Pixie and Dixie
Tv 1958 · The Huckleberry Hound Show (Hanna-Barbera)
Comic foil duo of two grey mice locked in a perpetual cat-and-mouse cycle with the southern-drawling Mr. Jinks, who famously hated those meeces to pieces.
Hanna-Barbera's second studio production
The Huckleberry Hound Show was William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's second original series after launching Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1957 with The Ruff and Reddy Show. The Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks segment was developed as one of three rotating components within the half-hour show, alongside the title Huckleberry Hound bear and the Yogi Bear segments. The pre-recorded series was sponsored in original run by the Kellogg Company.
Premiere date and Emmy win
The Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks segment debuted on 2 October 1958 in syndication, distributed by Screen Gems. The Huckleberry Hound Show won the 1960 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Children's Programming at the 12th Primetime Emmys ceremony on 20 June 1960 — the first animated television series to win a Primetime Emmy. The segment ran 57 cartoons across three seasons through to early 1961, with Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks the entire premise.
Voice cast
Don Messick voiced Pixie. Daws Butler voiced both Dixie (in a southern drawl reminiscent of his Huckleberry Hound character) and Mr. Jinks the cat (in a Marlon Brando-impression growl), the pair routinely sharing scenes in the same recording booth. Butler's catchphrase, delivered by Mr. Jinks — "I hate them meeces to pieces" — became one of the most-quoted cartoon lines of the 1960s and was referenced in The Simpsons season-seven episode Treehouse of Horror VI in 1995 and Family Guy season-two episode Holy Crap in 1999.
Character dynamic
Pixie and Dixie are two grey mice sharing a single mousehole. Mr. Jinks is the resident orange tabby trying to catch them. The segments invert the conventional cat-and-mouse dynamic by giving Jinks vain pretensions to social superiority that the mice undermine through trickery. The three are sometimes friends, sometimes adversaries, depending on the episode; this irregular friendship dynamic predates similar conventions later used in Tom and Jerry shorts of the 1960s.
Reunions and afterlife
The three characters reunited for the 1988 Hanna-Barbera direct-to-video special Yogi's Treasure Hunt, with Daws Butler reprising Dixie and Mr. Jinks. The trio appeared in cameos in Cartoon Network's Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (2000-2007) and the 2021 HBO Max reboot Jellystone, with Mr. Jinks voiced in the reboot by Niccole Thurman.
380 words. Cross-referenced against the Wikipedia entry. Sources: see /methodology.