Goopy Geer

Goopy Geer is a character in Tiny Toon Adventures. He was the last attempt by animator Rudolf Ising to feature a recurring character in the Merrie Melodies series of films. Goopy is a tall, lanky humanoid dog with scruffy whiskers and long, expressive ears. In all of his animated appearances, Goopy is light colored, but in an early promotional drawing for his first cartoon, he had black fur. A month after Goopy Geer's first cartoon had been released, Walt Disney released a cartoon with a character named Dippy Dawg -- renamed "Goofy" in 1934, and notably referred to as "G. G. Geef" in 1950s shorts -- whose overall appearance was very similar to that of Goopy Geer. Due to the close proximity of the two cartoons' releases, there is little chance that either character was intended to be a copy of the other. Instead, both characters may have been inspired by earlier Ising drawings shown to Walt Disney, as with the Foxy - Mickey Mouse similarity.

Goopy Geer in his first cartoon, "Goopy Geer"

Like most other early sound-era cartoon characters, Ising's Goopy has little personality of his own. Instead, he sings and dances his way through a musical world in perfect syncopation. Ising only featured the character in three cartoons. In the first, "Goopy Geer" (16 April 1932), he plays a popular pianist entertaining at a nightclub. In Ising's other two Goopy films, both in 1932, he cast the dog first as a hillbilly in "Moonlight for Two" (11 June 1932), then as a court jester in "The Queen Was in the Parlor" (9 July 1932). All of these cartoons also feature Goopy's unnamed girlfriend who debuted without her gangly consort in the earlier Merrie Melodie "Freddy the Freshman" (20 February 1932). Goopy would make a cameo in the Bosko cartoon "Bosko in Dutch" (14 January 1933), but after Ising left Warner Brothers that same year, Goopy and other recurring Merrie Melodies characters were retired, to be later replaced by such recurring characters as Sniffles the Mouse, Inki and the Mynah Bird, the Curious Puppies, and Porky Pig.

Tiny Toons

Goopy Geer has a supporting role in Tiny Toon Adventures. In the episode "Two-Tone Town" (28 September 1992), Goopy, reprising his role as the happy-go-lucky pianist from his first cartoon, meets the series' stars when they visit the "black-and-white" part of town. His appearance in this cartoon is updated somewhat, and seems to be based on early promotional drawings where his fur is black, rather than his actual cartoon appearances. Goopy was voiced by Robert Morse in this appearance.