List of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters


The Warner Bros comedies Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes feature a range of characters which are listed and briefly detailed here in this article.

List

This is a list of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters.
For the list of characters who are featured in the 2020 series see List of Looney Tunes Cartoons characters.
Rocky and Mugsy are animated cartoon characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. They were created by Friz Freleng.

Biography

As an animator, Friz Freleng enjoyed creating new adversaries for Warners' star Bugs Bunny, since he felt that Bugs' other nemeses, such as Beaky Buzzard and Elmer Fudd, were too stupid to give the rabbit any real challenge. Considered revolutionary for almost all of the late 1940s though he might have been, Freleng's own Yosemite Sam had not yet been proven capable of fully fulfilling his creator's intentions. Freleng introduced two of these more formidable opponents as a pair of gangsters in the 1946 film Racketeer Rabbit. In the film, Bugs decides to find himself a new home, but the one he chooses is unfortunately occupied by a duo of bank robbers. The characters here are called "Rocky" and "Hugo". Both gangsters are performed by the Warner studio's longtime chief voice actor, Mel Blanc.

Appearances

Freleng liked the mobster idea, and he used the concept again in the 1950 short Golden Yeggs. This time, it is Porky Pig and Daffy Duck who run afoul of the mob, only this time Rocky has not only one sidekick, but an entire gang. Freleng also redesigned Rocky for this short, making him a more generalized caricature of the "tough guy" gangster rather than Robinson in particular. Freleng used several of the same techniques that would make Sam, his other Bugs villain, such a humorous character: despite Rocky's tough-guy demeanor, everlasting cigar and foppish gangster dress, he really is little more than a dwarf in a much-too-large hat.
In 1953's Catty Cornered, Freleng set the mob against another of his comic duos, Sylvester and Tweety Bird. Gang leader Rocky, this time aided and abetted by a hulking simpleton named "Nick", kidnaps Tweety Bird, and when Sylvester's bumbling predations accidentally free the bird, the poor puss is hailed as a hero.
The duo reappear in 1954's Bugs and Thugs, this time in the form that Freleng would keep them in for the rest of their run. Rocky is aided by a new thug, "Mugsy". Although his body type is similar to that of Nick's, he has less hair and is even less intelligent. Before the Warner studio closed for good in January 1965, Rocky and Mugsy would appear in two more Freleng cartoons: Bugsy and Mugsy and The Unmentionables. Mugsy also appears without his boss in a cameo as one of Napoleon Bonaparte's guards in the 1956 Freleng short Napoleon Bunny-Part and also appeared as a bank robber in Satan's Waitin.
Rocky and Mugsy have also appeared in various Looney Tunes-related merchandise. They are semi-regular characters in Looney Tunes comic books, for example. They also play the villains in the 2002 Xbox video game ', a vs. fighting game in which the no-good gangsters attempt to run a film studio into the ground so that they can buy up the stock for next to nothing. Also, in Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, the pair are bosses of the 1930s era. They also appeared in episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries and Duck Dodgers, as well as made cameo appearances in the movie Space Jam. In the movie they are spotted wearing rabbit's ears and are shown shocked and terrified when Bugs gets crushed by a Monstar named Pound who was meant to crush Lola, because he and the other Monstars are violating the game which they should immediately lose. Both of them also appeared as kids in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.
In Loonatics Unleashed, Stoney and Bugsy were brief descendants of Rocky and Mugsy who adopted Pinkster Pig.
Rocky and Mugsy recently made cameos in The Looney Tunes Show''. In "It's a Handbag", Rocky and Mugsy's pictures were seen in the police's notebook. They were also seen in the Merrie Melodies segment "Stick to My Guns", sung by Yosemite Sam in the episode "Mrs. Porkbunny's" where Yosemite Sam mentions how he declared his vendetta on the Mafia when Sam threw a garbage can into their house. Around the end of the song, Rocky and Mugsy joined in on the final verse with Nasty Canasta, an angry bride, a female cannibal, a grizzly bear, and Toro the Bull.

Shorts

Rocky and Mugsy are parodied in the South Park characters Nathan and Mimsy in the episode "Crippled Summer", Nathan having been introduced in the earlier episode Up the Down Steroid. Throughout the episode's storylines, with various campers being parodies of other Looney Tunes characters, Nathan attempts to arrange fatal accidents for Jimmy Valmer which get ruined by Mimsy 's stupidity. Nathan and Mimsy become reoccurring characters following their return appearance in the episode "Handicar". A poster depicting Rocky and Mugsy can be seen on the wall of Nathan's room.

Blacque Jacque Shellacque

Blacque Jacque Shellacque is a fictional cartoon character in the Looney Tunes cartoons. He was created by Robert McKimson and Tedd Pierce, and first appeared in the 1959 Merrie Melodies short Bonanza Bunny set in the Klondike of 1896. Maurice LaMarche voiced the character from 2011-2014 in The Looney Tunes Show. The character was the inspiration for a specific version of five card draw poker mixed with blackjack named "Blacque Jacque Shellacque" in which the pot is divided between the winning poker hand and the winning blackjack hand. If everyone loses in blackjack, the winning poker hand takes all.
Like many of other Bugs Bunny's enemies, Blacque Jacque Shellacque is a male with a foreign accent and a beard, playing into a character trope of evil un-American foreigners with facial hair. While similar in many ways to Yosemite Sam—both are short in stature and temper—Blacque Jacque possesses his own unique characteristics, not the least of which is his comically thick French Canadian accent, performed by Mel Blanc. Also, like Yosemite Sam and many other villains, Blacque Jacque Shellacque does not have a high level of intelligence, preferring to use force instead of strategy to fight Bugs. His usual swear word is Sacrebleu, and he is often portrayed as a thief.

Appearances

Blacque Jacque first appeared in Bonanza Bunny, which takes place in the middle of the Klondike gold rush. Blacque Jacque attempts to seize Bugs' bag of gold through card cheating, trickery and out-and-out threats, but Bugs outwits him as always and defeats him by replacing his bag of gold with gunpowder while poking a hole in the bag and tossing a lit match on it, causing a massive explosion.
Blacque Jacque later clashed with Bugs in 1962's Wet Hare, in which his illegal damming of a river brings him into conflict with the rabbit—not only because he is committing a crime, but because he has blocked off the waterfall that Bugs uses as a shower. After demolishing several of Blacque Jacque's dams, Bugs turns the tables by damming the river upstream of Jacque's dam. Jacque, unsurprisingly, is enraged and wheels a small cannon along the riverbed to destroy Bugs' dam—but when he does he only reveals another dam further upstream. Jacque blows up several of Bugs' dams in succession and finally follows Bugs all the way to the "Grand Cooler Dam". Jacque tries to blow it up with his cannon, but the dam is so massive and thick that the cannonball he launches ricochets back into the cannon's barrel and the recoiling force lands both Jacque and the cannon into the back of a waiting paddy wagon, which then takes him away.

Legacy

Blacque Jacque is one of the more obscure Looney Tunes characters, but he has his share of fans. Canadian television networks in particular put his shorts in regular rotation, and the cartoons have an unusual number of Canadian references for the time period in which they were made.
In the video game ', he appears in various levels as an enemy to defeat. During this appearance, he was voiced by Billy West.
Although Blacque Jacque did not appear in ', he was featured in the film's, voiced by Maurice LaMarche. He was stealing paintings from the Louvre and being defeated by Bugs Bunny.
Blacque Jacque Shellacque appears in The Looney Tunes Show, voiced again by Maurice LaMarche. In this show, Blacque Jacque Shellacque is the cousin of Yosemite Sam. In the episode "It's a Handbag," his picture is seen in a police notebook. In "Ridiculous Journey," Blacque Jacque Shellacque was hunting Hugo the Abominable Snowman in Alaska when he turns his attention towards Sylvester, Tweety, and Taz and pursues them. Blacque Jacque Shellacque catches up to them on a train heading south and starts hunting them. Sylvester, Tweety, and Taz escape him by detaching the cars that are connected to the train. Blacque Jacque Shellacque then finds them in the cars of the Three Bears and tries to grab them until Baby Bear throws him out of their car and off the Golden Gate Bridge. Blacque Jacque Shellacque catches up to them in the desert when they end up in the desert and ends up cutting Beaky Buzzard's balloon. Blacque Jacque Shellacque then goes on the attack and manages to catch them. It turns out that Blacque Jacque Shellacque was hired by Bugs Bunny and Granny to rescue them upon the two of them being hooked up by Yosemite Sam.
Blacque Jacque Shellacque appears in New Looney Tunes, voiced by Jim Cummings.

Pete Puma

Pete Puma is a cartoon puma, originally voiced by Stan Freberg. He debuted in the November 15, 1952 short film Rabbit's Kin.

History

Though Pete Puma made only two appearances, in Rabbit's Kin and in Pullet Surprise, he is often vividly remembered by cartoon fans, especially for his bizarre, inhaled, almost choking laugh.
In Rabbit's Kin, Pete is chasing a young rabbit called 'Shorty' who asks Bugs Bunny for help. Bugs is eager to oblige, and subjects Pete to some of his trademark pranks.
Pete Puma's voice was used by Daws Butler for Sam the Cat in the Sylvester cartoons Trick or Tweet in 1959 and Mouse and Garden in 1960.

Later appearances

More recently, he has made occasional appearances on Tiny Toon Adventures, episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, co-starred with Foghorn Leghorn in Pullet Surprise, made a cameo appearance in the crowd scenes of Space Jam, Carrotblanca, Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas, and is a supporting character in the Looney Tunes comic books.
Pete appears in The Looney Tunes Show voiced by John Kassir, He is a dimwitted friend of Daffy Duck and does various jobs around town.
He appears in voiced by Jess Harnell, He serves as an intern to the Mexican general Foghorn Leghorn.
Pete Puma appears in New Looney Tunes, voiced again by John Kassir.