Fifi La Fume

Fifi La Fume is an anthropomorphic skunk featured in Tiny Toon Adventures. She was voiced by Kath Soucie in the English version and by Junko Asami in the Japanese version. She is a teenaged female variation of the Looney Tunes character Pepe Le Pew. Her fur is purple and white, as opposed to a normal skunk's black and white, and she keeps a ribbon tied to her hair which causes it to fall over one eye, giving her a sultry, coquettish look. She has a massive tail, nearly twice the size of her own body, which is the source of her powerful odor. She uses her tail for a number of things, including a pillow, a pom-pom and a snare to capture potential boyfriends before they can get away.

Character Profile and Personality
Like her mentor, Pepe Le Pew, Fifi is French, and often speaks with French exclamations. She also, unfortunately, shares the same faults as her idol: intense skunk-odor, and an inability to take "no" for an answer when pursuing the romantic object of her choice. When she falls in love, she loses all self-control, and will not allow anything to stop her from literally capturing her prey. Her putrid stench is also powerful-enough to melt solid steel (much to the terror of the boys she chases).

However, unlike Pepe, who reeks all the time, Fifi's musk only comes into play when she is attracted to someone, or when it would advance the plot, thus allowing her to interact with other characters when she is not the central focus of the story. It is also shown that her smell can be erased by tomato juice (a mythical skunk-stink cure that in reality doesn't work very well), but the effects are only temporary.

Friends and family
Like the other characters in the series, Fifi attends Acme Looniversity to be properly educated in the techniques of being a successful cartoon character. Fifi's best friends in the series were fellow classmates, Babs Bunny and Shirley the Loon. The majority of Fifi's appearances were as a part of this group, and they proceeded to engage in numerous adventures.

Together, they were the cheerleaders for the Acme Looniversity Football Team, and at one point, the back-up players. Another time (as shown in the segment "The Amazing Three"), in search of more mature men, Fifi, Babs and Shirley all went to a dance at Perfecto Prep, only to find that all the boys there were stuck-up and snotty. However, most of their time together was spent just hanging out and doing "girl stuff".

Like Buster Bunny, Fifi's family is occasionally spoken of but never seen. After capturing Furrball (whom she'd mistaken for a cute boy-skunk), she had planned to introduce him to her family. But despite this mention, she lives alone in a Cadillac in the Acme Acres Junkyard (which is much more spacious than one would expect).

Furrball
Mirroring the skunk/cat relationship between Pepe le Pew and Penelope Pussycat, Fifi's most frequent object of affection was Furrball. Fifi first pursued him in the episode "Aroma Amore", wooing the reluctant feline (who had acquired a white stripe down his back) all across Acme Acres before Furrball covered his stripe with blue paint, escaping her. Furrball then vengefully painted a pair of unconscious bully cats in skunk colors whom pursued him prior, leaving Fifi to happily chase after them.

Fifi was next seen chasing Furrball in "Ask Mr. Popular", where she could be seen pursuing him, Dizzy Devil, and Concord Condor down an alley, trying to capture them with a large net, as one of Buster's examples on how to make friends. In addition, she and Furrball had a brief scene together at the end of the first short of "Mr. Popular's Rules of Cool," dancing with each other on the floor of the "Cool Club."

Fifi's third romantic encounter with Furrball occurred in the 1992 Tiny Toon Adventures Annual (published by Marvel Comics). In a text story, Furrball's attempt to catch and eat Sweetie had unintended consequences after bumping into Fifi. Furrball went from predator to prey in an instant as Fifi began amorously chasing him. According to the prose, Furrball escaped; "And as (Fifi) slipped into something more comfortable, Furrball slipped away into the night".

A color activity book published by Merrigold Press in 1995 also contained a story where Fifi chases Furrball, though it was merely an adaptation of "Aroma Amore". The book did feature several bonus pages of artwork featuring Fifi wooing Furrball; scenarios that were not present in the original episode.

Calamity Coyote
In the episode "Love Stinks", when an attempt by Calamity Coyote to trap Little Beeper backfires, Calamity wound up coated in black tar with a stripe of white feathers flowing down his back. This immediately attracted Fifi, who continuously attempted to capture the terrified coyote until he managed to escape a smelly fate by removing the tar from himself (only moments before Fifi came rounding a corner after him). Little Beeper, mocking Calamity for all his recent skunk troubles, ended up covered in the tar and white feather stripe, leaving him to become Fifi's next romantic target. Little Beeper ran screaming in terror down the street at super speed with Fifi patiently hopping behind him.

Johnny Pew
In How I Spent My Vacation, Fifi finds brief joy with a genuine skunk; this one being a movie-star named Johnny Pew. After waiting on him hand-and-foot like some sort of groupie, Fifi discovers him to be an arrogant jerk when he gives her autograph away to a vuluptuous female skunk named Bimbette. The last straw, Fifi promptly and literally kicks him to the curb.

Buster Bunny
Fifi has also been known to have brief flings with other boys in Acme Acres, regardless of whether they resemble skunks or not.

In the first segment of "Return to the Acme Acres Zone", titled "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli", Fifi meets Buster Bunny (playing an old-fashioned detective) at a club and insists that they dance. After forcing Buster to engage her in a lengthy tango, Fifi plants a big kiss on him. However, it was soon revealed that Fifi's appearance here was in fact an evil robot clone.

Dizzy Devil
In the second segment of the episode "New Class Day", titled "Sound Off", all the Tiny Toons characters are thrown into a silent film. Dizzy Devil chases Buster and Babs into a hollow tree (or thinks he does), but when he reaches in he pulls out a swooning Fifi by her tail. Dizzy attempts to escape the lovestruck Fifi on a bicycle, but after a considerable amount of pedaling discovers it to be a stationary piece of exercise equipment that she had set up to trap him.

Hamton J. Pig
In "Prom-ise Her Anything", Hamton asked Fifi to be his date to the Prom, and Fifi enthusiastically (and magnetically) accepted in a heartbeat. They were never shown having a real romantic interest in one-another beyond their prom date, though the two did have a few scenes together in other episodes, such as when Fifi hugged Hamton like a Teddy Bear at the end of "The Acme Bowl," and in "The Just-Us League of SuperToons" where Hamton (as Decoy, a parody of Robin from the Batman series) makes a pass at Fifi (as Scentanna, a parody of Zatanna from the DC universe), but she rejects Decoy by blasting him with a shot from her tail, causing him to crumble to the floor.

Elmyra Duff
Fifi and all her friends were once pursued by Elmyra Duff in the episode "The Horror at Slumber Party Mountain". Elmyra had disguised herself as a gruesome monster and was picking off the Tiny Toons cast one-by-one to make them her pets. They all eventually freed themselves by the end of the episode.

Elmyra earlier attempted to make Fifi her pet in the segment "Out of Odor" (shown in the episode "Viewer Mail Day"), when Elmyra mistook her for a cat (even though she knew that Fifi was a skunk, Elmyra assumed that "skunk" meant "stinky kitty"). She disguised herself as Pepe Le Pew, went to her Cadillac, and Fifi fell for her trap. Elmyra squished tomatoes all over Fifi, which nullified her scent. After a long chase, Elmyra was finally able to successfully take Fifi captive.

Fifi was shown being held captive by Elmyra in the first episode produced, "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow", in which she, Furrball, and Tyrone Turtle were rescued by Buster and then teamed up with him and Babs to teach Elmyra a lesson about pet care. It has been speculated by fans that the events of that episode were in fact meant to take place after "Out of Odor", despite "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow" preceding it in both airing and production order. However, there is nothing in either episode to suggest the other way around, so it is possible that the theory is correct.

Bimbette
Fifi only once butted heads with Bimbette for the affections of Johnny Pew in How I Spent My Vacation. In the end, Fifi lost Johnny's attention to Bimbette. However, she discovered it to be no great loss considering that Johnny was a self-absorbed ego-maniac.

It should also be noted that unlike Shirley, Babs, and other headlining cast-members, Fifi does not have an "evil twin" that attends Acme Looniversity's rival school, Perfecto Prep. It might be concluded that, in theory, Bimbette could possibly be Fifi's Perfect Prep doppleganger, although the character has never been seen interacting with the {C}other "Perfectoids".

Miscellaneous

 * In the first segment of the episode "New Class Day", titled "Just-Us League of Supertoons", Fifi was a member of the mighty superhero team, the Just-Us League of Supertoons. She was the team's sultry sorceress, Scentanna the Mystical Maiden of Musk. An obvious parody of the DC Comics all-star superhero team, the Justice League of America, Fifi's character of Scentanna was an homage to the JLA's classic magic-weilding sorceress, Zatanna (albeit without the top hat).
 * Fifi's seldomly-used ending tagline was, "Au revoir, mon petite potato du couch!" as she flirtatiously waved her tail at the audience.
 * Fifi made a brief cameo in first season of Animaniacs in the segment "Survey Ladies", where Yakko, Wakko and Dot come to the mall to find a birthday gift for Dr. Scratchansniff. During the episode, the Warners visit a perfume shop that Fifi apparently owns and meet up with there. In her brief cameo, Fifi lists off the kind of colognes she carries, prompting Dot to ask "Do you have anything for beginners?"

External Links and Resources

 * Unofficial Tiny Toons site
 * Stephen's Fifi La Fume Shrine
 * Tiny Toon Image Gallery Plus
 * Fifi on Animated Lust
 * "Fifi La Fume" (Russian)
 * The Fifi La Fume Image Archve (Russian)
 * The Further Adventures of Fifi La Fume