Chilly Willy

Chilly Willy
"I'm frozen through and through. My nose is red and my tale is told. Ha...Hee...Hachoo!" 🎶 🎶
Genre: Comedy Slapstick Country: United States Release Date: 1953-1972 Created by: Paul J Smith Tex Avery (redesign) Starring: Daws Butler Episodes: 50

Chilly Willy is a series of cartoons produced between 1953 and 1972 by Walter Lantz Productions for Universal Pictures, with a total of 50 short films. The series focuses on Chilly Willy, a penguin who hates the cold and lives with hunger, who is always looking for a warm place to warm up, but he is generally prohibited from entering these places by the owners of the property, usually Smedley, and during the Short, he keeps annoying them until he gets what he wants.

Why it Rocks

1. These drawings do a good job of being cute and funny at the same time.
2. Chilly Willy is a problematic character, but very cute and hilarious, he is Walter Lantz's most famous character, after Woody Woodpecker, of course.
3. Smedley is a great rival for Chilly Willy and their rival chemistry is a lot of fun to watch.
4. There was an Oscar-nominated short called The Legend of Rockabye Point (1955).
5. The series got much better after Tex Avery, who had already worked at Walter Lantz in the 30s, was in charge of directing the character's shorts, he gave Chilly Willy his design that we know today, in addition to creating Smedley to be his rival.
6. When Avery left Walter Lantz in 1955, veteran Alex Lovy took over as director and he managed to stay true to his style of humor. The same goes for Sid Marcus, who directed short films featuring the character in the 60s.
7. Chilly Willy has also rivaled characters other than Smedley, including Woody Woodpecker characters such as Wally Walrus.
8. A curious detail is that, unlike most cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation, Chilly Willy is one of the only cartoons that has absolutely no racial stereotypes!
9. Great theme song sung by Nancy Wible.
10. Even after the end of Walter Lantz Productions in 1972, Chilly Willy continued to appear on screen, such as in the series The New Woody Woodpecker Show, where he returned to star in his own stories and Woody Woodpecker (2018), despite his Flanderization.
11. This series did a good job of replacing Andy Panda as the studio's secondary star, as the latter retired after the end of the 1940s.

Bad Qualities

1. The shorts can sometimes get very repetitive and predictable, because they consist of the same plot: Chilly Willy is starving or very cold, so he finds a warm place or one that has plenty of food, but he is prohibited from entering by the owner of the establishment. (usually Smedley), then he spends the rest of the short annoying the owner until he gets what he wants.
2. Chilly Willy, the character's debut short, although good, was not very successful, luckily Tex Avery came the following year and gave the touch he needed for success.
3. Smedley can be treated like a butt-monkey sometimes.
4. In the 60s, the character's shorts began to decline, because they began to have a more monotonous rhythm and the titular character began to talk, unlike in his first shorts, he remained silent.

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