Shirley the Loon

Shirley "the Loon" McLoon is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters on the show. Shirley is voiced by Gail Matthius. Shirley is a young, white female waterfowl with a pink, long-sleeved shirt and large bowed ribbon in her hair. She attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme Acres.

Shirley is one of the few characters of the show not associated with an on-screen 'mentor' Looney Tunes character, but is likely heavily inspired by Melissa Duck.

Her intelligence is somewhat obscured by a thick Valley girl accent and obsession 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; there's indication she is more in favor of Plucky, however sees Fowlmouth as more of a little brother persona and best friend. Ironically, Plucky and Fowlmouth did not appear together in her particular episodes. 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.

In the Series
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. She can levitate herself during meditation, commune with her aura (which is sometimes a separate entity from her), and also fire force-blasts from her hands when agitated. 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 of Carrie (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?" During another episode she demonstrates that she apparently also has the power to change a person's intellect, personality, and appearance. When Plucky begs her to give him Einstein's intellect to help him pass a math test, which she adamantly refuses many times, she eventually gives him Einstein's intellect and so on, but in the end this doesn't help Plucky as she (perhaps deliberately) forgot to mention that when he was a kid, Einstein failed math too. Presumably the effect is only temporary as Plucky was back to normal in his next appearance.

In the episode segment from 'New Class Day', titled 'Just-Us League of Supertoons', Shirley was a member of the mighty superhero team, the Just-Us League of Supertoons. She played Hawk Loon, a parody of Hawkman.

Shirley did not have an end tag.

Voice Actor
Shirley is voiced by Gail Matthius, a former cast member 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.

Reeferences

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See Also

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