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Species Kangaroo
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It"s Kiko! Kiko the Kangaroo! Renowned Terrytoons star of the 1930s. No joking: when the studio was developing the character they thought Kiko was going to be a major hit, their new star. They sank buckets of money into merchandising, buttons and figurines and plush and inflatable rubber dolls (made by the Miller Rubber Company) and a novelty record sent to 80 radio stations across the country to play. Then it turned out they"re Terrytoons cartoons so they don"t really know how to have a personality or a plot or anything much. Still, he, or she, is a pleasant enough person and, you have to agree, has got a strikingly modern design in being all thicc. And I happened to see a picture of her-or-him today and thought, why not? This might be my first black-and-white cartoon at least since I started drawing seriously, unless you consider Popeye characters grandfathered into that.
(One of Kiko"s last cartoons, Play Ball from 1937, does have the earliest example I"ve seen of the pouch-of-holding, by the way. In playing a baseball game she hits the ball, a joey leaps out of her pouch, and then another joey out of the first joey"s pouch, and another out of the second joey"s pouch, and so on, until there"s an unstoppable progression of kangaroos rounding the bases. For those interested in the origins of that gag. There may be an earlier iteration of this joke; I haven"t seen it is all.)
(One of Kiko"s last cartoons, Play Ball from 1937, does have the earliest example I"ve seen of the pouch-of-holding, by the way. In playing a baseball game she hits the ball, a joey leaps out of her pouch, and then another joey out of the first joey"s pouch, and another out of the second joey"s pouch, and so on, until there"s an unstoppable progression of kangaroos rounding the bases. For those interested in the origins of that gag. There may be an earlier iteration of this joke; I haven"t seen it is all.)
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fanart
Species Kangaroo
Gender Any
Size 768 x 1024px
File Size 109.4 kB
Aw, thank you. Have to say the Terrytoons animators knew some things about character design.
He or maybe she was, mostly. Genial in that way the minor 30s cartoons were. I don't know if there was ever a comic book with Kiko in it but if there were the character probably got more sharply defined there.
I do! I'm shakier on the black-and-white cartoons, but was a devoted watcher of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle, and had an unaccountable fondness for Deputy Dawg as a kid. I'm glad that YouTube has made it possible to see a lot of these cartoons again; it may be a minor studio but that doesn't mean it's not worth knowing about.
Oh, I like them too. I'm not sure there's any studio cartoons I don't like to some extent, although Fleischer Studios' Hunky and Spunky is a challenge.
I didn't think to mention: I got this picture, and my knowledge of those Kiko dolls, from reading W Gerald Hamonic's book Terry-Toons: The Story of Paul Terry and his Classic Cartoon Factory. The writing's less polished than, say, Jerry Beck or Leslie Cabarga would offer, but there is so much material and so much of it novel that it's worth the trade.
I didn't think to mention: I got this picture, and my knowledge of those Kiko dolls, from reading W Gerald Hamonic's book Terry-Toons: The Story of Paul Terry and his Classic Cartoon Factory. The writing's less polished than, say, Jerry Beck or Leslie Cabarga would offer, but there is so much material and so much of it novel that it's worth the trade.
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