Remember Jinks the Cat?
Mr. Jinks is a Hanna-Barbera character from the Pixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinks segments that ran as part of The Huckleberry Hound Show from 1958 to 1961.
Jink was sort of like Tom from Tom and Jerry in that he was constantly trying to catch him a mouse meal, but the similarities end there. Jinks was nowhere near as sinister as Tom. He was much “simpler” and his relationship with the mice, while adversarial, never felt as deadly as in Tom and Jerry.
Jinks had a great catchphrase that he would utter whenever he was foiled by Pixie & Dixie. He would say, “I hates those meeces to pieces!“
Mr. Jinks was voiced by Daws Butler doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando. Butler also voiced Dixie, while Pixie was voiced by Don Messick. If you can’t hear the Brando/Jinks connection, don’t think about Godfather Brando, instead, listen to him in this A Streetcar Named Desire clip.
If you have never seen one of these cartoons, you are in for a treat, here is Kit Kat Kit (1958). In it, Mr. Jinks buys a robotic Do It Yourself Kitty-Kat-Kit and turns it loose on Pixie and Dixie.
Naturally, those two mice are too clever and they quickly realize that this robo-cat is designed to catch mice. So while Jinks is sleeping, they dress him up as a mouse, with comical results.
This cartoon is fast paced and clever. It also has some wonderful art design in it. I suspect much of that can be attributed to work by first class animator and layout artist, Ed Benedict.
I started watching these cartoons again after stumbling upon a “Mr. Jinx” statue in the Hake’s catalog. I had always spelled it Jinks, and that is how it is spelled in the title. So I am left wondering, why did they use an X in the statue? A mystery for the ages I suspect.
