Hundreds of cartoon facts and why you should care- Chapter 6: Cartoon Bugs

 Yes, this chapter is all about Cartoon Bugs. You know, those little bitty bug creatures have had a not-so-little impact on pop culture with such themes as Big Bad Beetle Borgs and Spider Man, and the green hornet. We're not the only culture to really appreciate insects either. The ancient Egyptians used scarab beetles as jewelry. Cartoons are far from jewelry, though I've always considered them as good as gold. Let's begin with a list of cartoon inects that I've come up with:

 

1. Jiminy Cricket

 

2. Flik

 

3. Webstor

 

4. Buzz Off

 

5. Atom Ant

 

6. Maya the bee

 

7. Grubby

 

8. Zipper

 

9. Charlotte

 

10. Hopper

 

11. Maggie

 

12. Professor Cockroach

 

13. Z

 

14. The Insector

 

15. Freddy the Fly

 

16. Spidra

 

17. Revolta

 

18. Queen of 8 legs

 

19. Tentomon

 

20. Spider Riders

 

21.The Gambling Bug

 

22. Betty the queen of ants

 

23. Spiderman

 

24. Scumbug

 

25. Spiderwoman

 

26. Web Woman

 

27. The Ant Bully

 

28. The Roaches

       

          Okay, well, the bug type among the cartoons is more or less a projection of "small but mighty", making use of an exo-skeleton to make a hero or villain appear tougher, using extra arms based on a bug's six-to-eight legs to make a character more busy, or displaying the special abilities of a bug (Such as the way Spiderman can climb walls, has superhuman strength and agility etc.) to make the insects they're based on more like superheroes themselves. Anyway, in case you're bugging out about this latest chapter, let's "fly" right into the 20 facts about cartoon bugs:

 

1. Buzz-Off and Webstor were both insect warriors from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Buzz Off was a bee-type creature with wings and segmented eyes, and Webstor was a spider-type creature with six red eyes and webbing-like ropes. However, the two don't look a lot like real bugs.

 

2. Jiminy Cricket appeared in two Disney full-length animated features, including Pinnochio as Pinnochio's conscience, and in A Disney Christmas Carol as the ghost of christmas past.

 

3. The Insector was a wise-guy insect character from the magazine Zillions, who made fun of shopping and various television advertisements.

 

4. Flik from A Bug's Life ended up saving his colony from the oppressive grasshoppers that bullied them. But the conflict would never have come up if Flik hadn't screwed things up in the first place by spilling the offering into the water.

 

5. Warner Brothers' early cartoons often featured a bunch of anthropomorphic insects that were never actually named.

 

6. Professor Cockroach from Monsters versus Aliens was renouned for being indestructable because he was a cockroach, but cockroaches are anything but indestructable. You can actually squish one with your fingers.

 

7. Zipper, the small fly from Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, couldn't talk the same way all the others could, but all the other characters could understand him just fine.

 

8. The Gambling Bug from Looney Tunes caused a ridiculous impulse to gamble with anyone he bites. However, he ends up losing a gamble with his number one victim and trying to avoid being smacked by a newspaper!

 

9. The Ant Bully is all about a race of sentient ants who shrink a human child down to their size after he terrorizes their colony. However, the real villain of that feature was a big fat exterminator. Personally, I've never seen the movie, but I don't think it represented a whole lot of common sense.

 

10. Z, from the movie Antz, represented Woody Allen's only voiceover roll in the production of a 3D animated movie.

 

11. Tentomon, from Digimon, was the only creature associated with a male "digi-destined" kid who could fly.

 

12. The Queen of 8 legs from Thundercats was the largest non-robot creature the Thundercats had to face in the first season. The Queen of 8 legs appeared twice in that season, once in her own lair, where the Thundercats successfully destroyed her, and the other when Mumm-ra restored the Thundercats' enemies as evil paintings.

 

13. In The Tick, one enemy was an average-sized female insect named Betty who controlled a seemingly endless army of female ants who dressed in trench coats. She was surprisingly good as a megalomaniac.

 

14. In Teddy Ruxpin, Grubby was a giant grub-worm-like creature and Teddy's best friend on his long journey.

 

15. Revolta was a spider-like evil witch from Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School, who tried to take control of all the daughters of Universal Studios' greatest monsters. She is most notable for using "Spider Bats" to do her dirty work.

 

16. According to an episode of Atom Ant, Atom's one weakness is a picnic, which, being an ant, he finds totally irresistable.

 

17. There have been at least two recurring cartoon serieses with flies as the main characters. The first is Freddy the Fly, a segment in The Wacky World of Tex Avery in which a fly would routinely pester some rich fat woman. The second is The Buzz on Maggie, which follows the daily exploits of a teenage fly.

 

18. Maya the bee was a Nippon Animation cartoon show made in Japan in 1975, and introduced into America in 1990, clearly meant for younger viewers.

 

19. Tiny Toon adventures once had an episode featuring three adolescent rock-musician cockroaches who played in a concert to a whole bunch of other insects, all in Hampton J. Pig's kitchen! They were introduced as auditioning cartoons for the show's new recurring characters, but were never seen outside that episode.

 

20. The animated feature of Charlotte's Web was spun off into another animated movie, which featured Charlotte's adolescent daughters, each of whom had a different hair color.

 

Well, hope you enjoyed that creepy, crawly chapter. Stay tuned for more cartoon facts about other cartoon animals, and thanks for reading.