Plucky Duck

WBToonChar
name =Plucky Duck


image caption =Promotional image of Plucky Duck
first appearance =Regular on "Tiny Toon Adventures" since the series premiere "The Looney Beginning".
created by =
voiced by =Joe Alaskey
known aliases =
known relatives =
known pets =
known friends =Hamton, Buster Bunny, Babs Bunny, Shirley The Loon, Li'l Sneezer, Dizzy Devil, Furrball
known rivals =Montana Max, Gene Splicer, Mr. Hitcher
catchphrases =

Plucky Allen Duck is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series "Tiny Toon Adventures". He is arguably the third main character on the show after Buster and Babs. Plucky is voiced by Joe Alaskey (who also voices Daffy Duck). Plucky is a young, green male duck with a tank top. He attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme Acres.

Plucky's mentor and favorite teacher is Daffy Duck, and resembles the Chuck Jones characterization of Daffy in many ways, but not entirely. One such similarity Plucky has with Daffy is the classic gag from the "hunter trilogy." In the trilogy Daffy's bill keeps coming off; in "Tiny Toon Adventures", Plucky's bill keeps coming off as a running gag in the episodes.

Plucky, a teenager, is portrayed on the series as a greedy, egotistical, and easily excited young duck, who would often engage in various schemes with the goal of either personal glory or satisfying some personal whim. These schemes ranged from inventing a time machine, to delay doing his own homework, to traveling to Hollywood, California in an ill-fated attempt at selling his life story as a movie. His schemes often failed because his ego got in the way or because a guilty conscience got the better of him (as was the case when he attempted to cheat on a test and subsequently went insane as he brooded over the morality of his actions). Babs once aptly described him as "the silly green duck with an ego the size of Cleveland."

Similar to Daffy's relationship with Bugs Bunny, Plucky also sometimes found himself at odds with the two main stars of "Tiny Toon Adventures", Buster and Babs Bunny, though the three managed to remain friends (the rabbits were generally indifferent to Plucky's egotism when not using it to their advantage) and Plucky occasionally displays a sense of loyalty to them. Ironically, even though Plucky would gripe about how he deserved to have as much or more air-time on the show than Buster and Babs, a massive chunk of the series' episodes usually revolved around him in some manner.

Plucky's best friend is Hamton J. Pig, a mild-mannered pig and Plucky's opposite, much as Porky Pig is the opposite of Daffy. Plucky often takes advantage of Hampton. Plucky's romantic interest is Shirley the Loon.

Some episodes featured Plucky, a comic book enthusiast, parodying various heroic characters, much like Daffy's roles of "Duck Dodgers" and "The Scarlet Pumpernickel". These included The Toxic Revenger (See below), James T. Duck (a parody of Captain Kirk in "Star Trek"), Bat-Duck (a parody of Batman, with Hamton in Robin's red-and-green as "Decoy, the Pig Hostage"), and Pluck Hyerdahl of the "Kon-Ducki" (in a parody of Thor Heyerdahl and the "Kon-Tiki").

Of interesting note, in the credits to the episode featuring Elmyra's version of The Name Game the line appears "Name inadvertently left out of The Name Game: Plucky". Of course, Plucky was intentionally left out of The Name Game because if the song was sung with his name, it includes an expletive.

Plucky occasionally signs off with the "Romeo and Juliet" line, "Parting is such sweet sorrow!"

Baby Plucky

Among the more notable of the Plucky-centric "Tiny Toons" shorts featured "Baby Plucky", a look back at Plucky's diaper-clad toddler days (with cameos by other "Baby" "Tiny Toons" characters, such as Babs Bunny). Baby Plucky was characterized by a higher-pitched voice and stilted "baby-talk" diction ("Is no "your" turn to push the button, is "my" turn to push the button!"), and wore nothing except a diaper. He was also full of the wholly (or at least mostly) innocent mischief for which toddlers are known. Baby Plucky could easily be considered a not-so-subtle parody of the genre of re-imagining established characters as younger versions of themselves; "Tiny Toons" was often accused by critics of jumping on the bandwagon of that genre. Baby Plucky was voiced by Nathan Ruegger (the son of writer/producer Tom Ruegger and the future voice of Skippy Squirrel on "Animaniacs" and Froggo on "Histeria!").

In one short, Baby Plucky discovers that items in the toilet bowl disappear when the toilet is flushed ("Water go down the "hoooOOolle"."), and proceeds to flush various items simply to watch them vanish, not realizing until far too late that he was clogging the plumbing. In another, Baby Plucky and his mother (who was heard but only shown from the waist down, similar to the appearances of Nanny on the animated series "Muppet Babies" and the characters of Mom and Dad from "Cow and Chicken") visit a shopping mall and Plucky's obsession with an elevator ("Wanna go on the el-a-lator. Wanna push the "button".") leads him to cross paths with and eventually foil a criminal trying to make a getaway. Yet another cartoon has Baby Plucky and his father (also seen only from the waist down) playing miniature golf, in which Plucky manages to infuriate his father by either hitting the golfball too lightly or hitting it so hard that it bounces off things and injures Plucky's dad, often by striking him in the groin. At the end of the episode he hits the "free game" button so hard he gets several dozen balls. His father (now on crutches) falls down and says "Congratulations, Plucky. You're an only child!" in a wavering voice.

Baby Plucky also had several guest appearances in "Animaniacs" (normally as a background cameo), whereas when other "Tiny Toons" characters had cameos, they would be shown in their proper age.

Baby Plucky's end tag credit is him sucking his thumb, then pulling it out to say "I wanna flush it again!", then sucking his thumb again.

Toxic Revenger

In three cartoons, Plucky played an ecology-themed superhero who fought against polluters:

* In "The Return of the Toxic Revenger," Plucky plays the title hero (whose name is a parody of The Toxic Avenger) and shuts down Montana Max's air-polluting "donut hole factory," which produces portable holes.
* In "The Re-Return of the Toxic Revenger," Plucky fights Max again, this time stopping him from draining the swamp in which Plucky and his neighbors live.
* In "No Deposit, No Return of the Trash Bag Dispenser," Plucky, in a new costume and calling himself The Trash Bag Dispenser, tries to educate Elmyra Duff about recycling so that she'll stop throwing away empty cans in the forest.

See also

* Tiny Toon Adventures
* Animaniacs
* Daffy Duck
* The Plucky Duck Show

External links

*
* " [http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Warner_Bros_/Television/Tiny_Toon_Adventures/index.html Tiny Toon Adventures] " at the Big Cartoon DataBase