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"The Pink Panther" character was created in 1963 by DePatie-Freleng. Friz Freleng was in his late 50s, and had been the senior animator at Warner Brothers' animation department - working there for over 20 years - until it closed in 1963. Freleng had also won four Academy Awards (and was nominated for four more), and had even worked at Walt Disney studios in the 1920s.

With his business partner, David Hudson DePatie, he hired other animators at Warner Brothers to create DePatie-Freleng Enterprises - and their first major project was the opening credits for the 1963 Peter Sellers movie "The Pink Panther". Sellers played Inspector Clouseau, a police detective investigating a jewel thief. (In the movie "The Pink Panther" was the name of a famous diamond, which when held to the light was said to refract pink light in the shape of a panther.) Trying to match the movie's tone - sophisticated yet very funny - the cartoon opening introduced the cool panther, and he also returns in the film's closing credits. The studio was so pleased with the results that they even included the Pink Panther on the movie's poster, and hired the studio to create a series of cartoons based on the character.

And the first cartoon won an Oscar. (The 1964 "Animated Short Film" award for "The Pink Phink.") Matching the films' opening credits, it used Henry Mancini's swinging "Pink Panther Theme" in place of any dialogue, as the confident panther silently outwitted his short, big-nosed foil again and again. The panther replaces his bucket of blue paint with pink paint, slips in a sprinkler that spews pink paint, and pours pink paint into the little man's gun so his attempts to shoot the panther spray pink paint over the entire house! Eventually he buries the pink paint buckets, only to discover that even the lawn has turned pink. No animation studio had ever won an Oscar with their first cartoon - until now.

The cartoons continued, and were eventually collected into a popular Saturday morning cartoon show in 1969. To pad the length of the show, the cartoons were interspersed with short scenes from other cartoons, sometimes with new narration from a friendly narrator. ("Uh-oh. You've de-furred yourself.") These scenes included an instrumental version of the show's folksy opening children's theme song, even years later when the actual opening theme was changed.

"Think of all the animals you've ever heard about
Like rhinoceroses, walruses and minks.
There are lots of funny animals in all this world

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