Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
Are the best of friends
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
Are friends to the end
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
Sometimes enjoy a spat
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
With Mr. Jinks the cat!
Are the best of friends
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
Are friends to the end
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
Sometimes enjoy a spat
Pixie, Dixie, diddly-dum
With Mr. Jinks the cat!
— Theme song
Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks was an animated series of shorts by Hanna-Barbera. These shorts occupied the middle slot on The Huckleberry Hound Show.
In these shorts, Pixie and Dixie are two mice who have to deal with a Beatnik cat — Mr. Jinks — who lives in the house as well. And boy, does he hate those "meeces to pieces".
Daws Butler voiced Dixie and Mr. Jinks (the latter in a manner reminiscent of Marlon Brando), while the vocal actor for Pixie was Don Messick.
This series provides, like, examples of:
- Accent Adaptation: The Mexican Spanish dub gives Pixie a Mexico City accent, Dixie a Cuban accent, and Jinks an European Spanish accent from Andalusia.note
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Pixie and Jinks only wear bowties. Dixie only wears a vest with no shirt.
- Animal Jingoism: Naturally, cats and mice hate each other.
- Apologetic Attacker: Judo Jack repeatedly apologizes while body-slamming Mr. Jinks into the ground.
- Asian Buck Teeth: Judo Jack is a Japanese mouse with large buckteeth.
- Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Jinks and his son exhibit an uncomfortable dynamic in the episode "Jinks Junior," primarily because the latter doesn't share his father's meeces-hating tendencies.
- Bedsheet Ghost: In the cartoon "Ghost With the Most," Mr. Jinks thinks he's killed Dixie, who was playing possum after being hit with a fireplace shovel. Dixie implements the bedsheet ghost disguise and proceeds to haunt Jinks. At the conclusion when he finds out the truth, Jinks turns the tables and makes Pixie and Dixie think he committed suicide out of guilt. Jinks dresses up as a bedshhet ghost as well.
- Borrowing the Beatles: A 1965 commercial for Kellogg's Raisin Bran has Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks don Beatle wigs and perform an impromptu concert touting the cereal.
- Boxing Kangaroo: The short "Boxing Buddy" pitted Jinks against a boxing kangaroo, Ka-Pow. Similar to Sylvester and Hippity-Hopper, Jinks thought Ka-Pow was a giant mouse.
- Buffoonish Tomcat: Mr. Jinks often plays the block-headed fool in these episodes.
- Captain Obvious: Both Pixie and Dixie have a habit of announcing exactly what is happening during an episode.
- Cats Are Mean: Played with. While Mr. Jinks hates those meeces to pieces, he acts more like a Friendly Enemy to the resident rodents than many of his species do.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Jinks is a verbose cat whose dialogue mostly consists of withering snark and many a Verbal Tic.
- Character Catchphrase: Mr. Jinks is frequently heard exclaiming "I hate meeces to pieces!"
- Chased Off into the Sunset: "Jinks the Butler" had Jinks charged with guarding the food of a fancy dinner party, only for the "meeces" to disrupt things. It ends poorly for Jinks, who is chased in the distance by the mansion butler, swatting Jinks with a broom.Pixie: I didn't know the butler could run so fast.Dixie: Neither did Jinks!
- Circling Saw: In "Nice Mice", the two mice are trying to feed a kitten by swiping a bowl of cream from Mr. Jinks. In a rather intelligent use of this tactic, they use holes to cut off Jinks's escape routes before dropping him. To add insult to injury, Pixie pops out of a vent and snatches the cream as Jinks hangs in midair before falling.
- Civilized Animal: The three main characters are bipedal, wear accessories or limited clothing, and at times exhibit human behavior. However, Pixie and Dixie live in a mouse hole, and the three critters fulfill the antagonist relationship typical of their species.
- Country Cousin: In "Cousin Tex," Pixie and Dixie receive a visit from their cousin Tex, from Texas. Impressed with Tex’s size, Jinks decides to eat him, just to be defeated and ridden by the cowboy mouse. Jinks retaliates by calling his own cousin Pecos, but the latter was afflicted by a series of diseases that not only weakened him but made him shrink.
- Cute Kitten: In the episode "Jinks Junior," Jinks has a son who doesn't follow in his daddy's meeces-hating footsteps.
- Deep South: True to his name, Dixie speaks with a pronounced US Southern accent.
- Dub Name Change:
- In Japan, where Huckleberry Hound was broadcast on NET (the current TV Asahi), Pixie and Dixie are Chusuke and Chuta and Mr. Jinks is Doraneko. 'Chu' is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound a mouse makes, while 'Doraneko' means 'stray cat'.
- In the official Hungarian dub, Pixie and Dixie are Inci and Finci, and Mr. Jinks is Kandúr Bandi.
- In the Italian dub, Mr. Jinks is called Jinxie to match the names of the two mice.
- Ear Wings: "Little Bird-Mouse" has Dixie learn to fly by flapping his ears.
- Expy: The characters can be seen as updated versions of earlier Hanna-Barbera characters Tom and Jerry. Some of the episodes are in fact retreads of those from the earlier series.
- Faking the Dead: "Ghost With The Most" had Jinks clobbering Dixie with a fireplace shovel during a chase. Dixie fakes his death and dons a bedsheet for a ghost disguise which he uses to scare Jinks into subservience to Pixie. When Jinks catches on to Dixie's charade, he leaves a suicide note (faking his own death) and does the same ghost set-up to haunt Pixie and Dixie.
- Friendly Enemy: An interesting trait that makes Pixie and Dixie distinct from other cat/mouse cartoons — Pixie and Dixie are more often than not somewhat friendly to Jinks, who is generally a Jerkass but isn't exactly menacing, either. Tom and Jerry was known to do something like this as well, but with far less frequency. This would prove to be a favorite trait for Hanna-Barbera "chase" cartoons for years to come.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: In "Ghost With the Most," Jinks thinks he killed Dixie acter clobbering him with a fireplace shovel (he really didn't—Dixie was playing possum). Dixie plays his own ghost to haunt Jinks, but when Jinks gets wise, he leaves a goodbye note indicating his own demise then pretends to be his own ghost to haunt Pixie and Dixie.
- Gratuitous French: "King Size Poodle" had a runaway lion seeking Pixie and Dixie's help in hiding out from the zoo and from Mr. Jinks, who finds out a big reward is offered for the recapture of the lion. The two "meeces" disguise the lion as a French poodle whose French speaking consists of "coup de grace!" (which he mispronounces as "coop de grass" as opposed to the regular "coo de grah").Jinks: (after the lion secretly ambushes him a second time) Okay, I reiterates...what clobbered me? And don't give me any of that "cut the grass" stuff!
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Pixie and Dixie share the same mousehole and are invariably seen together.
- Home-Early Surprise: A Gold Key comic has the mice making Jinks think he's late for his watchman job at a factory so he'll leave early and they can raid the kitchen. Turns out Jinks' early arrival at work successfully thwarted a robbery, so he got the night off and with fellow employees celebrated at home. Pixie and Dixie get a win themselves as they take advantage of the spilled crumbs and discards from the food.
- Human Knot: In "Judo Jack", Jack applies his pretzel hold to Mr. Jinks.
- Japanese Politeness: Parodied in "Judo Jack," where almost all of Judo Jack's sentences end with "please," or "prease," and he apologizes while beating up Mr. Jinks.
- Japanese Ranguage: The most frequent phrase of Judo Jack's vocabulary is "prease."
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his hating meeces to pieces, Jinks isn't always the world's worst cat to Pixie and Dixie.
- Like Is, Like, a Comma: Jinks, like, talks this way, like, a lot.
- Magical Flutist: "Pied Piper Pipe" has Mr. Jinks, inspired by the Pied Piper story, create a flute to torture the meeces with. They get back at him by placing a dog whistle in the flute so Jinks can get beaten up a nearby bulldog.
- Magic Carpet: "Jinks Flying Carpet" has Mr. Jinks obtaining a magic carpet that operates under the command "Chabunagunga."
- Misspelling Out Loud: In one episode, Jinksie explains to Pixie and Dixie that they are "M-I-C-E-S meeces" and he is a "K-A-T cat" and that he wants them "O-U-T-T out!"
- Mouse Hole: Pixie and Dixie live in a hole.
- Nice Mice: While Pixie and Dixie can be vindictive or cruel at times, they're usually pretty well-behaved examples of their species.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Jinks's voice is reminiscent of Marlon Brando.
- Pain to the Ass: In "Cousin Tex", the meeces' Texas cousin tries to brand Mr. Jinks. The cat tries trapping the three mice under a wooden box, but Tex uses a hot iron to burn through it and brands Jinks' behind while he sits on the box.Jinks: Smells like, y'know, somebody's roasting an overcoat. YEEEOOOOWW!!!
- Perplexing Plurals: Jinks hates "meeces" to pieces.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: One-off guest characters Judo Jack and Cousin Hercules are both mice that are much stronger than their size suggests, easily able to lift and toss cats.
- Playing Possum: "Ghost With The Most" has Dixie playing possum when Jinks clobbers him with a fireplace shovel, making a very paranoid Jinks think he's killed Dixie.
- Pluralses: Mr. Jinks the Cat always refers to "meeces" (IPA: misez), not "mice", both double-pluralizing it and mispronouncing it. When refering to a single mouse, he'll call it a "meece". He usually gets other plural words correct, though.
- Rhyme Theme Naming: Pixie and Dixie.
- Ring Around the Collar: Like most Hanna-Barbera characters from this time, Pixie and Mr. Jinks wear an accessory around their neck (a bowtie in this case) to facilitate animation shortcuts. Similar to Mushmouse and Shag Rugg, Dixie averts this trope, as the vest he wears does not function this way.
- Signature Laugh: Mr. Jinks has a distinctive "Hyuk, yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk!" laugh, while Pixie and Dixie share a giggle when they're amused by something.
- Team Rocket Wins: Also in line with Tom and Jerry, there are several episodes where Jinks comes out smiling at the end of a short, either by reaching a truce with the mice or getting a Laser-Guided Karma victory when they get too vindictive.
- Three Shorts: In both incarnations of the The Huckleberry Hound Show, these shorts appeared second out of the clutch of three presented.
- Valley Girl: Like a certain Hanna-Barbera character to follow him (Shaggy from Scooby-Doo), Jinks is a male example, seen most clearly in his Beatnik attitude and flaky manner of speech.
- Verbal Tic: Jinks has, like, his own set of, like, verbal tics, y'know.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: On occasion, either Jinks or the two mice get rid of their foe only to regret it later.
