Fifi La Fume | |
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Tiny Toon Adventures character | |
Promotional image of Fifi La Fume |
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First appearance | A cameo on Tiny Toon Adventures in the series premiere "The Looney Beginning". Introduced as a regular character since the fifth episode "The Buster Bunny Bunch" in the segment "Born To Be Riled" (1990). |
Voiced by | Kath Soucie |
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Species | Skunk |
Mentor | Pepé Le Pew |
Fifi La Fume is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros.animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures.[1] She is one of the main characters on the show. Fifi is voiced by Kath Soucie. Fifi is a young, purple and white female skunk with a pink bowed ribbon in her hair. She attends Acme Loonerversity and lives in Acme Acres. She is also one of Acme Loonerversity's cheerleaders in which, like the other two (Babs Bunny & Shirley the Loon), she wears a royal blue ribbon in place of her pink ribbon.
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Fifi is a teenage skunk based on the Looney Tunes character Pepé Le Pew, who occasionally, though not often, serves as her mentor in the series. Her fur is purple and white, as opposed to a normal skunk's black and white, and she keeps a ribbon tied to her hair which causes it to fall over one eye, giving her a sultry, coquettish look. She has a massive tail, over twice the size of her own body, which is the source of her powerful odor. She uses her tail for a number of things, including a pillow, a pom-pom, and a snare to capture potential boyfriends before they can get away.
Like Pepé, Fifi is French and very flirtatious. She mainly speaks English with a few French words. She also shares the same faults as her idol: intense skunk-odor, and an inability to take "no" for an answer when pursuing the romantic object of her choice. When she falls in love, she loses all self control, and will not allow anything to stop her from literally capturing her prey.
Fifi's putrid stench has been shown to be powerful enough to melt solid steel (seen in "Love Stinks") and the more she falls in love, the stronger her stench gets. However, unlike Pepè, who reeks all the time, Fifi's musk only comes into play when she is attracted to someone, or when it would advance the plot, thus allowing her to interact with other characters when she is not the central focus of the story. Fifi's character is also taken in a somewhat sympathetic light, for she, alone, longs for a lover, leaving many people to feel sorry for her. Also, while Pepè seems oblivious of himself smelling bad, Fifi realizes she has a foul odor and often uses it to her advantage during desperate situations. For instance, in "Out of Odor", she wielded her tail like a machine gun to fire clouds of musk. Other uses include providing a means of causing mishaps among an opposing team. Two such examples are "The Acme Bowl" and "Son of the Wacko World of Sports". In "The Acme Bowl", Fifi caused Roderick Rat to turn green and fumble the football after she laid out a wall of brownish yellow clouds in his way. In "Son of the Wacko World of Sports", Fifi knocked out the Perfecto catcher (Rubella Rat) in a baseball game after Sylvester joked that she hadn't reached first base since 1988, which annoyed Fifi. It is also shown that her smell can be erased by tomato juice, but the effects are only temporary and can be reversed quickly by washing the tomato juice off.
Fifi is also referred to in casting documents as being something of a feminist, as she is the pursuer, as opposed to the more usual female role of pursued. She's described as imagining that there's nothing a boy could do that she couldn't do herself. Her remarks toward boys are also rather self-regardingly amusing. For instance, in "Aroma Amore", Fifi affectionately remarked, "Leettle boys are such children!"
Fifi is also far more versatile than her Looney Tunes counterpart, appearing in stories that do not entirely revolve around enrapture with Romance. Apart from being a 'lovair', her many adventures include the prom, looking for mature boys, having to deal with Elmyra, attempting to get an autograph from a famous movie star skunk hunk, and much more.
Her end tag credit has Fifi bidding goodbye to the viewer with a somewhat flirtatious "Au revoir, ma petite potato du couch."
Like the other characters in the series, Fifi attended Acme Looniversity to be properly educated in the techniques of being a successful cartoon character. Fifi's best friends in the series were fellow classmates Babs Bunny, and Shirley the Loon. The majority of Fifi's appearances were as a part of this group.
Together, they were the cheerleaders for the Acme Looniversity Football Team, and at one point, the unofficial back-up players. Another time, in search of more mature men, the three went to a high-class dance only to find that all the boys there were stuck-up. However, most of their time together was spent just hanging out and doing girl stuff.
Like Buster Bunny, Fifi's family was occasionally spoken of but never seen. After capturing Furrball (whom she'd mistaken for a cute boy-skunk), she had planned to introduce him to her family. Despite having a family, she lives by herself in a beat-up, red Cadillac DeVille in the Acme Acres Junkyard. In a bio published in issue #25 of the Tiny Toon Adventures comic (Marvel Comics volume), a character bio described Fifi as "a expatriate of Paris", indicating that she lived there before moving permanently to Acme Acres.
Mirroring the skunk/cat relationship between Pepe le Pew and Penelope Pussycat, Fifi's most frequent object of affection was Furrball. Fifi first pursued him in the episode "Aroma Amore", wooing the reluctant feline (who had acquired a white stripe down his back) all across Acme Acres before Furrball covered his stripe with blue paint, escaping her. Furrball then vengefully painted a pair of unconscious bully cats in skunk colors, leaving Fifi to happily chase after them.
Fifi was next seen chasing Furrball in "Ask Mr. Popular", where she could be seen pursuing him, Dizzy Devil, and Concord Condor down an alley, trying to capture them with a large net, as one of Buster's examples on how to make friends. In addition, she and Furrball had a brief scene together at the end of the first short of "Mr. Popular's Rules of Cool," dancing with each other on the floor of the "Cool Club."
Fifi's third romantic encounter with Furrball occurred in the 1992 Tiny Toon Adventures Annual (published by Marvel Comics). In a text story, Furrball's attempt to catch and eat Sweetie had unintended consequences after bumping into Fifi. Furrball went from predator to prey in an instant as Fifi began amorously chasing him. According to the prose, Furrball escaped; "And as (Fifi) slipped into something more comfortable, Furrball slipped away into the night".
A color activity book published by Merrigold Press in 1995 also contained a story where Fifi chases Furrball, though it was merely an adaptation of "Aroma Amore". The book did feature several bonus pages of artwork featuring Fifi wooing Furrball; scenarios that were not present in the original episode.
In the episode "Love Stinks", when an attempt by Calamity Coyote to trap Little Beeper backfires, Calamity wound up coated in black tar with a stripe of white feathers flowing down his back. This immediately attracted Fifi, who continuously attempted to capture the terrified coyote until he managed to escape a smelly fate by removing the tar from himself (only moments before Fifi came rounding a corner after him). Little Beeper, mocking Calamity for all his recent skunk troubles, ended up covered in the tar and white feather stripe, leaving him to become Fifi's next romantic target. Little Beeper ran screaming in terror down the street at super speed with Fifi patiently hopping behind him.
In the direct-to-video Tiny Toons movie Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, Fifi found brief joy with a genuine skunk; this one being a movie-star named Johnny Pew. After waiting on him hand-and-foot in exchange for an autograph, Fifi discovered he was an arrogant jerk when he gave her autograph away to a voluptuous female skunk named Bimbette. Fifi promptly and literally kicked him to the curb, where Johnny was captured by Elmyra and forced to be her pet "kitty". Johnny Pew was voiced by Rob Paulsen and he was one of the antagonists in the movie.
In the second segment of the episode "New Class Day", titled "Sound-Off", all the Tiny Toons characters were thrown into a silent film. Dizzy Devil chased Buster and Babs into a hollow tree (or thought he did), but when he reached in he pulled out a swooning Fifi by her tail. Fifi sighed "What a man!" and promptly chased Dizzy down the street. Dizzy attempted to escape the love-struck Fifi on a bicycle, but after a considerable amount of pedaling discovered it to be a stationary piece of exercise equipment that she had set-up to trap him.
In "Prom-ise Her Anything", Hamton asked Fifi to be his date to the Prom, and Fifi enthusiastically (and magnetically) accepted in a heartbeat. They were never shown having a real romantic interest in one-another beyond their prom date, though the two did have a few scenes together in other episodes, such as when Fifi hugged Hamton like a Teddy Bear at the end of "The Acme Bowl," and in "The Just-Us League of SuperToons" where Hamton (as Decoy, a parody of Robin from the Batman series) makes a pass at Fifi (as Scentanna, a parody of Zatanna from the DC universe), but she rejects Decoy by blasting him with a shot from her tail, causing him to crumble to the floor.
In "Out of Odor", Elmyra Duff disguised herself as Pepè Le Pew to trick Fifi into becoming her pet. Fifi fell for the ruse and rushed quickly to "Pepè". Painfully squeazing Elmyra to near-bursting, Fifi stated, "Ever since I met you I have had a, how you say, crush, on you".
Like most characters on the show, Fifi's encounters with Elmyra usually involved the latter trying to make the former a pet. Fifi was one of Elmyra's pets/prisoners in "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow"; after Elmyra catches Buster, he leads Fifi and Elmyra's other captives on a daring escape. When Buster is recaptured, Fifi and the others work with Babs to rescue him and teach Elmyra a lesson.
Fifi and all her friends were once pursued by Elmyra in the episode "The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain". Elmyra had disguised herself as a gruesome monster and was picking-off the Tiny Toons cast one-by-one to make them her pets. They all eventually freed themselves by the end of the episode.
Elmyra attempted (successfully) to make Fifi her pet in "Out of Odor", when Elmyra (repeatedly) mistook her for a cat (she assumed "skunk" meant "stinky kitty"). She disguised herself as Pepe Le Pew, went to her Cadillac, and luring Fifi out, squished tomatoes all over her, which nullified her scent. Fifi regained her odor after washing off all the tomato juice, but Elmyra's nose became clogged due to a rose allergy, allowing her to capture Fifi. How Fifi escaped is unknown, though some imply that this took place before "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow".
Fifi briefly competed with a voluptuous pink skunk named Bimbette for the affections of Johnny Pew in How I Spent My Vacation. In the end, Fifi lost Johnny's attention to Bimbette, but discovered it to be no total loss; Johnny was arrogant and insensitive.
Bimbette was also voiced by Kath Soucie.
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