Someone gave my daughter a weird little Tweet Bird-as-a-butterfly Easter plushy, and the thing is driving me up the wall more than it ought to.
The thing is, it emits some recorded expressions. It would be annoying enough just on the strength of the poor quality of the voice acting, as it sounds so utterly unlike Mel Blanc’s Tweety that I have a really hard time crediting that Warner Bros. actually gave their approval for the licensing. The phrases themselves aren’t much better: “I tawt I taw a butterfly. I am! I am a butterfly.” Really?
It’s extra annoying because it sounds for all the world like Gilbert Gottfried (literally) phoning in a Tweety impression, with the help of a little pitch-shifting.
Anyone heard this? Am I nuts? (With regard to this suspicion, specifically.)
Also, Googling “Gilbert +Gottfried +Tweety” appears to be an exercise in futility, for some reason.
Tweety has been voiced by Joe Alaskey for the last 15 years.
While Gottfried has done voice work, he’s a big enough star that he wouldn’t be hired just to do a voice for a toy. If Alaskey wasn’t able to do it, they’d get a cheap nobody.
I’m not so sure that does stand to reason. He just lost his primary gig with AFLAC. And if John Cleese can read directions on my Tom Tom, I really don’t think there’s any star too big to do any voiceover gig.
Where was the toy made? I ask because if you are an American voice actor in China, the person hiring you may not hear the difference as clearly as we would.
ETA: I got Cleese’s voice downloaded as a free bonus when I had a problem with the TomTom early on. I thought it would be fun and funny to hear his voice coming out of it. In reality though, I just find myself thinking about how utterly boring it must have been for a man of his intelligence to sit there for hours reading into a microphone “Left turn ahead.” “Right turn ahead.”
And the jokes, OMG. “Bear right . . . beaver left.”
