Elmyra Duff

Elmyra Duff is the animal loving girl from Tiny Toons. Elmyra was the antagonist to Buster Bunny and Babs Bunny.

Elmyra was a young girl, who's age was never given but about 7 years old, she always wore a blue dress. In her hair was a small bone and she had many pets. Elmyra was not necessarily an evil girl but suffered from over loving an animal, to the point of hurting the animal. He effects were similar to Pepe Le Pew squeezing that cat, as the animals would struggle and fight her to escape from her.

Elmyra had a large collections of various animals. Though almost every animal she had was afraid of her. Her parents obviously bought her animals in an effect to believe they were making up for a lack of good parenting skills and their inability to relate to or spend time with their kids. Of course they could also have just been extremely rich and liked animals, but then why didn't the viewers ever really see them?

While Elmyra was the semi-evil villain, she was necessary to the cartoon, to replace Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian, and many other evils from Bugs Bunny's day. She was created to not be scary but to rather be a humorous character for the rabbits to run from and worked very well for the idea and purpose of the Tiny Toons TV show.

Elmyra has had an odd career, being both a supporting character on Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs, and later a title character on Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain.

Elmyra's first continual pet was Furrball (the worrisome Tiny Toons equivalent of Sylvester who also had a few shorts to himself). She eventually gained a dog while on Animanics. The dog looked like an overgrown Shih Tzu, with no legs and just a nose, who made little muffled woofing noises at things. And of course for some reason the scientists at Acme Labs needed some cash, so they sold her Pinky and The Brain.

While on Tiny Toons she spent her time chasing anything that was cute and adorable, then caging it, and subjecting it to the most heinous cuddly torture ever conceived by man.

When she moved to Animaniacs, her character at first was only there to introduce the Skullhead Bonyhands shorts, by pulling the skull hair barrette out of her hair, and singing, ”It's the Mr Skullhead Show, Starring him: Mr Skullhead, 'Cause it's his show that he has, Mr Skullhead!” in that odd gooey voice of hers. Later she got to become a regular and chase The Warners around, and had a few shorts.

Near the end of Animaniacs, she received two whole episodes for her antics. They featured her entire family and much less in the way of pets. Her father, Mac (Matt Frewer), was an inventor, and mother, Emily (Tress MacNeille), was a realtor. There was the obligatory, angry at the world, punk teenaged sister, Amanda (Soleil Moon Frye), the younger brother, Duncan (Whitby Hertford), who thought that he was a super hero, the baby brother, who let out an earth shattering wail whenever he lost his pacifier, and a grandmother (Fran Ryan). They also had a maid with super human strength for some reason that wasn’t explained, also voiced by MacNeille. The episodes was fun, even though they didn’t really have the room to get a full spin-off.

And then there was Pinky and The Brain and Elmyra. I don’t know why this show was made. I thought Pinky and The Brain was perfect how it was, but it was interesting that The Brain had found a sidekick stupider than Pinky, albeit not as entertaining.

Elmyra Duff is a character in the cartoon show Tiny Toon Adventures, which ran from 1990 to 1992. She was a human girl, seemingly around eight years old, with red hair and a skull ribbon in her hair. She was voiced by accomplished voice actress Cree Summer. Her name is an adaptation of Elmer Fudd. Along with Montana Max, she is one of two major antagonists on the show.

Unlike her Rule 63 counterpart Elmer Fudd, who was a hunter, Elmyra is an animal lover, or at least she is in her own mind. However, she still wishes to hunt down "cute" animals, but not to hunt them, just to "hold them and love them and squeeze them into little bitty pieces", the last clause being a quite literal goal. Her attentions towards animals, although supposedly affectionate, are met with fear by the animals themselves. The comedy of Elmyra's appearances on Tiny Toon Adventure came from animals trying to escape Elmyra's supposedly well-meaning attention. Elmyra is a combination stalker and hoarder, trying to capture as many animals as she can to bring them back to her house to smother in her affections.

If you are familiar with American animation, you may know that most cartoons have a series of in-jokes thrown in "for adults", little cultural references and subtle innuendo made to amuse parents watching cartoons with their children. Some of these are clever, but they are usually just a joke or reference or two. But Elmyra Duff, as a character, is something that probably only an adult can understand. While the character's obnoxiousness and obliviousness might be funny to children, the true concept of the character, that of someone who hurts others out of supposed affection, is something that takes a while to understand. And despite the slapstick nature of the cartoon, I have to admit that upon rewatching it as an adult, the cloying, suffocating, self-centered nature of Elmyra Duff's "love" for animals comes across as very black comedy.