Skip Tarkenton

The Duck Factory is an American sitcom produced by MTM Enterprises that aired on NBC from April 12 until July 11, 1984. It was Jim Carrey's first lead role in a Hollywood production. It was also the only time Don Messick, famously the voice of Scooby-Doo, appeared in a live-action role, although he also voiced a cartoon character within the sitcom as well. The show was set at a small independent animation studio, and was co-created by Allan Burns and Herbert Klynn. The series won two Emmy Awards in technical categories, for its title sequence and art direction.

Burns had started his career as a writer/animator for The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and George of the Jungle before turning to live action and co-creating The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Klynn had worked in various production capacities on Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing, amongst many other cartoons.

The premiere episode introduces Skip Tarkenton (Carrey), a somewhat naive and optimistic young man who has come to Hollywood looking for a job as a cartoonist. When he arrives at a low-budget animation company called Buddy Winkler Productions, he finds out Buddy Winkler has just died, and the company desperately needs new blood. So Skip gets an animation job at the firm, which is nicknamed "The Duck Factory" as their main cartoon is "The Dippy Duck Show".

Other Duck Factory employees seen regularly on the show were man-of-a-thousand-cartoon voices Wally Wooster (played by real-life cartoon voice artist Don Messick); cynical, sometimes lazy comedy writer Marty Fenneman (played by real-life comedy writer Jay Tarses); veteran artist and animator Brooks Carmichael (Jack Gilford); younger storyboard artist Roland Culp (Clarence Gilyard); sarcastic editor Andrea Lewin; and hard-nosed, penny-pinching business manager Aggie Aylesworth. Buddy Winkler Productions was now owned by Buddy's young, ditzy but good-hearted widow, Mrs. Sheree Winkler (Teresa Ganzel), a former topless ice dancer who had been married to Buddy for all of three weeks before his death.