..Speedy Gonzales (or González), "the fastest mouse in all Mexico", is an animated cartoon mouse from the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes series of cartoons. The cartoon won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). Speedy's major traits are his ability to run extremely fast, and his stereotypical Mexican accent. He usually wears an oversized yellow sombrero and a white shirt and pants.
Sylvester is constantly outsmarted and outrun by the mouse, causing the cat to suffer all manner of pain and humiliation from mousetraps to accidentally consuming large amounts of hot sauce. Other cartoons pair the mouse with his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, the "slowest mouse in all Mexico." In the 1960s, Speedy's main nemesis became Daffy Duck—a move which some fans consider an unusual combination (Sylvester's appropriateness, being a cat, was never questioned) and as depicting the already morally ambiguous duck as excessively malicious.
Speedy's cartoons have come under fire in recent years for their alleged stereotypical depictions of Mexicans and Mexican life. Mice in the shorts are usually shown as lazy, womanizing and hard-drinking, while Speedy wears a huge sombrero and sometimes plays in a mariachi band (although Speedy's only real vice is implied to be a weakness for pretty girls; in one cartoon, other mice instigate a war between Speedy and Sylvester to keep Speedy from stealing all the girls in town). It was this criticism that prompted Cartoon Network to largely shelve Speedy's films when it gained exclusive rights to broadcast them in 1999. However, fan campaigns to put Speedy back on the air, as well as lobbying by The League of United Latin American Citizens, who argued that Speedy's cleverness and personality was a positive depiction of Mexicans, turned the tide in his favor, and in 2002, "the fastest mouse in all Mexico" was put back into rotation.
In 2003, he made a cameo appearance in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, making fun of his politically incorrect status. At around the same time, he also made a non-speaking cameo appearance in an episode of ¡Mucha Lucha!
Volume 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD series, released on November 14, 2006, has an entire disc of Speedy shorts.
Speedy Gonzales has appeared in a couple of video games, similar in design to the Sonic the Hedgehog games (some were even transformed into pirate Sonic games), for Super NES and Game Boy.
In 1962, pop singer Pat Boone scored a top 10 hit in the United States with the song "Speedy Gonzales" which featured Mel Blanc spouting faux-Mexican phrases as Speedy.
In 2006, Volkswagen licensed Speedy Gonzales for a series of Spanish-language commercials for the Volkswagen Golf.
Speedy Gonzales also made a cameo appearance in the Drawn Together episode "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II" where his speed is attributed to the use of cocaine. He is also seen in episode "Mexican't Buy Me Love" where he is featured as one of the faces on a Mexican version of Mount Rushmore, the other characters being the Taco Bell chihuahua, Jose Leno (a Mexican version of Jay Leno), and a donkey. The mice from Speedy Gonzales's cartoons have also made multiple appearances, usually as references to illustrate Mexican stereotypes.
