Furrball
From Loonipedia
Furrball is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is one of the main characters on the show. Furrball is voiced by Frank Welker. Furrball is a young, blue male cat with a hole on his right ear and a bandage on his tail. He attends ACME Looniversity and lives in ACME Acres. Furrball's mentor and favorite teacher at school is Sylvester The Cat, although the two similarities only seemed to include their appetites.
History[edit | edit source]
Furrball is usually depicted as living in a cardboard box in a back alley or as an unwilling pet of Elmyra Duff (in spite of the latter, he was absent from the spin-off Pinky, Elmyra, & The Brain). Unlike most of the other characters, he does not speak and is portrayed as a typical pet character (such as in the Porky Pig and Sylvester cartoons, in which Sylvester appears in to have a rare non-speaking role). Furrball spends much of his time futilely trying to eat Sweetie Pie, a pink canary; and Li'l Sneezer, a baby mouse with many allergies and hurricane-force sneezes. However, there has been 1 occasion where Furrball gets the last laugh on Sweetie when he had Arnold the Pit Bull to be hypnotized to chase her after recovering from the hypnosis she put him under. As the beginning indicates, Furrball is unlucky and deals with his main enemy, Spiky the bulldog. Furrball has also proven to be one of the most versatile characters on the entire show. Some of his many misadventures include getting a pair of enhanced 3-D glasses glued to his head, being hypnotized into trying to eat Arnold the Pitbull for supper, becoming the host of a family of singing Italian fleas, being amorously pursued by Fifi La Fume after involuntarily winding up with a white stripe down his back, and being chased by the temporarily transformed Sweetie, a large, carnivorous, evil-eyed, feathered Mr. Hyde/Dr. Frankenstein monster who wants to eat Furrball. Furrball also has a bad encounter with Byron Basset, who tries to prevent Furrball from trying to eat some baby birds whom he's protecting. Usually, though, the two of them are seen as living peacefully together, not paying much attention to each other and minding their own business. Although several appearances compare him to Sylvester, there were a few cartoons that cast him in a more sympathetic light. In these appearances, Furball is an abandoned alley cat, constantly looking for a home. The shorts would depict his misadventures in this goal, such as being mistaken for a dog by a blind couple; situations that were humorous, but also gathered sympathy for the character. He was a lonely cat against the world, but never gave up hope, much like legendary actor Charlie Chaplin. As Furrball hardly ever spoke throughout the show, his typical cat sounds are provided by Frank Welker. However, it is revealed that he speaks in three episodes. In the episode Duck Trek (in which Furrball played a spoof of Star Trek's Leonard McCoy), he is voiced by Rob Paulsen (actually, he was lip-syncing). In the episode Buster & The Wolverine (a spoof of the classic musical children's story, Peter & The Wolf), it is revealed that Furrball is voiced by his regular voice actor, Frank Welker. In the episode Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow, he speaks precisely 1 word ("years," referencing how long he has been held captive by Elmyra; of course, he'a exaggerating), with his voice again being provided by Welker. At the end of one episode after he and Dizzy Devil expose the Perfecto Prep students' cheating at a baseball game, they both said the following sentence at a victory celebration: "We love baseball." Through the majority of the show, Furrball is in fact a mute. Furrball's end tag credit is him roaring at the screen like a lion, before covering his mouth and letting out an apologetic meow.
Gallery[edit | edit source]
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Furball as a doctor
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Furrball being embraced by the smelly yet positively enamored Fifi
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Furrball going dumpster-fishing
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Furrball as a car window toy
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Furrball as a camper
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Furrball wearing 3D glasses, as seen in Optical Intrusion