Was the original (late 1960s) Pink Panther cartoons intended for adult viewers?
I’m asking because the Pink Panther can be seen smoking a cigarette in the intro credits (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWOp4z_huN4) and in several occasions throughout the cartoons.
From an archived Health & Human Services page:
That’s almost half of the population. Smoking didn’t become something really bad until mid-70s through about the mid-80s. They used to have cigarette commercials on television before sometime in the 70s.
Here’s the infamous Flintstones Winston Cigarette Ad.
The character Joe Camel was apparently created to appeal to children and has not been used since 1998.
As of January 2, 1971, cigarettes could no longer be advertised on American TV.
Winston’s involvement in the Flintstones went beyond that commercial. It actually sponsored the program during it’s first two seasons before it was dropped in favor of the more family-friendly Welch’s Grape Juice.
In any case, smoking showed up fairly frequently in cartoons and kid-oriented shows before the 70s–even Disney’s. For example, there was one cartoon featuring Donald Duck and his three nephews that revolved around a box of cigars. I doubt you could show that one now without an explanation beforehand that the short was the product of a time when nearly half of all adults smoked.
It should be noted that “The Flinstones” was initially, at least nominally, intended for adult viewing. It aired during prime time and was largely patterned after “The Honeymooners.”
I think that should read “allegedly.” I’ve seen the Pink Panther used to advertise home insulation and car insurance, but nobody’s ever accused those industries of marketing toward children.
(Snoopy used to shill for Met Life, as well.)
It’s worth noting that the cartoon smoking wasn’t written or produced for the cartoon series, but was rather part of the opening credits for the live-action 1963 film The Pink Panther, starring David Niven, Peter Sellers and Robert Wagner. The Panther itself is a pink panther-shaped flaw in the center of a large gemstone, the theft of such gemstone being the plot of the movie. In the film’s opening, a man is describing the gem and its flaw, the camera zooms in on this flaw, which coalesces into an animated panther and leads into the opening credits.
Sequels used more elaborate animation for their openings, and cartoons featuring the panther started being seen in theaters in 1964 and on television in 1969.
The point is that the smoking panther (which is drawn quite differently than its eventual TV offshoot) was not intended for children, though it proved popular with them.
All right, let’s get this straight:
Classic cartoons are not for children. They never were. They were for all ages, and written to amuse, not children, but the creator of the cartoon – who was an adult.
The Pink Panther cartoons (and credit sequence) were created at DePatie-Freleng. If the second name sounds familiar, it should – that’s Fritz Freleng, who formed his own company after a long and Oscar-winning career at Warner Brothers.
The belief that an animated character or a drawing automatically is designed for children is just plain ignorance. Is “Omaha the Cat Dancer” for children? How about “Little Annie Fannie”? Or, leaving out the erotic elements, there are things like “The Big Snit” or “The Old Mill,” or “The Cat Came Back” which are clearly for an adult audience.
A bunch of people who worked on old cartoons usually say something like “we never made these cartoons for children- we made them for ourselves.” (Actually, I went to a panel in honor of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, and Frank Oz said something similar about the Muppets.)
The shot of the Pink Panther smoking a cigarette that opens each cartoon is taken directly from the opening of the title sequence of the Pink Panther film in which the character was introduced. The cigarette is probably meant to make the Panther look like a suave gentleman- which was how he was characterized when his animated shorts began, a cool customer who was always able to outsmart the little man (and in the opening credits to the films, Inspector Clouseau- although the Inspector had his own cartoon series, he and the Panther only appeared together in the film credits.) As time progressed, the Panther eventually became a sort of Everyman, being bested by the foibles of everyday life, and losing as many times as he won.
The animated Pink Panther appeared in theatrical shorts in 1963-65 before he had a TV series, and these were explicitly for an adult audience. He even spoke in some of these, a trait that everyone hated in the 1993 cartoon; the classic version of the Panther is silent. Perhaps, like the Warner Bros. cartoons, material from theatrical shorts is interspersed with material made for television.
Someday, kid, let me tell ya’ about Betty Boop.
Friz.
What, that she started out as a dog?