Cartoon Stars Re-Animated: Woody Woodpecker.

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated title card.

I love cartoons. Always have. Growing up, almost any chance there was to watch a cartoon on TV, I'd take it. Saturday morning network cartoons. Sunday and weekday morning syndicated cartoons. Cartoons on cable. Old cartoons. New cartoons. Didn't matter. I'd watch them if they were on. 

 However, it's struck me lately that much of the crop of cartoons once considered “classic” to young and old alike have faded from view. Thanks to a media landscape that has changed from one that simple reruns things throughout the day to one that shows you what you were searching for, kids aren't aware of them like many of us were. 

 Now, what's to be done about this? Well, in terms of what sparked this awareness, I can stop watching theme park videos by Gen Zers where they argue that Universal's Toon Lagoon at their Islands of Adventure park should be rethemed to Spongebob Squarepants because they don't know who Popeye or Dudley Do-Right are. I can also stop doing impressions of characters that my niece and nephew have never heard of in front of them and avoid their quizzical looks. 

 But forget all that! Instead, I'm going to do a series of posts on here about cartoon stars that have faded from view and do a quick assessment of why they may not have the star power they used to. All in a feature I'm calling (for lack of a better title) Cartoon Stars Re-Animated. 

 Now, why don't we start with Universal Studios' supposed cartoon mascot, Woody Woodpecker. 

Woody Woodpecker was a creation of Walter Lantz Productions. And we can't talk about Walter Lantz Productions without talking about Walter Lantz. Lantz was born in 1912 in New Rochelle, New York to a pair of Italian immigrants, Francesco Paolo Lantz (formerly Lanza) and Maria Jarvis (formerly Gervasi). Lantz was interested in art from an early age, completing a mail-order drawing class at age 12. While working as an auto mechanic, a wealthy customer saw his drawings on the garage bulletin board and offered to finance his art studies at the Art Students League of New York. Lantz went on to work a number of jobs both during and after school including as a copyboy, gag writer, chaueffeur, etc. as well as working at numerous animation studios. There's a lot more to it, but I don't have the time and space to write out Lantz's whole biography. Anyway, he eventually makes it to California where he takes over what was then Universal Cartoon Studios at Universal (there's a story that claims he won the right to work on the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in a card game with Universal president Carl Laemmle in a poker game. But that sounds apocryphal). 

 Anyway, the character of Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the Andy Panda cartoon Knock, Knock in 1940. Andy Panda, for the record, was another fairly active characater from Lantz's studio. He started as a sort of mischevious problem child character who was inexplicably hunted by Pygmy tribesmen (which calls into question which continent Andy's stories took place on) and later evolved into a sort of cartoon everyman in a similar model to Porky Pig or Mickey Mouse. Anyway, early Woody was made out to be a crazy, chaos-bringer in a similar mode to early Daffy Duck. And his design was . . . a work in progress. 

The early, snaggle-toothed, chubby-legged version of Woody Woodpecker

Woody Woodpecker's design and character would evolve as time went on. 

A mid-ish version of Woody.  Actually taken from his 1999 show.

His look was streamlined. Personality-wise, he would stay a chaos-bringing character for a good while. This is especially true whenever he was set up as the comic foil of a character named Wally Walrus. Wally was a walrus with a Scandinavian accent who was probably meant to come across as kind of stuffy and tightly-wound but never quite showed enough personality to hit that home. While there were other situations too, Woody generally bothered Wally when he was after food. And Woody could be quite the glutton. 

 Woody's design would get reworked overtime, becoming rounder and more human-like. 

 And by the 1950s, Woody had developed the pompadour-like tuft of plumage he's become known for. He had also mellowed out quite a bit. He was still something of a glutton at times. However, he was also put up against a new antagonist who was shiftier and much more prone to causing trouble for his own benefit, Buzz Buzzard. This shifted Woody into being in a more reactive role where he was responding more to wrongs done against himself and others. 

The more recognizable modern take on Woody Woodpecker.

 His voice changed too. He was originally voiced by prolific voice actor Mel Blanc. Then, the role went to Danny Webb, Kent Rogers, Dick Nelson, Ben Hardaway and Grace Stafford. One should note that Grace Stafford was actually Walter Lantz's wife, and she slipped her audition tape in without him knowing. Later, the role would be taken up by Billy West and Eric Bauza. The voice was refined in a number of ways, sometimes using technological means to help attain his high pitch. However, Woody's trademark laugh remains. 

 Walter Lantz Productions continued making cartoons longer than a lot of other big Golden Age cartoon studios. Though, not without some sacrifices in animation quality. And Woody remained Lantz's big star. He made the leap to toys, comics, and even had an Academy Award-nominated song back in the '40s. In 1982, he was even made into a balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which lasted until 1996 (it may have been one of the first places I saw the character). Woody made the leap to TV in 1957 with ABC's The Woody Woodpecker Show. The show featured three Walter Lantz cartoons bookended with host segments featuring Walter Lantz himself interacting with an animated Woody Woodpecker. Though, the structure with the host segments was clearly copied from The Wonderful World of Disney, which started life as Walt Disney's Disneyland in 1954, there is a notable difference. While Walt Disney generally used his wraparound host segments as means of marketing his upcoming projects, Walter Lantz used his to cue in kids to how the animation process worked. There would also be The New Woody Woodpecker Show on Fox Kids in 1999. 

The Woody Woodpecker parade balloon

But beyond all the history and such, what do I think of Woody Woodpecker as a character? Well, I personally like him. I know he's not always the most popular with cartoon and animation fans. I know a number of people who see him as either “annoying” or even “psychotic” based on his earlier chaos-causing persona. And his adversary in those cartoons, Wally Walrus, despite being a bit pompous, doesn't seem bad enough to deserve what Woody dishes out. Woody would eventually evolve into a more morally-driven trickster in the Bugs Bunny mold, after he started squaring up against Buzz Buzzard. But by then, the animation quality of the shorts had taken enough of a dip that it didn't really help with a lot of people. I don't mind seeing the chaos Woody brings. I know of far worse and more annoying cartoon characters (Screwy Squirrell for example). And the fact that in many of his early cartoons have him chasing after food gives him a relatable drive in a sort of animal way. Though he walks and talks like a person, in many ways he's like a badly trained dog, or a pigeon chasing after stray bits of popcorn. I also find that he's one of the cartoon characters whose evolution is fairly easy to trace, going from agent of chaos to more moral trickster. It would be presumptuous to say that there's a platonic ideal of Woody Woodpecker that could be found if you combined different versions of the character. But it is something to think about. 

So, how did Woody Woodpecker fade from popularity? Well, like a lot of older cartoon characters, lack of exposure. It starts a little earlier with Woody than some of the others, though. In the 1990s, the way for older cartoon characters to stay in the limelight was through repeated play on cable tv. And that usually meant being on Nickelodeon or, more likely, Cartoon Network. Woody didn't play on Cartoon Network. At least, to my knowledge. He did get a new show on Fox Kids in 1999. But on Fox Kids it was easily to be overlooked or muscled out by other shows, especially as kids' tastes changed and Fox Kids started to enter its anime era. It might have been something of a blessing in disguise that Woody Woodpecker never played on Cartoon Network, though. Most of that channel's lineup at the time was the result of Turner Broadcasting buying up every cartoon library and studio it could get its hands on, which eventually ended up in the hands of Warner Animation. So, Universal got to keep Walter Lantz Productions and Woody as a result. 

 There is one exception to that: the country of Brazil. In Brazil, Woody Woodpecker is very well known. Though he just goes by the name Pica-Pau (which just means Woodpecker in Portuguese). And near as I can tell, the popularity is just the product of good dubbing and a lot of local television play. 

 So, what's become of Woody since? Well, a hybrid live action/CGI movie was released to theaters in South America and DVD in the United States. I've seen it. Aside from some scatalogical humor, I don't hate it. Though, the story is a bit out of joint in places. A sequel titled Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp which reunites him with antagonists Wally Walrus and Buzz Buzzard was released in 2024. I haven't seen that one, because it appears to only be on Netflix, which I don't have at the moment. In 2018, a new series of animated shorts were released to YouTube. They're not quite my personaly cup of tea. I'm not sure if they were popular, because I'm not sure how many people would actually look for them. He also still appears at Universal Studios as a walkaround character sometimes, but his presence has decreased (he used to have a kiddie coaster). 

 The older shorts are still available in different places, though. Last I checked, The Woody Woodpecker Show was being run on MeTV Toons. And a blu-ray titled The Woody Woodpecker Screwball Collection was released in 2021. Keep in mind that these shorts are a product of their time before watching them, though. Some may include common racial and ethnic stereotypes of the era. 

 Anyway, stay 'tooned as I raid my physical media collection for more cartoon stars to revisit. Until next time.