Shirley the Loon

Shirley "the Loon" McLoon is a fictional character, a female waterfowl citizen of Acme Acres featured in Tiny Toon Adventures.

Shirley is one of the few characters of the show not directly inspired by an existing Looney Tunes character, but she bears more than a passing resemblance to Melissa Duck. Although she seems reasonably intelligent, she speaks with a thick Valley girl accent and is obsessed with superficial New Age paraphernalia. Her name is derived from fellow New Age aficionado Shirley MacLaine, while the latter part of the name is an obvious pun. More often than not, characters refer to Shirley as "Shirley the Loon" rather than "Shirley McLoon." Shirley is often pursued romantically by Plucky Duck and Fowlmouth. When not meditating (and sometimes levitating while chanting, "Ohm what a loon I am... Ohm what a loon I am...") or fortune-telling, Shirley hangs out with her Acme Looniversity classmates Babs Bunny and Fifi Le Fume.

Shirley is a keen ballerina who has to face prejudice when attending an upmarket ballet school otherwise attended exclusively by Perfecto Prep swans. Jealous at her superior dance skills, they mock her accent and try to sabotage her performance at their recital, but are soon thwarted by Shirley's nimble moves and a behind-the-scenes Babs, staging a sabotage of her own.

Shirley also seems to have telekinetic powers. During an episode where Babs Bunny, Fifi LeFume, and Shirley attend a prom at Perfecto Prep, a rival university, red punch gets spilled on Shirley, and she begins a rampage very similar to that ofCarrie (although much more G-rated), from the Stephen King novel of the same name. The scene even goes as far as when Fifi asks what is Shirley doing, Babs dryly remarks, "Remember the movie 'Carrie'?"

Shirley did not have an end tag.

Shirley is voiced by Gail Matthius, a former castmember of NBC's Saturday Night Live during its low-rated and widely panned 1980-1981 season. Matthius's recurring character from SNL, an irritating Valley Girl named Vicky, is similar to Shirley the Loon in voice. In the Japanese dub, Shirley is voiced by Mika Kanai.