Speedy Gonzales (character)

Speedy Gonzales is a cartoon mouse from the Looney Tunes series, also the fastest mouse in all Mexico.

Date of Birth

 * August 29, 1953

Date of Death

 * October 26, 2011

Appearance
Speedy's major traits are his ability to run extremely fast, and his Mexican accent. He usually wears an oversized yellow sombrero, red neckerchief, a white shirt and pants.

Origin
Speedy debuted in 1953's "Cat-Tails for Two ," directed by Robert McKimson. This early speedy was a meaner, rattier creation, with a giant-sized gold tooth.

Modern Speedy
It would be two years before Friz Freleng and animator Hawley Pratt redesigned the character into his modern incarnation for the 1955 Freleng short, "Speedy Gonzales." The cartoon features Sylvester the cat menacing a group of mice. The mice call in the plucky, excessively energetic Speedy to save them, and amid cries of "Ándale! Ándale! Arriba! Arriba!" (courtesy of Mel Blanc), Sylvester soon gets his painful comeuppance. The cartoon won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. Speedy later made a cameo appearance during the final scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was at the bleachers watching the basketball game and putting a vote for Michael Jordan's fall while in a chair in Space Jam, and later chatting with Porky Pig at a dining table in Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Nemesis
Freleng and McKimson soon set Sylvester up as Speedy's regular nemesis in a series of cartoons, much in the same way Chuck Jones had paired Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in his Road Runner cartoons. Sylvester is constantly outsmarted and outrun by the mouse, causing the cat to suffer all manner of pain and humiliation from mousetraps to accidentally consuming large amounts of hot sauce. Other cartoons pair the mouse with his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, the "slowest mouse in all Mexico." Slowpoke predictibly gets into all sorts of trouble but the intellact runs in the family. Through intelligence and wit, even Slowpoke can outsmart the Sylvestro the Pussygato. In later cartoons, Speedy's main nemesis became Daffy Duck.

Controversy
Speedy's cartoons have come under fire in recent years for their alleged stereotypical depictions of Mexicans and Mexican life. Mice in the shorts are usually shown as lazy, womanizing and hard-drinking while Speedy wears a huge sombrero and sometimes plays in a mariachi band. These stereotypes are seen as dehumanizing as stereotypically depicting anybody from any race/ethnicity in a racist manner. It was this criticism that prompted Cartoon Network to largely shelve Speedy's films when it gained exclusive rights to broadcast them in 1999. However, fan campaigns to put Speedy back on the air, as well as lobbying by The League of United Latin American Citizens, who argued that Speedy's cleverness and personality was a positive depiction of Mexicans, turned the tide in his favor, and in 2002, "the fastest mouse in all Mexico" was put back into rotationy.

Quotes

 * "¡Andale! ¡Andale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Yiii-hah!"
 * "Hello, pussy cats! You looking for a nice fat mouse for deenner?"
 * "I don't see that seelly pussy cats today. He must be asleep. I better wake heem up!"
 * "They don't make pussy cats like they used to."
 * "Holy frijoles! That thing runs faster than me!"
 * "I like this pussy cat fello! He silly!"
 * " Your Too Much Pink, Thats why Thats your Name !"

Merchandise
There has been a variety of Speedy Gonzales merchandise, not just in America and Mexico, but around the world. The only video release showcasing Speedy was Speedy Gonzales' Fast Funnies. Speedy later shared a disc of the Bugs and Friends laserdisc collection in Japan, and got his own disc in Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4.