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| Inki | |
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| Inki hunting in Caveman Inki | |
| First appearance | The Little Lion Hunter (1939) |
| Created by | Chuck Jones |
Inki is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons.
Character Biography
Inki is a little African boy who usually dresses in a simple loincloth, armband, legband, earrings, and a bone through his hair. He never speaks, and his usual pastime seems to be hunting jungle creatures.
Animator Chuck Jones first used the character in the 1939 short "The Little Lion Hunter." The character's look was designed by Disney veteran Charlie Thorson. The plot of the cartoon focuses on little Inki out hunting, oblivious to the fact that he is being hunted himself by a hungry lion. As such, it is very similar to "Little Hiawatha", a Silly Symphonies cartoon Thorson had worked on in 1937. The cartoon also introduces a strange, minimalist character in an expressionless mynah bird (spelled "minah bird" in the third film's title). The bird hops in time to Felix Mendelssohn's "Fingal's Cave Overture," totally oblivious to any obstacles or dangers.
Jones officially named the character in the next film, "Inki and the Lion" (1941), another jungle hunting scenario. Inki once again runs afoul of a lion, only to be saved by the bizarre mynah bird. The cartoon is still mostly done in a cute style, but its more aggressive tone and unconventional humor show that Jones was already moving out of his "cute" phase.
"Inki and the Lion" was a surprise hit, and Jones brought Inki and the mynah bird back in three more cartoons: "Inki and the Minah Bird" (1943), "Inki at the Circus" (1947), and "Caveman Inki" (1950). As Jones moved further toward the humor-centered cartoons for which he is famous, however, he retired Inki along with other Disney-inspired characters like Sniffles. Inki's final film was "Caveman Inki" in 1950.
The Inki films are rarely seen today. Although the jungle boy character was never intended as a derogatory stereotype of Africans, he is easily viewed that way.
The 1986 videotape "I Taw a Putty Tat" included "Inki at the Circus," "Inki and the Lion," and "The Little Lion Hunter." The 2004 DVD "Cartoon Craze" included "Inki and the Minah Bird."
Technically, he was originally created for the Merrie Melodies series, as all his cartoons prior to Caveman Inki were issued as part of that series (thus he is one of the few characters to initially be exclusive to the Merrie Melodies series in the Leon Schlesinger era prior to the full conversion to color, alongside Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and his prototype Egghead, and Sniffles).
An episode of Animaniacs paid homage to Inki, or more specifically the mynah bird. The Goodfeathers are having a bad day and see the mynah bird caged in a pet shop. They think they can cheer themselves up by laughing at the mynah bird's ugliness. The Goodfeathers then realize the mynah bird, while ugly, is not stupid, as "Fingal's Cave Overture" begins playing, and as in the Inki cartoons, the mynah bird lets himself out of his cage, moves in tune to the music, and kicks them into a streetlight, then returns to his cage.
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