The Pink Panther is a series of animated shorts featuring the Pink Panther character who first appeared in the opening credits of the film with the same name. The shorts were originally released from 1964 to 1980.
Premise
The first entry in the series, 1964's The Pink Phink, featured Pink harassing his foil, a little white mustachioed man who is actually a caricature of Friz Freleng (this character is officially known as "The Little Man")), by constantly trying to paint the Little Man's blue house pink. The Pink Phink won the 1964 Academy Award for Animated Short Film, and subsequent shorts in the series, usually featuring the Pink Panther opposite the Little Man, were successful releases.
In an early series of Pink Panther animated cartoons, Pink generally remained silent, speaking only in two theatrical shorts, Sink Pink and Pink Ice. Rich Little provided Pink's voice in the latter shorts, modelling it on that of David Niven (who had portrayed Clouseau's jewel thief nemesis in the original live-action film). Years later, Little would overdub Niven's voice for Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, due to Niven's ill health. All of the animated Pink Panther shorts utilized the distinctive jazzy theme music composed by Henry Mancini for the 1963 feature film, with additional scores composed by Walter Greene or William Lava.
Boomerang run
The series was shown in a hour-long package with The Ant and the Aardvark, The Inspector, Crazy-Legs Crane, and other MGM cartoons called The Pink Panther Show, which was shown on Boomerang from 2004 to 2010. In addition, the shorts were also shown on the Elements programming block.