Sniffles
Encyclopedia
Sniffles is an animated cartoon
and comic-book
character
in the Warner Bros.
Merrie Melodies
series of cartoons and comics.
Chuck Jones
created Sniffles as a potential new star for the studio in 1939. The character was designed by Disney veteran Charles Thorson
, an old hand at designing cute characters for Disney's Silly Symphonies
. Thorson's design was highly derivative of a character he had designed for Disney in 1936, the country mouse from the Oscar-winning
short The Country Cousin
. Both the country mouse and Sniffles are, in a word, cute. Sniffles' head is almost as large as his body, which allows his infant-like face to dominate his look. He has large, baby-like eyes, a small bewhiskered nose, and a perpetual smile. His ears grow from the sides of his head, placed so as to hearken more to a human infant than to Disney's top star, Mickey Mouse
. The character wears a blue sailor cap, a red shirt, blue pants, a yellow scarf, and tan shoes. His fur is brown with light markings on the face.
Jones debuted the character in the 1939 short Naughty But Mice
(which is quite similar to Disney's "The Country Cousin" itself) though he has nearly identical traits to the hero kitten in the 1938 short The Night Watchman
. In Naughty but Mice, Sniffles has a cold and is searching for a remedy. He eventually stumbles upon an alcoholic cold medicine, drinks it, and becomes intoxicated. He then pals around with an electric shaver, which eventually saves him from a hungry cat. Sniffles was played by voice actresses Gay Seabrook
, Bernice Hansen
, and Sara Berner.
Jones went on to direct 12 cartoons featuring Sniffles, most of which showcase the naïveté of Sniffles by placing him in a dangerous world. For example, in Sniffles Takes a Trip, a simple drive into the country turns into a nightmare as Sniffles is constantly frightened and awed by his surroundings. Some of Sniffles' films pair him with a bookworm character who accompanies the mouse into a sort of fantasyland where books and toys come to life, such as Toy Trouble. Others simply focus on the inescapable sweetness of the character.
In Bedtime for Sniffles, for example, he struggles to stay awake into the wee hours on Christmas
Eve in order to glimpse Santa Claus
(which of course never happens). This scene is a showcase for Jones' facility of realizing character through facial expression.
By the end of the series, Jones transformed Sniffles into an incessant chatterbox who serves more as a nuisance than a cute protagonist. For example, in The Unbearable Bear, Sniffles foils a robbery attempt by perpetually pestering the perpetrator. Jones was moving out of his Disney-esque stage in the late 1945, and Sniffles was retired in 1946 as the director took to more hilarious and sadistic characters such as the Three Bears, fellow mice Hubie and Bertie
, Marvin The Martian
, and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
. The mouse's final cartoon was Hush My Mouse (his only entry in the Looney Tunes
series) in 1946.
Sniffles quickly faded into obscurity in the animation arena. However, he would find new life in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics begun in 1940 by Dell Comics
(writer
Chase Craig
used several minor Warner Bros. characters to fill pages). These comics teamed Sniffles with a little girl named Mary Jane who could shrink herself to mouse size, originally by sprinkling magic sand or simply by wishing it and then, throughout most of the series, by reciting "Magic words of poof poof piffles, make me just as small as sniffles.". Sniffles and Mary Jane would then adventure in a sort of magical toyland. Mary Jane soon surpassed the mouse in popularity, and she got top billing in later issues. Artist
Roger Armstrong drew the series until Al Hubbard took over in the 1950s. These adventures proved a favorite with readers, and the series continued until 1961. This series was recently resurrected for a story in issue #140 of the current Looney Tunes comic book published by DC Comics
.
With the exception of Naughty But Mice, every cartoon in the Sniffles series was given a Blue Ribbon reissue. Also, all Sniffles cartoons would end up being sold to Associated Artists Productions
(a.a.p.) in 1956 (which itself would eventually be bought out by Warner Bros.
).
series Tiny Toon Adventures
features a younger counterpart to Sniffles named Li'l Sneezer, a baby mouse with a propensity for having hurricane-force sneezes. Sniffles also has cameos in the movie Space Jam
(he was squashed flat by one of the Monstars in this case) and the television
series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and comic-book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
series of cartoons and comics.
Character biography
AnimatorAnimator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
created Sniffles as a potential new star for the studio in 1939. The character was designed by Disney veteran Charles Thorson
Charles Thorson
Charles Gustav Thorson , born Karl Gustaf Stefanson, was a political cartoonist, character designer, children's book author and illustrator of icelandic decent....
, an old hand at designing cute characters for Disney's Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
. Thorson's design was highly derivative of a character he had designed for Disney in 1936, the country mouse from the Oscar-winning
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
short The Country Cousin
The Country Cousin
The Country Cousin is an animated short film released on October 31, 1936 by RKO Radio Pictures. The winner of the 1936 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the film was produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, and animated by Art Babbitt and Les Clark...
. Both the country mouse and Sniffles are, in a word, cute. Sniffles' head is almost as large as his body, which allows his infant-like face to dominate his look. He has large, baby-like eyes, a small bewhiskered nose, and a perpetual smile. His ears grow from the sides of his head, placed so as to hearken more to a human infant than to Disney's top star, Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
. The character wears a blue sailor cap, a red shirt, blue pants, a yellow scarf, and tan shoes. His fur is brown with light markings on the face.
Jones debuted the character in the 1939 short Naughty But Mice
Naughty But Mice
Naughty but Mice is a 1939 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and starring Sniffles in his cartoon debut. In the cartoon, Sniffles has a cold and is looking for a cold remedy....
(which is quite similar to Disney's "The Country Cousin" itself) though he has nearly identical traits to the hero kitten in the 1938 short The Night Watchman
The Night Watchman
The Night Watchman is a Merrie Melodies cartoon released to theaters on November 19, 1938. This short was the very first film directed by a then-credited Charles Jones after he was promoted from an animator .For the so called "dubbed version" created by Turner, recreated Blue Ribbon title cards...
. In Naughty but Mice, Sniffles has a cold and is searching for a remedy. He eventually stumbles upon an alcoholic cold medicine, drinks it, and becomes intoxicated. He then pals around with an electric shaver, which eventually saves him from a hungry cat. Sniffles was played by voice actresses Gay Seabrook
Gay Seabrook
-Career:Seabrook was teamed with comedian Emerson Treacy to form the double-act Treacy and Seabrook. The team was very successful on radio and in theater during the early 1930s, with routines similar to those of real husband-and-wife team Burns and Allen....
, Bernice Hansen
Bernice Hansen
Bernice Hansen was a voice artist who did a number of female character voices for Warner Bros. cartoons in the 1930s and early-1940s...
, and Sara Berner.
Jones went on to direct 12 cartoons featuring Sniffles, most of which showcase the naïveté of Sniffles by placing him in a dangerous world. For example, in Sniffles Takes a Trip, a simple drive into the country turns into a nightmare as Sniffles is constantly frightened and awed by his surroundings. Some of Sniffles' films pair him with a bookworm character who accompanies the mouse into a sort of fantasyland where books and toys come to life, such as Toy Trouble. Others simply focus on the inescapable sweetness of the character.
In Bedtime for Sniffles, for example, he struggles to stay awake into the wee hours on Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
Eve in order to glimpse Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
(which of course never happens). This scene is a showcase for Jones' facility of realizing character through facial expression.
By the end of the series, Jones transformed Sniffles into an incessant chatterbox who serves more as a nuisance than a cute protagonist. For example, in The Unbearable Bear, Sniffles foils a robbery attempt by perpetually pestering the perpetrator. Jones was moving out of his Disney-esque stage in the late 1945, and Sniffles was retired in 1946 as the director took to more hilarious and sadistic characters such as the Three Bears, fellow mice Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie
Hubie and Bertie are animated cartoon mouse characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Though largely forgotten today, Hubie and Bertie represent some of animator Chuck Jones' earliest work that was intended to be funny rather than cute.-First film:Jones...
, Marvin The Martian
Marvin the Martian
Marvin the Martian is a fictional character appearing in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Marvin's likeness appears in miniature on the Spirit rover on Mars.-Conception and creation:...
, and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...
. The mouse's final cartoon was Hush My Mouse (his only entry in the Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
series) in 1946.
Sniffles quickly faded into obscurity in the animation arena. However, he would find new life in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics begun in 1940 by Dell Comics
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
(writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
Chase Craig
Chase Craig
Chase Craig is an American writer-cartoonist who worked on comic strips and comic books. During the 1940s and 1950s, he was an editor and scripter for Western Publishing....
used several minor Warner Bros. characters to fill pages). These comics teamed Sniffles with a little girl named Mary Jane who could shrink herself to mouse size, originally by sprinkling magic sand or simply by wishing it and then, throughout most of the series, by reciting "Magic words of poof poof piffles, make me just as small as sniffles.". Sniffles and Mary Jane would then adventure in a sort of magical toyland. Mary Jane soon surpassed the mouse in popularity, and she got top billing in later issues. Artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
Roger Armstrong drew the series until Al Hubbard took over in the 1950s. These adventures proved a favorite with readers, and the series continued until 1961. This series was recently resurrected for a story in issue #140 of the current Looney Tunes comic book published by DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
.
With the exception of Naughty But Mice, every cartoon in the Sniffles series was given a Blue Ribbon reissue. Also, all Sniffles cartoons would end up being sold to Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical feature films and short subjects for television. It existed from 1953 to 1958. It was later folded into United Artists. The former a.a.p. library was later owned by MGM/UA Entertainment and then Turner Entertainment. Turner continues...
(a.a.p.) in 1956 (which itself would eventually be bought out by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
).
Legacy
The 1990 televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
features a younger counterpart to Sniffles named Li'l Sneezer, a baby mouse with a propensity for having hurricane-force sneezes. Sniffles also has cameos in the movie Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
(he was squashed flat by one of the Monstars in this case) and the television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
.