0042 - Bubbles the Elf (Patreon)

The Happy Little Elves are first mentioned in a Tracey Ullman short, but it is in an apparent Christmas special that they are given a voice.

The Happy Little Elves are a concept that are forgotten relatively quickly in the Simpsons timeline. Itchy and Scratchy prevailed for many years, but these guys are swept aside, probably because there's not much to be done with them beyond pointing out that old cartoons are bad. Once that joke has been told, there's little further point to make.

While Itchy and Scratchy in many ways represent the Golden Age of animation, the Elves are a nod to the cartoons that came before the 1990s animation boom, things like Smurfs, Snorks, and all manner of Hanna-Barbera garbage that was the standard for low-quality children's entertainment. I don't think it's too harsh of me to say the 1970s and 1980s were a low point for this kind of thing, cartoons were cheaply made, stiff and boring.

The Simpsons is punching down at this old style of cartoon, many of the writers would have grown up with these productions. It is fortunate, then, that The Simpsons itself was at the centre of a revolution in TV animation. Things like The Disney Afternoon (think Ducktales or Gummi Bears) and Warner Bros output (mainly Tiny Toons, Animaniacs and my personal favourite Batman The Animated Series) were encouraging a better general quality of cartoon that in many ways lasts to this day! Cheaper content like Pokemon or Power Rangers killed the budgets of TV animation, but the desire from the creative contributors perseveres.

My personal theory is that this came about because these were the first people making cartoons who grew up watching cartoons, and actually cared that they were making something good.

I mention all this because it's funny how history tells these stories. In terms of TV animation, The Simpsons was a little bit of right place, right time, where the TV market could support a show with a little more care put into it. The staff couldn't have possibly known back then how important their show would be compared to, say, The Smurfs, but they were still confident enough to say "this old stuff sucks. In with the new."

I am pretty confident that there is no Patreon devoted to drawing every Smurfs character.

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.