Lightning Rodriguez (aka Zippy Caramba) is a minor character in Tiny Toon Adventures. Rodriguez is a young brown mouse who wears a blue and white hat and hi-tops and a light blue shirt. His name is a parallel to Speedy Gonzales and, as confirmed in an interview with Tom Ruegger, Lightning was indeed created as a potential Tiny Toon counterpart to Speedy. Lightning shares his surname with Speedy's slow cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, but it is not known if he would have been related to the two Mexican mice (or at least Slowpoke) had he been developed into a proper character. Lightning Rodriguez appears only twice in the show, and one of those two appearances is a still shot. He attends Acme Looniversity.
The character is referred to as "Zippy Caramba" in Facebook posts by Tom Ruegger and others. According to fan research, at least one script treatment (if genuine) was pitched in which "Caramba" would have played a detective role similar to Peter Falk's Columbo, although this would have been abandoned early on.
Appearances[]
He appears in the episode, You Asked for It, where Plucky displays a machine that shows which character the fans want to see (Rodriguez is one of the characters that passes by on the machine's screen).
His other appearance is in The Acme Bowl, where you see the back (and quick front view) of him with the other Tiny Toons around a campfire at night before playing against Perfecto Prep. He is wearing a blue and white jersey with the letter "A" on it (for Acme Looniversity) along with the rest of the toons in support of their football team.
Behind the Scenes[]
Creator Tom Ruegger speaks of him in an interview:
Interviewer: "What about this one character I've heard was created, but tossed during production...Lightning Rodriguez, the Tiny Toons equivalent of Speedy? Was he nixed because of ethnic sensibilities?"
Tom Ruegger: "That name never made it very far. I think it was jotted in as a possibility only. We already had a fast character in Little Beeper, so having a young Speedy wasn't a high priority. The 50's and 60's Speedy Gonzales cartoons were already encountering some trouble (criticism) as far as the characters' ethnicity goes, and we were not about to create any problems for ourselves. A Latino character was certainly viable, but we weren't in the market to create any ethnic stereotypes, especially potentially negative ones."[1]
Tom Ruegger: "He was not going to be a detective like Columbo. He was a little kid mouse who zipped around fast on his skateboard. (All of the characters in Tiny Toons were kids going to school and didn't have professional careers yet.) One of the reasons we didn’t pursue segments featuring Zippy was that we already had Little Beeper speeding around in our show and we didn’t need another character doing the same thing. Furrball was called Puddy Tat very early in development, back when he could talk. His talking and his name "Puddy Tat" didn't last long."
From pitch document: ZIPPY CARAMBA is our kid version of Speedy Gonzales. Zippy is the world's fastest mouse, and plays cameo roles that require his swift-footed talents. In some cartoons, Zippy works as a boy waiter at Zippy-Burgers, a fast (and we mean, fast!) food restaurant in Acme Acres. This is Puddy Tat's favorite eatery -- but he's not interested in eating burgers. He wants to eat Zippy. In other cartoons, Zippy plays the world's fastest kid detective. Whenever there's a crime in Acme Acres, Detective Zippy arrives on the scene within seconds. He specializes in crimes committed by cats, so we usually find Zippy investigating and hounding Puddy Tat. Zippy wears a trenchcoat, and comes off like a sped-up version of Columbo. Thus, Zippy's last name: "Caramba."
"The Taco the Town" Script Pitch : Disaster strikes the mouse mansion of J. Paul Gouda, wealthy cheese magnate. The millionaire mouse has disappeared! All the servants are in a panic -- except, that is, for the butler: Puddy Tat. He just stands in a corner wearing a big smile on his face. (He occasionally "hiccups.") In desperation, the mouse servants call for the fastest detective alive -- Zippy Caramba! Zippy arrives in less than 24 frames. "Si, senors and senoritas, I weel find heem," he says. "My fee is twenty centavos a day, plus expenses." Caramba lines up the suspects against the wall and recreates the crime. He turns out the lights, then turns them back on. Now, all the suspects are gone, except for Puddy Tat. (His "hiccups" are worse now.) Caramba starts to get "suspeeeshus." A chase ensues, with Caramba allowing Puddy to catch him and swallow him. Inside the cat's stomach, the detective finds Gouda and the other servants alive and well. Zippy then teaches the cat a lesson about eating the wrong foods. While still inside Puddy's tummy, the mouse runs like mad, and drags the cat all around the mansion and cheese factory -- upstairs, downstairs, and finally, out an open window. Hanging from a rooftop flagpole, the desperate cat agrees to let the mice go. As they climb out Paddy's mouth, Caramba unties the cat's tail from the flagpole, and Puddy drops into a bubbling vat of red hot tamales. The flaming cat rockets over the horizon, as we IRIS OUT.
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