pink panther

The Pink Panther cartoon character is the main character in a series of animated short films. The character originally appeared in the opening and closing credit sequences of the 1963 live-action feature film The Pink Panther. The popularity of the character spawned a series of animated short films, and the character would appear in the opening sequence of every film in The Pink Panther series (except A Shot in the Dark and Inspector Clouseau). The cool cat starred in 126 shorts (either theatrical or made-for-television), 10 television shows and 3 prime-time television specials. The animated Pink Panther character's initial appearance in the live action film's title sequence, directed by Friz Freleng, was such a success with audiences and United Artists that the studio signed Freleng and his DePatie-Freleng Enterprises studio to a multi-year contract for a series of Pink Panther theatrical cartoon shorts.
As Pink Panther historian Jerry Beck notes, "Classic animation pretty much died in the '60s, everyone had kind of bailed out. But his creators didn't rest on their laurels. They didn't make the cartoons to look like Warner Bros. cartoons, or Disney cartoons, or the UPA look of Mister Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing. They came up with their own clever new style. The only other important cartoon of the '60s was Yellow Submarine.
The Pink Panther was therefore a notable contribution to the animation art form. Top animation directors such as Hawley Pratt, Robert McKimson, and Sid Marcus contributed to a distinctive style, supported by master story writer John W. Dunn. Produced after theatrical cartooning's golden age of the 1940s and 50s, they were constrained to the limited animation techniques applied to Saturday morning cartoons of 1960s and after. Within these limitations, the Pink Panther made creative use of absurd and surreal themes and visual puns and an almost completely wordless pantomime style, set to the ubiquitous Pink Panther theme and its variations by Henry Mancini. The overall approach is reminiscent of the classic silent movies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.