History

In the 1945 cartoon Nasty Quacks, Daffy's owner, a young girl, also becomes the besotted owner of a small, yellow duckling. When a jealous Daffy feeds the duckling growth pills, he is surprised to see it age into a white, female duck with blonde hair. By the end of the cartoon, the two have fallen in love and given birth to roughly ten black, white, and yellow ducklings of their own. The blonde duck in this cartoon bears visual similarities to Daffy's girlfriend from 1953's Muscle Tussle and may represent the "origin" of the Melissa Duck character.^[7]

Melissa Duck first officially appeared by name in adult form in the 1950 short The Scarlet Pumpernickel which was, in 1994, voted number 31 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.^[8] In the cartoon, she appears as a blonde damsel-in-distress and Daffy's love interest. The plot followed Daffy attempting to save "the Fair Lady Melissa" from having to marry the evil Grand Duke Sylvester with whom she is not in love.^[7] She next appears (referred here as Femme Fatale (aka "The Body", also referred to as Fowl Fatale or Shapely Lady Duck)), in the short The Super Snooper, where she was a tall voluptuous bright blue-eyed, redheaded duck wearing red lipstick going madly in love with Daffy as a detective.^[7] Later in Robert McKimson's Muscle Tussle (1953), Melissa appears with Daffy on a visit to the beach.^[7] Later in the Post-Golden Age media, Melissa (here she is being presented in a human-like form) appears as a possessed client of Daffy's paranormal investigations business in the short The Duxorcist, originally released as part of Daffy Duck's Quackbusters in 1988.

Melissa Duck's most notable role is from the series Baby Looney Tunes which debuted in 2001 and casts the adult characters from the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts as their infant selves, and displays Melissa's crush on Daffy Duck when she was an infant.^[9] In 2011 The Looney Tunes Show introduced a new female duck character, Tina Russo, based on Melissa Duck, although she had a more tomboy personality and appearance.

In 2021, Melissa Duck reappeared as a playable character in the mobile game Looney Tunes World of Mayhem titled the "Fair Lady Melissa", "Maid Melissa", "Possessed Melissa", and "Shapeshifter Melissa".

Biography

As an animator, Friz Freleng enjoyed creating new adversaries for Warners' star Bugs Bunny, since he felt that Bugs' other nemeses, such as Beaky Buzzard and Elmer Fudd (who actually appeared in many more Freleng shorts than is commonly realized), were too stupid to give the rabbit any real challenge. Though considered revolutionary for almost all of the late 1940s, Freleng's own Yosemite Sam had not yet been proven capable of fully fulfilling his creator's intentions. Freleng introduced two of these more formidable opponents as a pair of gangsters in the 1946 film Racketeer Rabbit, written by Michael Maltese.^[16] In the film, Bugs decides to find himself a new home, but the one he chooses is unfortunately occupied by a duo of bank robbers. The characters here are called "Rocky" (drawn like movie gangster Edward G. Robinson) and "Hugo" (a caricatured Peter Lorre). Both gangsters are performed by the Warner studio's longtime chief voice actor, Mel Blanc.^[17]

Appearances

Freleng liked the mobster idea, and he used the concept again in the 1950 short Golden Yeggs. This time, it is Porky Pig and Daffy Duck who run afoul of the mob, only this time Rocky has not only one sidekick, but an entire gang. Freleng also redesigned Rocky for this short, making him a more generalized caricature of the "tough guy" gangster rather than Robinson in particular.^[18] Freleng used several of the same techniques that would make Sam, his other Bugs villain, such a humorous character: despite Rocky's tough-guy demeanor, everlasting cigar (or cigarette) and foppish gangster dress, he really is little more than a dwarf in a much-too-large hat.

In 1953's Catty Cornered, Freleng set the mob against another of his comic duos, Sylvester and Tweety Bird. Gang leader Rocky, this time aided and abetted by a hulking simpleton named "Nick", kidnaps Tweety Bird, and when Sylvester's bumbling predations accidentally free the bird, the poor puss is hailed as a hero.^[19]

The duo reappear in 1954's Bugs and Thugs, this time in the form that Freleng would keep them in for the rest of their run.^[20] Rocky is aided by a new thug, "Mugsy". Although his body type is similar to that of Nick's, he has less hair and is even less intelligent. Before the Warner studio closed for good in 1963, Rocky and Mugsy would appear in two more Freleng cartoons: Bugsy and Mugsy (1957) and The Unmentionables (1963). Mugsy also appears without his boss in a cameo as one of Napoleon Bonaparte's guards in the 1956 Freleng short Napoleon Bunny-Part.

Rocky and Mugsy have also appeared in various Looney Tunes-related merchandise. They are semi-regular characters in Looney Tunes comic books, for example. They also play the villains in the 2002 Xbox video game Loons: The Fight for Fame, a vs. fighting game in which the no-good gangsters attempt to run a film studio into the ground so that they can buy up the stock for next to nothing. Also, in Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, the pair are bosses of the 1930s era. They also appeared in episodes of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries and Duck Dodgers, as well as various cameo appearances in the movie Space Jam. In the movie, they are spotted wearing rabbit's ears and are shown shocked and terrified when Bugs gets crushed by a Monstar named Pound who was meant to crush Lola. They have a brief appearance in the direct-to-video film Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, where they reside in a cabin in Rio de Janeiro while hiding from the police; Mugsy is also in charge of placing the country postmark on Tweety's passport. Rocky and Mugsy both made a cameo appearance in Space Jam: A New Legacy were they are seen in line with the other Tunes leaving Tune World in Bugs Bunny's flashback.

Rocky and Mugsy made cameos in The Looney Tunes Show. In "It's a Handbag", Rocky and Mugsy's pictures were seen in the police's notebook. They were also seen in the Merrie Melodies segment "Stick to My Guns", sung by Yosemite Sam in the episode "Mrs. Porkbunny's" where Yosemite Sam mentions how he declared his vendetta on the Mafia when Sam threw a garbage can into their house. Around the end of the song, Rocky and Mugsy joined in on the final verse with Nasty Canasta, an angry bride, a female cannibal, a grizzly bear, and Toro the Bull.^{[citation needed]}

Rocky and Mugsy appear in the Looney Tunes Cartoons shorts "Chain Gang(sters)" and "Hideout Hare", with Rocky voiced by James Adomian and Mugsy voiced by Fred Tatasciore.^[21]

Shorts

• Racketeer Rabbit (1946) – Features a prototype of Rocky.
• Golden Yeggs (1950) – Rocky's first cartoon, only cartoon paired with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.
• Catty Cornered (1953) – Only pairing with Sylvester and Tweety.
• Bugs and Thugs (1954) – Mugsy's first cartoon.
• Napoleon Bunny-Part (1956) – Mugsy cameos as a guard.
• Bugsy and Mugsy (1957)
• The Unmentionables (1963) – Final appearance of Rocky and Mugsy.

Parodies

In the television series Loonatics Unleashed, the characters Stoney and Bugsy are two gangsters descendants of Rocky and Mugsy, being very similar to them in appearance.

Rocky and Mugsy are parodied as the South Park characters Nathan and Mimsy in the episode "Crippled Summer", Nathan having been introduced in the earlier episode "Up the Down Steroid". Throughout the episode's storylines, with various campers being parodies of other Looney Tunes characters, Nathan (Rocky) attempts to arrange fatal accidents for Jimmy Valmer (a counterpart to Bugs Bunny) which get ruined by Mimsy (Mugsy)'s stupidity. Nathan and Mimsy become reoccurring characters following their return appearance in the episode "Handicar". A poster depicting Rocky and Mugsy can be seen on the wall of Nathan's room.^[22]