Tuffy

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Tuffy, as he appears in the ending of The Little Orphan.
Tuffy, as he appears in the ending of The Little Orphan.

Tuffy (originally Nibbles) is a fictional character from the Tom and Jerry cartoon series. He is the little grey, diaper-wearing orphan mouse whose cartoon debut came in the 1946 short The Milky Waif. Tuffy was later featured in the 1949 award-winning short The Little Orphan. The reason why Tuffy wears a diaper is due to the fact that he is portrayed as a baby mouse.

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[edit] Origin and Development

Tuffy's first actual appearance came in the 1942 comic book Our Gang Comics 1, where despite his diaper, he was presented as a peer of Jerry rather than a younger individual. In the comics, the grey mouse's name was given as Tuffy Mouse from the start. The parents of Tuffy (Real name Nibleton or Niblet to his friends) Neesha and Dan breast fed him from a young age. They enroled him in the Aycliffe Acting School for Talented Mice, where he was the lead in their production of Mice (the opposite to CATS obviously)

When the smaller Nibbles design was introduced to animation in 1946, the comics' Tuffy was retconned to match, almost immediately shrinking in size and age. But Tuffy's name in the comics stayed Tuffy. In the comics, Tuffy remained a peer of Jerry with no relatives. But in 1953, the animation writers decided to change his on-screen relationship to Jerry. He became Jerry's nephew in Life with Tom.

Now it was the cartoons' turn to retcon, changing the screen name Nibbles to Tuffy in the 1957 cartoon Feedin' The Kiddie.

Tom and Jerry comic books have been out of print in the United States since 1991. Not surprisingly, as time passes, fewer staffers working on modern Tom and Jerry products remember the comics and the continuity they introduced. For this reason, Tuffy's name has sometimes changed back to Nibbles in new product: notably the Tom and Jerry movie, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, and the new TV series, Tom and Jerry Tales. The reference books Hanna-Barbera Cartoons by Michael Mallory and The Hanna-Barbera Treasury by Jerry Beck refer to the character only as Nibbles, without mentioning his alternate name at all.

Tuffy was more often a speaking character than Jerry. In the "Mouseketeer" subseries, he spoke mostly in French, resorting to English whenever a slapstick humor depended on it. The only exception to this was Robin Hoodwinked where he talked purely in Saxon English and had a different, rougher voice. Tuffy looked somewhat more mature in Hoodwinked as well, despite the fact that he still wore his diaper. The Mouseketeer shorts almost always featured sequences in which Tuffy got drunk. In his last appearance in Robin Hoodwinked, he is also shown to be drunk as the cartoon comes to a close. In the Tom and Jerry Tales episode Cat Nebula, Nibbles appeared as Jerry's sidekick and had a younger voice. Strangely, he spoke in a feminine French accent in the non-mouseketeer Tales shorts Cat Show Catastrophe and Cat of Prey. In Babysitting Blues, Tuffy was actually portrayed as a real baby who couldn't speak, though it is unknown if this was really Tuffy or another nephew of Jerry's.

[edit] Featured Cartoons

[edit] Tom and Jerry

[edit] The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show

  • Pied Piper Puss
  • No Museum Peace

[edit] Tom and Jerry Tales

  • Cat Nebula
  • Cat Show Catastrophe
  • Cat of Prey (cameo appearance)
  • Sasquashed
  • DJ Jerry (cameo appearance)
  • Babysitting Blues