Pepé Le Pew

Pepé Le Pew is a fictional character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, first introduced in 1945. A French skunk that always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of "love", Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own. However, he has one huge turnoff to any prospective mates: his malodorous scent. Furthermore, he can't take 'no' for an answer, blissfully convinced that the girl is flirting with him, even when she physically assaults him. Pepé is the French equivalent of Speedy Gonzales concerning stereotypes.

Pepé Le Pew storylines typically involve Pepé in pursuit of what appears to be a female skunk ("petite femme skunk"). But, usually, the supposed female skunk is actually a black cat (retroactively named Penelope Pussycat) who has had a white stripe painted down her back, often by accident (as by squeezing under a fence with wet white paint). Usually Penelope runs away from him anyway due to his putrid odor or because of his overly aggressive manner.

In the shorts, a kind of pseudo-French or Franglais is spoken and written primarily by adding "le" to English words (example: "le skunk de pew"), or by more creative mangling of French expressions with English ones, such as "Sacre Maroon!", "my sweet peanut of brittle", "Come to me, my little melon-baby collie!" or "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?", and "It is love at sight first!" The writer responsible for these malapropism was Michael Maltese.

Some transcribed Maltese dialogue from the Oscar-winning 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons: