Ricochet Rabbit, the poor-man’s Quick Draw McGraw. To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of Westerns or Western cartoons, Quick Draw included. So Ricochet Rabbit was never my cup of tea.
Still, I liked him more than Quick Draw McGraw, mostly because Ricochet had a super power; he was a speedster not unlike the Flash, Quicksilver, Max Mercury, Johnny Quick or, um, the Wizzer. Yeah, I guess Quick Draw was kind of a super hero. He had that El Kabong thing going. But that was just a crappy Zorro parody, and Zorro has always been lame.
No, Ricochet Rabbit would shout “Ping! Ping! PING!” and zoom off at light-speed, usually smashing through a plate-glass window and landing in a barrel of lemon wedges or something. All that, AND he shot criminals in the face with a Magnum. Hardcore.
But the best thing about Ricochet Rabbit is that he had a dark and secret origin. Ricochet Rabbit’s very first appearance was in a Touche’ Turtle cartoon, where he was the episode’s lead villain. I think he was stealing carrots or lettuce or something and Touche’ and Dum-Dum had to arrest him. He was a little different then, having a light brown fur coat as opposed to his later white one, and I don’t think he talked much, either.
And, true to Western-form, the once-villainous desperado ends up as a Sheriff. He even got saddled with some mildly-retarded deputy named Droop-a-Long. So, to be honest, whenever Ricochet ricocheted himself into a vat of piranha or off a cliff and into a scorpion’s nest, I never really felt sorry for him. I mean, I usually felt bad for the likes of Yogi Bear or Doggy Daddy when, despite their good intentions, they got brutally butchered for our entertainment. But not Ricochet. He was a former bad guy and this was just his comeuppance.
So that’s it for Ricochet Rabbit. Despite being a villain-turned-good with super powers and a handgun…he still sucked.