wackyland

Kangaroos are interesting animals. They are marsupials which means that the females lack a placenta or womb. This means that they have really small gestation periods and the young are born in a near unrecognizable state. The young then crawl into a pouch that their mother has where they will latch onto a nipple and suckle constantly. As the young gets bigger, it starts to resemble its parent more. Eventually, it can venture out of the pouch. But will continue to visit and once it gets too big, at least poke its head in for a quick suckle. Adult kangaroos feed on grass and other vegetation. They have to hop everywhere as they are incapable of walking. They live only on Australia along with the majority of the worlds marsupials. They have long ears much like a rabbits, and thick supple tails.

Now why am I discussing the natural aspects of a kangaroo on a blog about animation? Well, based on that description I just gave you, would you ever look at one of these things and go “Wow. That’s a big mouse.”? And yet, that’s how this guys shorts play out. Sylvester will catch sight of him and try to hunt him, under the assumption that he is a rodent of unusual size. (Although if Sylvester is a normal house cat, and Hippity is as tall as him, then capybaras are larger still.) His reasons for catching him aren’t even food based. (Just like in nature. Predators aren’t likely to waste their time hunting something large that can fight back unless there is a number of themselves) Most of the time, its a matter of pride. He wants to prove to his son that he can catch said mouse as he has just spent the first part of the short bragging about his skills. Other times, he wants nothing to do with the “mouse” but other characters refuse to believe in a giant mouse’s existence and demand he face his fear. Hippity himself doesn’t talk as he is a baby. What’s more, since he comes from a species who is known to practice kick boxing as young, he doesn’t know that his repeated pummelings of Sylvester are hurting him. So, yeah, his shorts aren’t big on story. It’s just McKimson trying his own version of a chase cartoon. Jones had his coyote/roadrunner and wolf/sheepdog, Freleng had Sylvester with Tweety or Speedy, and McKimson had a baby kangaroo. (Who for the sake of the joke is always drawn with rounded ears to look more mouselike.)

When Chuck Jones started directing his own shorts, this was his first character. As you can tell, Sniffles was a mouse. (Mice were quite popular in animation for a while there.) His name came about from his first appearance, wherein he had a cold. Seeing as he came around at the beginning of Jone’s directing career, Sniffles acted towards his problems much differently than the other Looney Tunes. (And he wasn’t voiced by Mel. But Bernice Hansen. I think the voice suits him)  His first instinct was to run away. While this didn’t make for especially funny shorts, they were still entertaining. Showing how one might live if you were the size of a mouse. By the end of his theatrical career, Sniffles got more of a personality. He became quite the chatterbox. And this is how he is remembered to this day. But the poor guy just couldn’t compete with other characters like Daffy and Bugs, and by 1946, he had his final short. But the little guy wasn’t completely forgotten. He played quite the prominent role in the early Looney Tunes comic books. There he was the friend of a girl named Mary Jane. She could shrink down to his size and join him on his adventures.

He got his own apprentice on Tiny Toons. (Known as Lil Sneezer.)

And he played for the Tune Squad in “Space Jam.” He is promptly squished after annoying one of the Monstars with his chatter. (Which kind of annoys me. I wish his opponent would have covered his ears or something, allowing Sniffles to take the ball.) And he got a shout out in the direct to DVD movie “Leroy and Stitch.” One of the experiments is given the name “Squeak” and he is designed to annoy people with his endless chatter. And he wears a suspiciously similar hat. 

And Sniffles was meant to appear in “The Looney Tunes Show.” But sadly it was cancelled before he could make more of an appearance besides the intro. But what really makes me sad, is that he was set to be voiced by Tara Strong. She’s a master at voicing cute characters. It would have been great to see how she would have made him sound. It’s sad that the little fella never got as popular as his co-stars, but he at least made enough of an impact to be absorbed by everyone subconsciousness. And I take great pride in having seen every one of his shorts. This Sniffles is one I am always happy to see every flu season. (Sorry, was that too cheesy?)