Slappy Squirrel
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Slappy Squirrel (voiced by Sherri Stoner) is a character in the Warner Brothers cartoon show Animaniacs. She is characterised as a bitter, cranky old woman, ostensibly an aged "Screwy" Squirrel (a short-lived Tex Avery cartoon character from animation's so-called "Golden Age", the 1930s and 1940s). She was first seen in Animaniacs' third episode, Slappy Goes Walnuts, originally aired on September 15, 1993, which also introduced an extract of a purely fictious Looney Tunes cartoon featuring herself and suggesting that she was a rejected Looney Tunes character who crossed over into Animaniacs. In several episodes, there are shots of fictitious Looney Tunes cartoons portraying a younger Slappy, under the pseudonym Slappy the Slap-Happy Squirrel.
She is an anthropomorphic gray squirrel, usually wearing a green hat decorated with a drooping white gardenia and carrying a pink purse and green umbrella that she occasionally uses to hit other characters. Hurray For Slappy reveals Slappy to be in her 80s, as Mary Heartless (a parody of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart) refers to Slappy as "octogenarian".
She lives in a hollow tree with her nephew Skippy Squirrel, who loves to hear her tell stories about her former days of stardom. He usually accompanies her on her adventures, where his optimism and naïveté sometimes irritate her, but she always shows a genuine affection for him. Her position on cartoon violence is strictly positive (If you get in her way, she will positively hurt you), although she admits it takes talent to make something funny. She also has been known for breaking the fourth wall at times, or explaining why this is a cartoon and must be "sold". In the first episode where they are trying to get walnuts from a tree guarded by a mean dog, Skippy suggests it would be much easier to get walnuts from the supermarket, to which Slappy replied sarcastically "Oh, yeah, we'll have 'em in hysterics with that bit. Six minutes in the checkout line. Oooh, somebody stop me, I'm laughin'."
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[edit] Characters
Her former co-star and arch-enemy Walter Wolf harbors a grudge against her, both for defeating him repeatedly (and violently) in the past and for becoming a big star, albeit now a faded one. He has also enlisted the help of her other ex-nemeses, including Sid the Squid and Beanie the Brain-Dead Bison. Much like Slappy, all these characters show signs of age and senility.
In addition to Walter's occasional attempts at revenge, Slappy must sometimes endure more mundane annoyances such as a cloyingly-perky new neighbor or Skippy's emotional traumas, for instance after he watches Bumbie (a thinly-veiled version of Bambi). In this case she tells Skippy that Bumbie's mother was played by an old friend of hers, the cartoon doe Vina Walleen, who, like herself, Walter Wolf et al, is now much older. She manages to convince Skippy that Vina played Bumbie's mother by taking him to Vina's home and asking her to morph into the character. But Vina cannot maintain the morph for long, and on returning complains that she can't do it as well as she used to.
[edit] Humor
Slappy easily outsmarts whatever foes she faces (who are almost universally dimwitted as well as decrepit) and exacts revenge with exaggerated cartoon violence, usually whilst reminiscing about her "classic" (but fictional) film appearances of her youth. She often will remark how her enemies remind her of various famous cartoon characters when they were very young. Her catchphrase "Now that’s comedy!" is usually delivered after visiting seemingly grave physical injury and humiliation upon her opponents.
Slappy is also well known for the dialog Who's on Stage?, a 2 minute Vaudevillesque wit-round routine, based on the legendary sketch Who's on First?, in Episode 59 (Woodstock), in which she tries to determine which band is performing on stage ("The Band", "Who" or "Yes") which of course ends with Roger Daltrey inviting the pair on stage.
The music played during the title card of her segments is an excerpt from Antonín Dvořák's "Humoresque".
[edit] Episodes
Excluding cameos and brief appearances in ensembles, Slappy has appeared in the following Animaniacs episodes:
- Episode 3, Slappy Goes Walnuts
- Episode 5, Taming of The Screwys (Cameo)
- Episode 8, Bumbie's Mom
- Episode 13, Little Old Slappy from Pasadena
- Episode 16, Hurray for Slappy
- Episode 22, Guardin' the Garden
- Episode 27, I Got Yer Can (according to writer/voice actor Sherri Stoner on the Animaniacs Vol. 2 DVD, this was based on a real situation)
- Episode 36, Critical Condition
- Episode 41, Broadcast Nuisance (Cameo;Unaired version)
- Episode 45, ...And Justice for Slappy
- Episode 50, `Twas the Day Before Christmas
- Episode 51, Frontier Slappy
- Episode 58, Smell Ya Later
- Episode 59, Woodstock Slappy
- Episode 62, Scare Happy Slappy
- Episode 64, No Face Like Home
- Episode 70, Nutcracker Slappy
- Episode 71, Three Tenors and You're Out
- Episode 72, Rest in Pieces
- Episode 73, Gimme a Break
- Episode 74, Method to Her Madness
- Episode 79, My Mother the Squirrel
- Episode 81, Soccer Coach Slappy
- Episode 82, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock
- Episode 92, Bully for Skippy
- Episode 94, The Christmas Tree
- Episode 97, Sunshine Squirrels
[edit] Show Notes
- Episode 3, Slappy Goes Walnuts: Slappy makes reference to Lionel Hampton who popularized the vibraphone in the 1930s.
- In Episode 22, Guardin' the Garden, Slappy refers to God as "Mr. Big".
- A prelude to Episode 51, Frontier Slappy, included Slappy and Skippy advertising the purely fictitious breakfast cereal, Smellogg's Branimaniacs, as a parody of the Kelloggs adverts around at the time.
- A majority of the Slappy cartoons were animated by StarToons.
- There's a running gag where Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would often make cameo appearances in Slappy cartoons.
