Three Little Pigs

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Eyes: Black
Hair: None
Race: Pig


Marital Status: Single
Known relatives: Father Pig (deceased)
Group affiliation: Junior Woodchucks
Story: The Three Little Pigs are Practical Pig, Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig. When they moved away from home Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig made houses of straw and wood while Practical Pig made his house of stone. The Big Bad Wolf blew down the houses of straw and wood and the two pigs escaped to the house of Practical Pig.

The Big Bad Wolf never succeeded in catching and eating the three pigs but went on to have a son who befriended the pigs, much to his dismay.


Continuity: Disney
Publisher(s): Disney
First app.: Cartoons: Three Little Pigs (May 27, 1933)
Creator(s): Walt Disney
Country of origin: USA


Background notes: The Three Little Pigs are one of Disney's adaptations of European and African folk stories. The story The Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jacob Halliwell (1849) was the first printed version of the story, but the original story about the wolf and the three little pigs goes back a lot longer.

Like the original pigs, these three pigs moved from their home and one build a house of straw, one a house of wood and the last a house of stone, and like the originals the Big Bad Wolf came and blew down the first two houses and failed blowing down the house of stone. Unlike the original stories and in the Disney spirit, all the pigs survived in the house of stone. The cartoon Three Little Pigs from 1933 became a huge success and was quickly followed by other cartoons about the wolf and the pigs. The cartoon spawned the immortal song "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf" which would become an even greater success than the cartoon. The song would later, as the depression hit USA in the late 30's, become a major hit as it defiantly kept away the wolf at the door. The song would later become famous in another version. The movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" from 1966 used the chorus only using Virginia Woolf instead of The Big Bad Wolf. In the cartoons the voice of Practical Pig was done by Pinto Colvig, Fifer Pig by Dorothy Compton and Fiddler Pig by Mary Moder.

After the three cartoons (the last was Three Little Wolves from 1936) the pigs did not appear in cartoons until 1999 in the parody in MTV's Real World: Three Little Pigs. They made an appearance in the cartoon The Porker's Court from 1993. The cartoon is a parody on the program "The People's Court" where the Three Little Pigs takes the Big Bad Wolf to court for destroying their houses. In the cartoon the wolf is called "The Large Nasty Wolf" and everyone is speaking jive, which considering how strict Disney are about names and voice characteristics, makes it most likely an alternative version of the Disney characters.

In the beginning the wolf and the three pigs had no real personality, but they are generally considered to be the first cartoon characters to display individual characteristics and not just simple "good guys" and "bad guys" or three copies of the same personality like Huey, Dewey and Louie. The Fifer and Fiddler Pig are frivolous and carefree; Practical Pig is cautious and earnest.

When the cartoon was transferred to comics, the Pigs were placed in a forest along with the Big Bad Wolf. The forest later became inhabited by other adaptations from folk stories like Bre'r Rabbit, Bre'r Fox and Bre'r Bear and in 1945 Li'l Bad Wolf was introduced. Li'l Bad Wolf, the white sheep of the Wolf family and became a good friend of the pigs. Catching the Three Little Pigs became a major part of the stories about the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, and as the ideas developed, the Big Bad Wolf developed devices for catching the pigs that looks like some of the inventions Wile E. Coyote got from ACME when he tried to catch the Roadrunner. The stories never reached the level of violence and over-the-top gags seen in the Wile E. Coyote cartoons, but some of the wolf's devices and Practical Pig's counter devices were close. Like many other Disney characters, the production of stories stopped almost entirely in the late 1970's, but in Europe new material is still published today.

Being as famous as the Three Little Pigs, a wide variety of merchandise was ensured. The pigs occurs as pins, figurines, stamps, plates etc. and of course they had their famous song "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf".


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