Fifi La Fume

Fifi La Fume is a fictional character appearing in the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters on the show. Fifi is voiced by Kath Soucie. Fifi is a young, purple and white female skunk with a pink bowed ribbon in her hair. She attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme Acres. She is also one of Acme Looniversity's cheerleaders in which, like the other two (Babs Bunny & Shirley the Loon), she wears a royal blue ribbon in place of her pink ribbon.

Character's profile and personality
Fifi is a teenage skunk based on the Looney Tunes character Pepe Le Pew. Her fur is purple and white, as opposed to a normal skunk's black and white, and she keeps a ribbon tied to her hair which causes it to fall over one eye, giving her a sultry, coquettish look. She has a massive tail, over twice the size of her own body, which is the source of her powerful odor. She uses her tail for a number of things, including a pillow, a pom-pom, and a snare to capture potential boyfriends before they can get away.

Like Pepe, Fifi is French and very flirtatious. She mainly speaks English with a few French words. She also shares the same faults as her idol: intense skunk-odor, and an inability to take "no" for an answer when pursuing the romantic object of her choice. When she falls in love, she loses all self control, and will not allow anything to stop her from literally capturing her prey.

Fifi's putrid stench has been shown to be powerful enough to melt solid steel (seen in "Love Stinks") and the more she falls in love, the stronger her stench gets. However, unlike Pepe, who reeks all the time, Fifi's musk only comes into play when she is attracted to someone, or when it would advance the plot, thus allowing her to interact with other characters when she is not the central focus of the story. Fifi's character is also taken in a somewhat sympathetic light, for she, alone, longs for a lover, leaving many people to feel sorry for her. Also, while Pepe seems oblivious of himself smelling bad, Fifi realizes she has a foul odor and often uses it to her advantage during desperate situations. For instance, in "Out of Odor", she wielded her tail like a machine gun to fire clouds of musk. Other uses include providing a means of causing mishaps among an opposing team. Two such examples are "The Acme Bowl" and "Son of the Wacko World of Sports". In "The Acme Bowl", Fifi caused Roderick Rat to turn green and fumble the football after she laid out a wall of brownish yellow clouds in his way. In "Son of the Wacko World of Sports", Fifi knocked out the Perfecto catcher (Rhubella Rat) in a baseball game after Sylvester joked that she hadn't reached first base since 1988, which annoyed Fifi. It is also shown that her smell can be erased by tomato juice, but the effects are only temporary and can be reversed quickly by washing the tomato juice off.

Fifi is also referred to in casting documents as being something of a feminist, as she is the pursuer, as opposed to the more usual female role of pursued. She's described as imagining that there's nothing a boy could do that she couldn't do herself. Her remarks toward boys are also rather self-regardingly amusing. For instance, in "Aroma Amore", Fifi affectionately remarked, "Little boys are such children!"

Fifi is also far more versatile than her Looney Tunes counterpart, appearing in stories that do not entirely revolve around enrapture with romance. Apart from being a 'lovair', her many adventures include the prom, looking for mature boys, having to deal with Elmyra, attempting to get an autograph from a famous movie star skunk hunk, and much more.

Her end tag credit has Fifi bidding goodbye to the viewer with a somewhat flirtatious "Au revoir, ma petite potato du couch" which (roughly) means "Goodbye, my little couch potato" in mock French.

Best friends and family
Like the other characters in the series, Fifi attended Acme Looniversity to be properly educated in the techniques of being a successful cartoon character. Fifi's best friends in the series were classmates Babs Bunny, and Shirley the Loon. The majority of Fifi's appearances were as a part of this group.

Together, they were the cheerleaders for the Acme Looniversity Football Team, and at one point, the unofficial back-up players. Another time, in search of more mature men, the three went to a high-class dance only to find that all the boys there were stuck-up. However, most of their time together was spent just hanging out and doing girl stuff.

Like Buster Bunny, Fifi's family was occasionally spoken of but never seen. After capturing Furrball (whom she'd mistaken for a cute boy-skunk), she had planned to introduce him to her family. Despite having a family, she lives by herself in a beat-up, red Cadillac DeVille in the Acme Acres Junkyard. In a bio published in issue #25 of the Tiny Toon Adventures comic (Marvel Comics volume), a character bio described Fifi as "a expatriate of Paris", indicating that she lived there before moving permanently to Acme Acres.

Furrball
Fifi pursued Furrball in the episode "Aroma Amore", wooing the reluctant feline (who had acquired a white stripe down his back) all across Acme Acres before Furrball covered his stripe with blue paint, escaping her. Furrball then vengefully painted a pair of unconscious bully cats in skunk colors, leaving Fifi to happily chase after them.

Fifi was next seen chasing Furrball in "Ask Mr. Popular", where she could be seen pursuing him, Dizzy Devil, and Concord Condor down an alley, trying to capture them with a large net, as one of Buster's examples on how to make friends. She and Furrball also had a brief scene together at the end of the first short of "Mr. Popular's Rules of Cool," dancing with each other on the floor of the "Cool Club."

Calamity Coyote / Little Beeper
In the episode "Love Stinks", when an attempt by Calamity Coyote to trap Little Beeper backfires, Calamity wound up coated in black tar with a stripe of white feathers flowing down his back. This immediately attracted Fifi, who continuously attempted to capture the terrified coyote until he managed to escape a smelly fate by removing the tar from himself (only moments before Fifi came rounding a corner after him). Little Beeper, mocking Calamity for all his recent skunk troubles, ended up covered in the tar and white feather stripe, leaving him to become Fifi's next romantic target. Little Beeper ran screaming in terror down the street at super speed with Fifi patiently hopping behind him.

Hamton J. Pig
In "Prom-ise Her Anything", Hamton asked Fifi to be his date to the Prom, and Fifi enthusiastically (and magnetically) accepted in a heartbeat. Fifi also hugged Hamton like a Teddy Bear at the end of "The Acme Bowl," and in "The Just-Us League of SuperToons" Hamton (as Decoy, a parody of Robin from the Batman series) makes a pass at Fifi (as Scentanna, a parody of Zatanna from the DC universe), but she rejects Decoy by blasting him with a shot from her tail, causing him to crumble to the floor.

Dizzy Devil
In the second segment of the episode "New Class Day", titled "Buster & Babs in Sound-Off", all the Tiny Toons characters were thrown into a silent film. Dizzy Devil chased Buster and Babs into a hollow tree (or thought he did), but when he reached in he pulled out a swooning Fifi by her tail. Fifi sighed "What a man!" and promptly chased Dizzy down the street. Dizzy attempted to escape the love-struck Fifi on a bicycle, but after a considerable amount of pedaling discovered it to be a stationary piece of exercise equipment that she had set-up to trap him.

Pepe Le Pew
In "Out of Odor", Elmyra Duff disguised herself as Pepe Le Pew to trick Fifi into becoming her pet. Fifi fell for the ruse and rushed quickly to "Pepe". Painfully squeezing Elmyra to near-bursting, Fifi stated, "Ever since I met you I have had a, how you say, crush, on you".

Johnny Pew
In the direct-to-video Tiny Toons movie Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, Fifi found brief joy with a genuine skunk; this one being a movie-star named Johnny Pew. After waiting on him hand-and-foot in exchange for an autograph, Fifi discovered he was an arrogant jerk when he gave her autograph away to a voluptuous female skunk named Bimbette. Fifi promptly and literally kicked him to the curb, where Johnny was captured by Elmyra and forced to be her pet "kitty". Johnny Pew was voiced by Rob Paulsen and he was one of the antagonists in the movie.

Elmyra Duff
Like most characters on the show, Fifi's encounters with Elmyra usually involved the latter trying to make the former a pet. Fifi was one of Elmyra's pets/prisoners in "Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow"; after Elmyra catches Buster, he leads Fifi and Elmyra's other captives on a daring escape. When Buster is recaptured, Fifi and the others work with Babs to rescue him and teach Elmyra a lesson.

Fifi and all her friends were once pursued by Elmyra in the episode "The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain". Elmyra had disguised herself as the One-Eyed Jack" and was picking-off the Tiny Toons cast one-by-one to make them her pets. They all eventually freed themselves by the end of the episode.

Elmyra attempted (successfully) to make Fifi her pet in "Out of Odor", when Elmyra (repeatedly) mistook her for a cat (she assumed "skunk" meant "stinky kitty"). She disguised herself as Pepe Le Pew, went to her Cadillac, and luring Fifi out, squished tomatoes all over her, which nullified her scent. Fifi regained her odor after washing off all the tomato juice, but Elmyra's nose became clogged due to a rose allergy, allowing her to capture Fifi.

Bimbette
In How I Spent My Vacation, Fifi lost Johnny's attention to a voluptuous pink skunk named Bimbette, but discovered it to be no total loss; Johnny was arrogant and insensitive.

Bimbette was also voiced by Kath Soucie.

Cameos

 * In the first segment of the episode New Class Day, titled Just-Us League of Supertoons, Fifi was a member of the mighty superhero team, the Just-Us League of Supertoons. She was the team's sorceress, Scentanna, the Mystical Maiden of Musk. An obvious parody of the DC Comics all-star superhero team, the Justice League of America, Fifi's character of Scentanna was an homage to the JLA's classic magic-wielding sorceress, Zatanna. The episode was written by Paul Dini with help from Bruce Timm, the two driving forces behind the DC animated universe.
 * Fifi made a brief cameo in the Animaniacs episode Survey Ladies. In that episode, she is seen running a perfume shop and tries to help Yakko, Wakko, and Dot find the right cologne for Dr. Scratchansniff. Coincidentally, Fifi also dressed up as Dot Warner in Tiny Toons Night Ghoulery.

Production

 * Early production artwork illustrated by Dan Haskett shows Fifi as a standard black and white skunk, as opposed to the purple and white version seen in the final product. Her design also featured a few other variations in build and design.