Western Animation / Pink Panther and Pals

From left to right: Pink Panther, Big Nose, the Ant, and the Aardvark.

Pink Panther and Pals is an animated series starring The Pink Panther(who else?). First airing in 2010, it was created by Desert Panther Production and Rubicon Studios in association with the Mirisch Company and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television.

Each episode is divided into three shorts. Two of these are centered around the titular Pink Panther and his archenemy Big Nose (Alex Nussbaum)^note Due to the Pink Panther shorts being Mime And Music Only Cartoons, Big Nose does not have full dialogue, only nonverbal sounds like laughs and grunts, with frequent appearances from Big Nose's loyal Dog, and less frequently, Pink Panther's companion Hoarse. These shorts put the characters in a variety of situations and settings, but almost all of them involve Pink Panther and Big Nose getting into some sort of conflict with each other. These conflicts are usually instigated by Big Nose, but sometimes by Pink Panther. Big Nose tries his hardest to outdo Pink Panther, but Pink Panther's skills, friendliness, and sometimes luck help him win in the end.

The other segment, coming in between the two Pink Panther segments, features The Ant and the Aardvark. As in the classic cartoons, Aardvark (Eddie Garvar) tries every method he can think of to catch and eat Ant (Kel Mitchell), only for Aardvark's plans to backfire on him every time.

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Tropes common to this series include:

• Aardvark Trunks: Like in the original series, only now the Aardvark's trunk is even longer and more flexible.
• The Ace: Pink is shown in some episodes to be more talented than Big Nose.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. In previous cartoons, Pink Panther had a very tall, lanky, and stylized appearance, making him look like a comical wise guy. Without altering his design too much, this series makes his body look more organic and rounded, making him look more conventionally cute. This is very fitting for his Nice Guy personality in this series.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Hoarse gets this. In the original, he is shown to be mean to Pink whenever he wants to ride him, but here he is more willing to cooperate with Pink.
  • The Strongman reappears but now is friends with Pink. Of course, he was focusing his wrath on Big Nose.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Big Nose is much more despicable and volatile in this version.
• Adapted Out: Unlike the original, there are no Inspector Clouseau shorts.
• Age Lift: Pink Panther is notably younger than any of his previous incarnations, being that of a teenager.
• Alliterative Title: Pink Panther and Pals.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Aardvark when he becomes prey to bigger predators in "One Small Step for Ant", "Ant-Arctic", and "Land of the Gi-Ants".
• Alter Kocker: The Aardvark speaks like this, though without Yiddish sayings.
• American Accents: The Genie in the "If Ants Were Wishes" short speaks with something a New York inflection.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In "Zeus Juice", after Aardvark drinks something from the Super Duper Juicer, which causes his brain to grow in a massive size, he goes over to the Ant's home to gloat about it. When the former asks the latter for the final request, the Ant asks this question which catches the Aardvark off-guard and then causes his head to expand until it explodes.
  Ant: Here's one I've always pondered. Why can't you catch me?
• Aside Glance: In "Pinxillated," when Pink Panther realizes that Big Nose is cheating his customers out of earning prizes by Moving the Goalposts, Pink Panther gives the audience an angry look, as if to say, "Can you believe this?" He even scrunches his tail up into a zigzag shape to emphasize his anger.
• Butt-Monkey/The Chew Toy: Who else but Big Nose? Also, Aardvark leans towards the latter trope during his attempts to catch and eat Ant, which frequently get him injured.
• Cartoon Creature: Hoarse, for the most part, as it isn't clear if he's a horse or donkey but it's generally settled that he's a horse.
• Coloring in the World: "A Pinker Tomorrow" has the Pink Panther waking up in a black-and-white future controlled by an evil dog. Since he's the only thing left with any color, he has the power to bring it back, and does so by hooking himself up to the villain's power source so he can spread color on a large scale.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In "If Ants Were Wishes", Genie tries to bring up an idea to Aardvark that he can just simply wish for ants to eat. Naturally, Aardvark didn't listen.
• Depending on the Writer: In some episodes, Big Nose is married (with or without kids) and, in other episodes, he isn't. Likewise, in some episodes, he's shown to instigate the conflict, whereas in a few he's been shown to have been minding his business.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The titular Ant and the Aardvark are called what they are.
• The Dog Bites Back: Literally, Big Nose's dog would get back at his owner for his mistreatment towards him.
• Here We Go Again!: In Make Pink, Not War, Pink manages to make his warring neighbors befriend each other, but their kids start playing with each other the same way, water balloons and all.
• Heroic Mime: While most other characters in the Pink Panther shorts make grunts and other vocal sounds (or, in a few cases, speak actual words,) Pink Panther himself is completely silent.
• Horsing Around: This is best seen in "Pink On the Hoof", where Hoarse does not want to cooperate with Pink and, thus, acts up, until he sees a girl horse.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: In most Pink Panther shorts, the word "Pink" is part of the title.
• Informed Species:
  • The Aardvark resembles more of a cartoon anteater, than an aardvark (besides his ears). However, this might be slightly justified, as, in the original shorts, he would tell the Ant, "Quit calling me an Aardvark! I'm an Anteater!" Oddly, his prehistoric cousin looks more like an aardvark would.
  • Played for Laughs in "The Aardvark's New Moves". During one of the Aardvark's attempts to catch the Ant, he is shown a real life photo of an aardvark and reacts in absolute terror.
  Ant: "A reality show? A bitter reality."
  Aardvark: "Oh no!" (Runs away screaming) "No, no, no!"
• Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Also true to the original, as, outside of the Ant and Aardvark sketches, no one talks.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • One of the characters in the Ant and Aardvark sketches, which are set in the African jungle, is a tiger. Tigers are native to Asia. Bears and boars have also appeared in some shorts.
  • The episode segment "Ant-Arctic" also features a walrus (a species found in the North Pole) living in the South Pole.
• Moving the Goalposts: In "Pinxillated," Big Nose runs an arcade where the prizes are all the same plushie. There is a sign saying, in pictures, "one ticket = one plushie." A boy comes up to the prize booth with a ticket, but Big Nose decides he doesn't want to give away the plushies, so he changes the sign to make it say "two tickets = one plushie." The boy walks away, disheartened. Pink Panther starts winning arcade games to give the boy his tickets, and Big Nose keeps driving up the price of the plushies so that Pink Panther will have to get more tickets. By the end, the sign reads "1000 tickets = one plushie," but by that point, Pink Panther has a truck full of tickets, and Big Nose is trapped inside an arcade machine, so he can't change the sign again, and Pink Panther and the boy each get a plushie.
• Nice Guy: Pink Panther is shown to be very kindhearted. For example, in "Pinxillated," he is angry when Big Nose cheats a boy out of a prize at Big Nose's arcade by increasing the number of tickets required to get a prize. Pink Panther takes it upon himself to win the arcade games to get more tickets for the boy.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: While the Ant is voiced by Kel Mitchell using his normal voice, the Aardvark is still an impersonation of comedian Jackie Mason.
• No Name Given: Like the original, Pink Panther isn't given a name, and neither is Big Nose or his dog. Likewise, the same would occur for the Aardvark and the Ant.
• No-Sell: In one scene of "Pink Trek," Pink Panther and Hoarse go over a waterfall and land in the ground nearby, creating an Impact Silhouette. This is one of the very few times that Pink Panther suffers an Amusing Injury. However, he simply climbs out of the hole, still looking cheerful and completely unharmed, while Hoarse looks dazed when he pokes his head out.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: In one episode, "Remotely Pink", Pink Panther uses the remote to turn the sky from day to night which turns a bicycle newspaper delivery boy into a werewolf.
• Out-Gambitted: In "Party Animals," Aardvark realizes that Ant can't resist parties, so he sends Ant an invitation to a party at his (Aardvark's) house, hoping to get Ant alone with him so he can eat him. Ant realizes immediately that the party is a trap, so he invites some other animals to the party. The other animals accidentally get in Aardvark's way, preventing him from eating Ant, which leaves Ant free to enjoy the party.
  • "Pick A Caardvark" has Aardvark try to outwit Ant using card tricks, with the bet being that if Aardvark wins, he gets to eat Ant, but Ant proposes that if he wins, Aardvark has to retrieve honey for him by passing through a dangerous obstacle course. Naturally, Ant gets the better of Aardvark by distracting him and then switching the cards around... not that the possibility ever crosses Aardvark's mind.
• Plot Allergy: In "Find Your Own Ant", it's revealed that Aardvark is allergic to kiwi—his entire body puffs up should he ever come in contact with it.
• Prehensile Tail: In "Pinxillated," while Pink Panther is doing great at an arcade game, he briefly takes his hands off the joysticks and moves one of them with his tail, just to show that he can.
• Real After All: In "A Pinker Tomorrow", Pink Panther wakes up from a nightmare where Big Nose's dog rules the Earth. He looks outside and sees everything is normal until he turns his back around to not notice that his neighbor is controlled by the dog, implying that the nightmare might be true.
• Right Behind Me: In "I Didn't See That Coming", the Aardvark cracks some mean comments about the Tiger for inadvertantly foiling his plan to catch the Ant while asleep. Cue the angry predator grabbing him and making him face him from behind, ready to make him pay.
• Secret Test of Character: In "The Pink is in the Mail", the head mailman observes the Pink Panther and Big Nose in their competition and sees the former as a worthy mailman for being a kind-hearted soul.
• Shout-Out: In Pinxilated, we see parodies of Street Fighter, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and DanceDanceRevolution
  • Remotely Pink has shoutouts to Star Wars, Superman, and Click
  • In "A Pinker Tomorrow", Pink tricks Big Nose into coloring a house à la the very first Pink Panther short, "Pink Phink".
  • In "Chilled to the Pink," Big Nose's heater gains a pair of shifty-looking eyes when turned on, making it resemble the Air Conditioner from The Brave Little Toaster. Like the Air Conditioner, it also overheats and explodes.
• Single Tear: When Ant catches the Awful Aardvark crying over his lost skateboard, the latter tries to deny it by stating he's too mean to cry, with a single tear disproving his statement.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Big Nose is this to Panther in the shorts where he's his neighbor. He's jealous of the Panther's likeability and does everything he can to sabotage him, but almost nothing goes right for the poor guy.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: In-Universe. In "Pink Kahuna", Big Nose enforces the law on the beach too far to the point he forbids anyone from having fun on the beach. This comes back to bite him in the ass at the end, where he is arrested for trying to outlaw leisure from the beach and is carted off to prison.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: "The Mighty Pinkwood Tree" ends with a rare moment where both Pink and Big Nose get what they want, though not before all of Big Nose's attempts to get rid of the huge tree Pink lives in end in failure. As Big Nose breaks down crying, Pink takes pity on him and calls in the termites and beaver which Big Nose sent to remove the tree, and which Pink befriended, to carve a hole in the trunk so Big Nose's highway can safely pass through the tree.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: In "A Pink and Stormy Night", we see Big Nose's wife, who's who appears to be ten times his size.
• Too Dumb to Live: Near the end of "Spaced Out", Aardvark opts to eat the alien even after Ant warned him not to because the other aliens would shoot him.
• Universal Remote Control: In "Remotely Pink", the Pink Panther buys a universal remote after his normal TV remote breaks. It doesn't work on the TV, but it does allow him to control everything else around him.
• The Un-Reveal: In "Enchanted Pinkdom", we're never shown what Pink Riding Hood was taking to his granny. The only thing that's shown is the wand she takes out to turn herself into a fairy.
• Warm-Hearted Walrus: In Ant-Arctic, when Aardvark follows Ant to Antarctica, he runs into a walrus (yes, in Antarctica) who is lonely and wants a friend. The walrus sees Aardvark as a new friend and does all sorts of nice things for him, including playing games, making pancakes, and even writing him a poem. Although the walrus is overbearing, he is genuinely trying to be nice. In the end, the walrus saves Aardvark from a hungry orca. Aardvark (who has seen the walrus as nothing but an annoyance up to this point) admits that maybe the walrus isn't so bad after all, though he changes back to being annoyed when he realizes that he's now trapped on a small iceberg with the walrus, who is still eagerly trying to be his friend.
• Wasteful Wishing: In "If Wishes Were Ants", Aardvark finds himself a genie in a lamp. But rather than simply wishing he had Ant, he uses up two of his wishes on zany and unsuccessful schemes, then in frustration, finally wishes the genie would go away. Ant then wishes the genie free and puts Aardvark in her place.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Much of the show. We know for the main segments take place in the US but we don't know precisely where, though it's presumably New York or California, given some of the environment. Likewise, we don't know where the Ant and the Aardvark takes place besides that it's in Africa, though, given that, in one episode, Ant's species is called a "South African red ant", we can presume that the much of the shorts take place somewhere near South Africa.
• Younger and Hipper:
  • The Pink Panther in this show is aged down to be that of a teenager. Unlike his other incarnations who are sophisticated and a bit mischievous, Panther is easy going and fun-loving.
  • Ant in the older cartoons was a snarky old man. Here, he acts and sounds more like an energetic, fun-loving teenager.
• Your Mom: In "I Didn't See That Coming", the Tiger is deeply enraged at the Aardvark after the latter makes an insult about his mother. Not only does the Tiger beat him up, but he brings his mother to deliver some beatings of her own.

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