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Plucky Duck

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File:Plucky Duck.jpg
Plucky Duck

Plucky Duck is a fictional anthropomorphic green duck who appeared in the 1990s animated series Tiny Toon Adventures. Plucky was voiced by Joe Alaskey. In the Japanese dub of the show, he was voiced by Kōichi Yamadera. Plucky, a teenager, was portrayed on the series as a greedy, egotistical, and easily excited young duck, who'd often engage in various schemes with the goal of either personal glory or satisfying some personal whim. These schemes ranged from inventing a time machine to delay doing his own homework to traveling to Hollywood, California in an ill-fated attempt at selling his life story as a movie. His schemes often failed because his ego got in the way or because a guilty conscience got the better of him (as was the case when he attempted to cheat on a test and subsequently went insane as he brooded over the morality of his actions). Babs once aptly described him as "the silly green duck with an ego the size of Cleveland."

Like the other characters in the series, Plucky attended Acme Looniversity, where his mentor and favorite teacher was Daffy Duck, and resembled his personality so much that he was nearly a clone. Similar to Bugs's's relationship with Bugs Bunny, Plucky also sometimes found himself at odds with the two main stars of Tiny Toon Adventures, Buster and Babs Bunny (No relation!), though the three managed to remain friends (the rabbits were generally indifferent to Plucky's egotism when not using it to their advantage) nevertheless and Plucky occasionally displays a sense of loyalty to them.

Plucky's best friend was Hamton J. Pig, a mild-mannered pig and Plucky's opposite - much like Porky Pig being the opposite of Daffy - whom Plucky often takes advantage of; his romantic interest was Shirley the Loon, a young psychic female duck.

A comic book enthusiast, some episodes featured Plucky parodying various heroic characters, much like Daffy's roles of "Duck Dodgers" and "The Scarlet Pumpernickel".

These included The Toxic Revenger (a parody of the B-movie character, The Toxic Avenger), fighting the highly-pollutive Montana Max industries; James T. Duck (a parody of Captain Kirk in Star Trek); Bat-Duck (a parody of Batman, with Hamton in Robin's red-and-green as "Decoy, the Pig Hostage"); and Pluck Hyerdahl of the Kon-Ducki in a parody of Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki.

Plucky's end tag was the Romeo and Juliet line, "Parting is such sweet sorrow!"

Baby Plucky

File:Baby Plucky.jpg
Baby Plucky

Among the more notable of the Plucky-centric Tiny Toons shorts featured "Baby Plucky", a look back at Plucky's diaper-clad toddler days (with cameos by other "Baby" Tiny Toons characters, such as Babs Bunny). Baby Plucky was characterized by a higher-pitched voice and stilted "baby-talk" diction ("Is no your turn to push the button, is my turn to push the button!"), and wore nothing except a diaper. He was also full of the wholly (or at least mostly) innocent mischief for which toddlers are known. Baby Plucky could easily be considered a not-so-subtle parody of the genre of re-imagining established characters as younger versions of themselves; Tiny Toons was often accused by critics of jumping on the bandwagon of that genre. Baby Plucky was voiced by Nathan Ruegger (the son of writer/producer Tom Ruegger and the future voice of Skippy Squirrel on Animaniacs).

In one short, Baby Plucky discovers that items in the toilet bowl disappear when the toilet is flushed ("Water go down the hoooOOolle."), and proceeds to flush various items simply to watch them vanish, not realizing until far too late that he was clogging the plumbing. In another, Baby Plucky and his mother (who was heard but only shown from the shoulders down, similar to the appearances of Nanny on the animated series Muppet Babies and all adults in the Peanuts comic strips and animated cartoons) visit a shopping mall and Plucky's obsession with an elevator ("Wanna go on the el-a-lator. Wanna push the button.") leads him to cross paths with and eventually foil a criminal trying to make a getaway.

Baby Plucky also had several guest appearances in Animaniacs (normally as a background cameo), whereas when other Tiny Toons characters had cameos they would be shown in their proper age.

See also