Last week, I took my nieces and nephews to
The Greatest Cartoons of all Time, an annual event held at the
Alex Theater in Glendale. On the drive there, one of my nephews asked me what I thought was the worst cartoon character of all time. Being a cartoon buff, I was somewhat insulted by the question - there are no bad cartoon characters, just bad scripts. But later, sitting at my computer, several examples of just-plain-bad cartoon characters began to pop intro my brain. Within 30 minutes, I had compiled a list of what I consider the worst cartoon characters of all time. To be fair, this list only contains cartoons that I have, at one point in my life, watched and have some knowledge of... So obscure characters like "
Spunky and Tadpole" didn't make the list, despite how bad I am sure they are. We'll start with number 10, and work our way up over the next few weeks until we get to the #1 absolute worst cartoon character of all time. Here we go...
NUMBER TEN: Baby Huey
The world of cartoons has a large number of idiots; Baby Huey is probably the biggest, most idiotic character of them all. Baby Huey is a gigantic baby duck that has the IQ of a rock. In most cartoons, he wants to play with the neighborhood ducklings, but the little ducks don't want anything to do with him (you know how cruel kids can be at that age). He eventually ends up playing with a bloodthirsty fox who has plans to eat Baby Huey, but every plan to murder the duckling are thwarted by either Baby Huey's indestructible body or his indescribable stupidity.
Baby Huey began his career in the 1949 Paramount Noveltoon
Quack a Doodle Doo. He starred in several Paramount cartoons in the 1950's and was featured on Casper's Saturday morning cartoon show. He also had a long run of comic books and was even resurrected for an all-new TV series in 1994. He also starred in a direct-to video movie in 1999,
Baby Huey's Easter Adventure. To top off his career, President Bill Clinton once compared himself to Baby Huey in a 1993 interview: "I'm a lot like Baby Huey. I'm fat. I'm ugly. But if you push me down, I keep coming back." I'd be the last person to argue with a president.
Baby Huey cartoons share traits that were common with all Paramount cartoons at the time; while they are well-produced and animated, they are exceedingly and senselessly violent. Even I have a tendency to cringe at least once during a Baby Huey cartoon. We'll get another example of Paramount's violence in another top ten listing. For now, here is a typical Baby Huey short:
Git Along Li'l Duckie, from 1955.
