"Heavens to Murgatroyd! Copycat--stage right!"
With Depatie-Freleng cartoons in heavy rotation here I thought I would bring up a mystery that has haunted me since the advent of that studio's famous PINK PANTHER character...The strange thing is that another cartoon pink mountain lion (which could also be called a "panther" by a zoological stretch) preceded that character by at least two years on the public forefront. Namely Hanna-Barbera's SNAGGLEPUSS. It's probably just a co-incidence, but this is a rare case where such a 'co-incidence' occurs out of sync, meaning that Hanna-Barbera's creation actually came out before the other one. H-B cartoons were always conspicuously liberal about "borrowing" --as in THE FLINTSTONES resembling THE HONEYMOONERS, THE JETSONS resembling the BLONDIE movies, heck--even the moniker "TOM & JERRY" belonged to a completely unrelated series of Van Beuren cartoons before Bill & Joe's cat and mouse came along.
Ultimately the differences between the characters far outweigh the remarkable physical similarities, "Pink Panther" is a purely pantomime character and "Snagglepuss" never shuts up for one thing. "Pink Panther" generally inhabits a kind of psychedelic universe that is vaguely urban, whereas "Snagglepuss" lives in the wilderness (or somewhere else, I can't sit through a single one of these any more).
Still the coincidence, (which is what I honestly think it is in this case) amuses me.
P.S. Purists, bear with me on the drawing, it was done entirely from memory. Also: "SNAGGLEPUS" is copyright protected by Hanna-Barbera/Time-Warner. "PINK PANTHER" is copyright protected by DFE enterprises, MGM-UA, and FOX HOME VIDEO.
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