiced in English by Louis Chirillo and Brian Drummond.

Heero is a complicated character with a twisting and turning story, standing in stark contrast from many of the other Gundam protagonists. He's utilitarian to a fault, focused on his mission to a degree that he thinks nothing of swiping the parts from an ally just to get airborne. He's also painfully stern in combat, save for those laughing fits when he completes his assigned task. While I haven't watched all the Wing materials, the sheer number of times he and Relena are pulled together and apart all while surrounded by war, devastation and chaos... it's all a departure from so much of Gundam media, where the core message usually tends to be somewhere between "buy our model kits" and "stuff blows up real good."

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Trixie, the love interest and genuinely helpful lady fair of Speed Racer, is your Toon of the Day. As always, check out the ALT text!

Trixie from Speed Racer, or Michi Shimura in the original Japanese broadcasts of Mach GoGoGo. She's a brown haired, brown eyed teenage girl wearing a pink blouse with a red "M" emblazoned on it. She's standing in a cute pose with one finger pointing up and a playful expression on her face.

The very first four episodes of Mach GoGoGo saw her voiced by Yashiko Matsuo, but after that, Michiko Nomura would perform her for the rest of the 55-episode run. Michiko also performed the title character in the 1975 series Maya the Bee. In English, Trixie is performed by Corrine Orr, who also voiced Spritle and contributed her pipes to the... memorable Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero. And yes, she'd be portrayed in live action by Christina Ricci.

Especially rare for her time period, Trixie was not a damsel in distress or a useless hanger on. She acted as Speed's spotter in the races via piloting a helicopter and held her own in hand-to-hand combat. Of course, she also had a jealous streak to her, but not one your admin would call all-consuming; she's more than happy to set that aside in The Car Hater, for example. All told, a pretty well rounded character!

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Heigh-Ho! Doc, the de facto leader of the Seven Dwarfs, is your Toon of the Day. Have fun ALTing the read text, uh, I mean reading the ALT text!

Doc, a bespectacled dwarf with a short grey beard, an olive green stocking cap, red shirt with brass buttons and the sleeves rolled up, and a black belt with brass buckle. He's admiring a diamond at a table filled with sacks and trays of freshly mined gems against a cavernous backdrop.

Roy Atwell performs Doc in the film, though it was almost Eddie Holden or, even more divergent from the voice we did get, Billy Bletcher who is best known for Peg-Leg Pete for Disney and Pa Bear of Chuck Jones' take on that old fairy tale. Atwell himself had been acting since 1914, and was used to the mixed-up delivery of words that was Doc's trademark. Numerous well known voice performers like Stan Freeberg, Hal Smith, Jim Cummings and Bill Farmer have done the role for other projects, and the current official Doc is Andre Sogliuzzo. Wesley Tuttle provided his yodeling for the film.

In your admin's opinion, Doc utters the line in the movie that has aged to a point where it's an unintentional parental bonus. We're prepared for it with his other spoken sequence slip-ups like "The lits light! Er, the lights lit!" and such, but when he finally encounters Snow White, he asks here "What are you and who are you doing??" I'm not up on my 1930s slang so I don't know if "doing" translated to what we understand it in sense of physical relationships in 1937, but it sure did by the time I saw this movie for the first time in the 1990s and it caught my sister, myself and our mutual friend by surprise.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

You've probably noticed this account doubles as advertising for your admin's podcast project. Therefore, against my better taste, Sarge from Bailey's Comets is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text is not the next clue to a million-dollar prize.

Sarge from Bailey's Comets, a Caucasian woman with short red hair, red lips, and wearing a roller derby jersey and skating helmet. She stands outside a Transylvanian manor at nighttime. In this scene she's in the middle of telling teammate Bunny that the latter just poked someone's nose instead of ringing a doorbell.

Kathy Gori supplied Sarge's voice. Her other credits include Laurie on Inch High Private Eye, Katie Butler for Valley of the Dinosaurs, and Rosemary the police phone operator on Hong Kong Phooey.

When your admin was watching this show for the podcast he produces, he didn't find much to like, but Sarge at least stood out for not being a typical female archetype of the early 70s era. She's not falling into the four Josie categories of standard likeable girl (Josie), the smart one (Valerie), the dumb one (Melody) or the jealous troublemaker (Alexandria). Instead she's the team motivator on Bailey's Comets, and speaks with a gruff, drill sargeant-like voice that you'd imagine Peppermint Patty having as a teenager. For its time this stood out, especially on a show where VERY LITTLE ELSE stood out from the massive pack of characters who mostly didn't even have individual names! For that, Sarge, you at least get a little respect from me.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

In memory of Hanna Barbera artist and designer Jerry Eisenberg, his co-creation Peter Potamus is your Toon of the Day. Did you get that ALT text I sent you?

Peter Potamus, a purple cartoon hippo wearing a white safari jacket held by a dark grey belt, and a yellow pith helmet. He's accompanied by So-So, a monkey with a blue shirt and darker blue backwards cap. They're standing next to a sign for a Rotary Club apparently in Egypt, if the pyramid in the background is any indication.

Daws Butler used his Joe E. Brown impression for the original Peter Potamus cartoons, the same voice he used for Lippy the Lion. In appearances on Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Joe Alaskey and later Chris Edgerly would take on the reinvented role. He'd be reinvented again for Jellystone and be voiced by that series' creator CH Greenblatt.

You'll note that word, reinvention. Peter Potamus was a B-tier player among the Hanna Barbera funny animal characters; his show was the 6th (or thereabouts) bundle of shorts about these sorts of casts that the company produced and you could kind of tell the writing was wearing thin on them. He'd pop up as a supporting character on Yogi's Gang and then for cameos here and there, until the late 1990s when the Harvey Birdman team successfully reinvented him as a lecherous scuzzball lawyer with the ambiguous catchphrase "Did you get that thing I sent you?" The second reinvention was even further from the original than that, humorously casting Peter as a socially awkward Otaku. I can't imagine these drastic changes happening to, say, Doggy Daddy or Snagglepuss, far more prolific characters whose personalities are much more entrenched in cultural memory. If there's a lesson in this, it's about taking chances with an established property: the less beloved, the greater the chance you can take?

There's got to be a better way to articulate that...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Ms. Keane, who has been part of the Powerpuff Girls since at least the first What a Cartoon Short, is your Toon of the Day. Class, turn your (corrected) ALT textbooks to page 79.

Ms. Keane (named for artist Margaret Keane) from the Powerpuff Girls, a Caucasian woman with blue eyes, black hair done in a reverse bob, an orange short, red vest, brown pants and red shoes. She's standing in front of a classroom chalkboard with upper and lower-case letters written on it.

In her appearance on the first What a Cartoon short, "Meet Fuzzy Lumpkins," she's performed by Kath Soucie, who also performed Phil and Lil on Rugrats and Dexter's Mom on Dexter's Laboratory. Since then, for both American series and the theatrical movie, Jennifer Hale has voiced her, along with Sedusa on both shows and Princess Morbucks in the first series, in addition to her other credits including numerous Marvel Comics adaptations. Her Anime/Z incarnation is voiced by Tomoko Akiya in Japan and dubbed in English by Tabitha St. Germain.

Teaching grades K-6 in the United States is a demanding job; you're effectively babysitting kids by the dozens, and teaching them subjects ranging from basic history to times tables to good social skills while their level of receptiveness is variable under the best of circumstances. Ms. Keane is the platonic ideal of a great kindergarten teacher: patient, intelligent and willing to admit her mistakes, all good qualities when your class is host to 6-year-old superheroes. Admittedly, though, the fiasco when Mitch was left to take care of the class pet hamster could have been avoided...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

We're having technical difficulties, specifically PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). The Toon of the Day will be reposted, correctly this time, later today when your Admin is less irritated at himself.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Today's Toon of the Day isn't an individual character but an archetype, The Frank Nelson-Esque, aka the guy who says "EEEE-Yeeeeeessssss??" Do we have ALT text explaining this? OH, DO WE!!!

Let's start here, with one of the most mainstream versions from The Simpsons. Simply referred to in scripts as "The Yes Guy" this balding, heavyset man in a blue suit with white collard shirt, red tie and boutonnière, and a pencil thin moustache pops up every now and again, to the point where Homer (pictured right) could just refer to him as "That Annoying Guy Who Always Says "EEE-Yeeeessssss!" Usually he's spotted in the Costington's Department Store as a salesman, but he just pops up here and there much like the original Fank Nelson character on the Jack Benny Show did. Indeed, this character is also very much in Frank's likeness.

Dan Castellaneta voices this fellow, alongside his numerous other roles on the show, but if we dig deeper, the Frank Nelson-Esque has a much longer history. Click on over to the next image for more!

Often times, they'd be performed by Frank Nelson himself, like this greasy hotel clerk in Hawaii on the special Garfield in Paradise. He has a brother stateside who works as a salesman, also voiced by Nelson. This would be his final role before his passing in 1986, and he still sounded great even at that point.

Frank Nelson also voiced this take on the Devil in The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, where his sending back Yosemite Sam to the mortal world to knock off Bugs so the rabbit can take Sam's place in the Home For Infinite Losers acts as the framing device for clips of some of the best-known Bugs and Sam cartoons. In this one, Frank subverts his most famous line; when Sam asks if he's in Dallas on account of the heat, the Devil practically coos "Nooooooo... but you're close!"

Just for a point of comparison, here's the real-life Frank Nelson on The Jack Benny Show. After his passing, Dan's The Yes Man on the Simpsons would be far from the only homage to his distinctive delivery. Some of them, like Estroy from Evil Con Carne, are just significant enough to merit their own Toon of the Day entries. Some others, like the various hippos who adopted his mannerisms on Disney's Talespin voiced by Jack Angel, are less likely. I suppose if you want to get technical about it, this whole entry might as well be for The Yes Guy himself, but I wanted to talk about the sheer number of times Nelson's mannerisms have popped up in animation, either by himself or by others.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

We've done a few mostly silent characters so far, but none made it look as cool as today's Toon of the Day, the Pink Panther. The ALT text is best enjoyed with a soundtrack inspired by Henri Mancini.

The Pink Panther, who is essentially just that, a cartoon panther with pink fur. He's striking a debonair pose against a purple background.

The few times this character speaks, it's usually been for a punchline. Rich Little was the first in 1965's Sink Pink, then Mel Blanc would supply some yelps here and there in the next couple of years. A new series of shorts starting in 1993 had the Panther speaking courtesy of Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer, then Michael Sinterniklaas would do that iteration's voice for a pair of computer games.

Friz Freleng and David DePatie just stumbled into this smash hit of a character, from the sound of the known history. Their firm was intended to do graphic illustration for commercials when they were contracted by United Artists to make a title sequence for their movie about a jewel heist. They anthropomorphized the name of the diamond, the Pink Panther, into what would eventually evolve into the character you see above this text, and while the movie was a hit, especially the Peter Sellers character Inspector Clouseau, people kept going back to theaters to watch the opening sequence and that hip cat. Suddenly Friz was back in the theatrical animation business, and with a hit this big, why not!

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

We've done a few mostly silent characters so far, but none made it look as cool as today's Toon of the Day, the Pink Panther. The ALT text is best enjoyed with a soundtrack inspired by Henri Mancini.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Cue the cavalry horns! It's Odie, your Toon of the Day! Today's ALT text came in with 47.3 fluid ounces of slobber. Took us a bit to clean it off, but we did it.

Odie, a yellow beagle dog with brown ears, a black nose, huge eyes, a black patch of fur on his side, a black tail and a tongue easily as big as any of his limbs.

In the majority of Odie's appearances he's voiced by Greg Berger, also known for Orson Pig in the sister franchise US Acres (or Orson's Farm depending on your region) and mighty Grimlock on the Transformers. In the 2004 live action movie, Frank Welker supplied the barks where necessary, while last years' CGI movie had Harvey Guillén in the role.

It should surprise no one that in a comic strip centered around a cat, the canine character embodies the "dumb dog" stereotype to a comical degree. You could run a whole year of comic strips based on the pranks, tricks and kicks in the posterior he's been on the receiving end of from Garfield and not have a single repeat, since the strip has been going on for over 40 years now. Still, similarly to Olive Oyl's fickleness which we described a few days ago on this page, Odie only tends to be as dumb as the story being told needs him to be. In A Garfield Christmas he's genuinely resourceful and clever, and Jim Davis is an experienced enough writer of gag comics that he knows exactly the right time to subvert expectations where Odie's intelligence is concerned.

Still... Odie. A dog named Odie. A blimp named Hindenberg, a ship named Titanic, a car named Edsil...

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Valerie Brown from Josie & the Pussycats is your Toon of the Day. Find out more about the twists and turns leading up to her animated debut in the ALT text!

Valerie Brown, as depicted in Hanna Barbera's Josie & the Pussycats cartoon. An African-American woman wearing red lipstick, a lilac collared shirt with a purple dress and matching belt over it. She's holding an active remote control at this particular moment.

Valerie actually has two voice performers. For speaking likes, actress and costume designer Barbara Pariot performed the character. Her singing voice was supplied by singer and "You've Made Me So Very Happy" songwriter Patrice Holloway, and it's her voice you hear singing the theme song for the show.

Patrice was cast for the singing by record producer Danny Janssen to reflect the cast of the comics as they were in the most recent issues Archie Comics were publishing, but allegedly somewhere Hanna Barbera didn't pick up on all the changes that were being done and cast another character from the comics, Pepper, in the cartoon instead of Valerie. There was intended to be a live action component to the series, and HB wanted Patrice recast with a white actress. Danny held firm, saying Patrice was the best vocalist they could get for the sound HB was after, so the animation company relented and replaced Pepper with Valerie. It complicated matters for the animators, but the sessions musicians for the series took notice of the stand Janssen took for a Black vocalist and worked for scale. Sadly the live action segments never materialized, but we still got the first ever leading Black woman in an animated series out of the whole thing, which is no small deal.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Calamity Coyote, kid genius of the Tiny Toons set, is your Toon of the Day. I wonder how many of those signs it would take to transcribe the ALT text onto...

Calamity Coyote, a grey... well, canine with long ears, bushy eyebrows and a cute red nose. Not pictured are his stylish running shoes.

Calamity is mute 98% of the time we see him in the series, communicating by holding up signs. In the rare instances where he does speak, he's performed by Frank Welker using a sophisticated Southern accent, as a contrast to the upper class intellectual voice Wile E. Coyote was given when put opposite Bugs Bunny.

In the lead-up to the series debut, Calamity was a front and center character in advertisements (at least the one your Admin saw as a kid), but spent much of his time on the show as a supporting character. Apparently Chuck Jones wasn't a fan, calling him and a pair of other characters inspired by Chuck's own some very unflattering terms. I've made my case for why Chuck was wrong before on my podcast, but to reiterate, "This little fellow is distinct from Wile E in that he’s so, SO much more sympathetic; his design and the fact that his bad luck extends past pursuing a prey animal endeared this character to a lot of people, myself included. And as a mostly silent, intelligent, relatable character with both virtues and faults, he’s a generally positive and fun neurodivergent-coded character, whether that was the team’s intention or not. I hope I get the chance to meet Tom Ruegger and tell him that."

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

OOOOH YEAH! Rasslor, voiced by the cream of the crop that always rises to the top, is your Toon of the Day, yeah! The ALT text is nigh unbeatable, DIG IT!

Rasslor, from the Dial M for Monkey segments of Dexter's Laboratory. He's a turquoise skinned, muscular male alien with long, curly white hair, a purple wrestling mask with gold accents, lilac-colored trunks and white tape on his wrists and palms. He's just discarded a purple cape with white fur trim. This is all against the backdrop of a wrestling wring in a packed outdoor arena at night.

In his single, but memorable appearance, Rasslor was voiced by real life professional wrestler and Slim Jim spokesperson Randy Poffo, aka "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Savage has also contributed his distinctly growling voice to Whatever Happened to Robot Jones, King of the Hill, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and the Disney feature film Bolt.

Rasslor's episode is an homage to the comic book Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7, where TotD alumni The Thing was joined by several other powerhouse characters to battle the cosmic gladiator The Champion. The titular Monkey who you apparently Dial M For took the role the Thing had in that issue, where one competitor kept getting up and the alien antagonist realized that his spirit could never be crushed. Coincidentally, though, while Rasslor couldn't defeat Monkey, the seeds for his segments' replacement were sown right here, as the other heroes gathered were the Justice Friends, all making their first appearance in the series. They'd take the B feature segment over from Dial M for Monkey in short order. Talk about slipping on your own banana peel.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

The dame that launched a thousand brawls, Olive Oyl, is your Toon of the Day. Today's ALT text is dedicated to @choochoobear.bsky.social

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Thing ring, do your thing! Yeah, the F4 teaser looks great, but I can't help but be a wiseass. The Thing, in any form, is your Toon of the Day. The ALT text ain't a revoltin' development, that's for sure...

Benjy Grimm, a young white male in a blue long sleeved shirt, white undershirt with a collar, orange pants, blue socks and brown shoes. He stands in front of his heroic alter ego, The Thing, the classic, ever lovin' idol of millions from the pages of Marvel's Fantastic Four comics. Thing's an orange rock monster with blue trunks, but most of you knew that.

This iteration of the character is voiced by two performers: Benjy is Wayne Morton in his most prolific role, while The Thing is voiced by character actor Joe Baker, who would go on to voice a supporting character in another comics-based property, "Bad Luck" Hula Hula in Ruby Spears' Plastic Man cartoons. Paul Frees would be the first to voice the Thing, with other subsequent voice actors taking up the role for animated projects including Ted Cassidy, Chuck McCann, Brian Dobson, David Boat and Fred Tatasciore.

So I picked this version of The Thing for just how wild this all turned out. The previous year, DePatie-Freleng had ran their own Fantastic Four cartoon on NBC, infamously swapping out the Human Torch for Herbie the Robot thanks to Universal holding Johhny Storm's rights. Fred Silverman, NBC's head of children's programming, wanted a cartoon from Hanna-Barbera about a kid with a magic ring who transformed into something famous and recognizable. Hanna Barbera turned to Marvel and asked for the Thing, having already done the prior, 1967 Fantastic Four cartoon. Meanwhile, the D-F F4 was cancelled, since Silverman apparently hated it, so I can imagine his surprise when he wound up with another show featuring a wildly different take on one of the exact same characters, only paired up with new Flintstone short subjects.

Animation history is SO FUN, man!

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

It's the Toon of the Day Swimsuit Special featuring Daggett! Here he is wearing the "inflexible fabric up to the armpits" style, a very daring choice. Don't be a spoot-head, read to ALT text for more.

Daggett of the Angry Beavers, the younger of the two by a matter of seconds. He's a brown furred beaver with a pointy red nose, buck teeth in the front and sharp fangs along the rear of his mouth. He's seen here standing next to a volleyball on the beach while other folks look at him in frustration.

Dagg is of course voiced by Richard Horvitz, well known for Invader Zim, Billy of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Rez from Psychonauts and Kaos from the Skylanders games.

I could talk about his rather unpredictable temper, his funny howl when he soars through the air after another mishap, his alter ego of "Muscular Beaver! (WOOOSH!)" and so on, but I want to talk about how freaking silly this swimsuit is. You see, Daggett is a very elastic, mobile, reactive character, in keeping with the exaggerated movements typical in Nicktoons that weren't made by Klasky Csupo. But in contrast, whenever the show requires him to wear swimwear, it's these trunks, which NEVER MOVE. They're completely static, no matter how much Daggett moves, gesticulates or what have you. It's such a wonderful bit of random humor that can only happen in a cartoon.

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Toon of the Day @toonoftheday.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Dopey, a beloved pantomime character, is your Toon of the Day. He don't talk none, but the ALT text talks plenty!

Dopey, a bald male dwarf with blue eyes, as depicted in Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. He's wearing an oversized green coat held closed with a belt and with a grey patch on one arm, and a purple stocking cap also too large for him. He's holding a candle as he climbs the stairs to investigate an intruder.

While known as a silent character who was inspired by Harpo Marx, he does yelp and blubber a bit here and there. These vocal effects were provided by Eddie Collins, while the hiccups were done by Pinto Colvig. Frank Welker would do sounds for the character, as well as the assorted forest animals, for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train attraction at the Magic Kingdom.

Arguably tied for most popular dwarf in the film with Grumpy, Dopey is the center of many of the best slapstick and sight gags in it. Him and Sneezy teaming up to dance with Snow White gives them both a chance to put their traits to good comedic use, which has been recreated in the parks as one of its most memorable parade-exclusive costumed characters. In fact, Dopey is often the Dwarf called upon to represent the group as a whole for large theme park shows featuring multiple Disney franchises. Pretty good for someone without a lot to say, huh?

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