My Adolescent Cartoon Crush Is Now A Russian Cult's Deity -- Seriously, I'm Not Joking!

Do any of y'all remember watching your favorite cartoons as kids and realizing that you were focusing just a little too much on one of the characters? I mean sure the other characters were great, but there was always that one character in particular that you identified with who was just so smart, so cool, so amazing at everything they did and so good at vanquishing bad guys -- or maybe they could have actually been one of the villain themselves?

Very recently in doing research for a topic for this blog, I came across a somewhat interesting reddit post regarding these cartoon crushes. It was a discussion by adults telling the stories of cartoon characters that they'd some attraction to at one point or another.

Even though we'd all seemingly had them, nobody usually ever talked about focusing on certain characters in some of our favorite TV shows, or animated films. Many adults today consider those tiny little torches we carried for those certain special animated characters to be a bit embarrassing to say the least; just a little blip on our journey to adulthood. 

However, now that we're all older and (mostly) more mature, we can finally admit that -- between about the ages of around 10 - 15, or so, in that strange gap in adolescence between childhood and the march toward becoming an adult -- these cartoon hotties always gave us feelings that we're not quite sure how to deal with. 

For Gen-X folks like your favorite blogger, and later the Millennial generation, we've all had our share of crushes on certain animated characters in our formative years. Given the animated shows of the 1970s through the early 2000s, we had a wide variety of awesome characters to choose from.

Now, before I go on, I would like to point out that not all of these were necessarily immature sexual attractions by early adolescents -- although if I were referring to that, I'd have to confess that Princess Teegra from Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice (1983) did cause me to wear out that old VHS tape pretty fast when I was around 14 or so.

For the most part these cartoon crushes were largely characters that some of us just personally identified with, or maybe wanted to be like in some significant way: a defender of the innocent, a superhero, a soldier, a fantasy character, a furry character if that is your thing, or even a bad guy character that had that certain charisma that you wished you could adopt for your own personality.  

Cartoon crushes come in all forms from human characters, anthropomorphic animals or furries, fantasy creatures, robots and cyborgs, and even villains at times.

So I decided to do a three-month long social experiment on my facebook page earlier this year and asked my friends and colleagues online if any of them had a cartoon crush in their youth they would like to share. I was amazed that a number of my friends who admitted to having a cartoon crush. Many of these are people my age and younger, though a few Baby Boomers even chimed in listing characters from the older cartoon and anime shows.

The cartoon crushes ranged from a variety of shows and characters which included:

1 - Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 TV series)
2 - Robin Hood and Maid Marion from Disney's Robin Hood
1 - Mighty Mouse 
1 - Underdog 
2 - Flynn Rider and Rupunsel from Disney's Tangled 
2 - Scarlett and Lady Jaye from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero 
2 - Penny from Inspector Gadget 
1 - Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes 
1 - Peppermint Patty from Peanuts 
2 - Sailor Mars and Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon 
1 - Trixie from Speed Racer 
1 - Asuka Langley Soryu from Neo-Genesis Evangelion 
2 - Bart Simpson from The Simpsons 
2 - Chel from The Road To El Dorado 
1 - Esmeralda from Disney's The Hunchback of Noter Dame
1 -  Cheetara from ThunderCats (and I second that one!)
1 - Helga Pataki from Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold! 
1 - Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty 
3 - Kim Possible and Shego from Disney's Kim Possible 
1 - Lola Bunny from Space Jam 
3 - Winry Rockbell and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist
2 - Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender 
1 - Raven from Teen Titans (the original)
1 - Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
1 - Revy from Black Lagoon
 
And finally the ever-popular Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- who got a whopping 8 responses from guys (and at least one female).  

Some of the choices listed were not even from animated shows. One person told me they had a crush on the genie animation from the beginning of I Dream Of Jeannie. Another mentioned Princess Daphne from the 1980s interactive game Dragon's Lair, or Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda. Another was the holographic A.I. woman Cortana from the Halo game franchise, several of the female cast of Fortnite, and one lady who even admitted to a crush on....Mr. Clean?

Uh....yeeeeeeah....

Many of those who responded offered their reasons why they choose those particular characters as their cartoon crushes. Others simply posted the name of the character. Overall, the responses were overwhelming positive, and convinced me that my own cartoon crush wasn't so weird....either that, or maybe I just know a whole lot of weirdos on facebook? 
 
As for yours truly, my childhood cartoon crush was none other than the talented Miss Gadget Hackwrench from Disney's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. 

Gadget Hackwrench from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
(Image courtesy of Disney)

Okay, you can stop laughing your jerks! 

Yes, I'll admit it, between the ages of 13 to 14, I had an absolute affection for a fictional cartoon mouse. 

Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers was probably one of the most popular Disney cartoon series of the early 90s after the original DuckTales. The series premiered on Saturday, March 4, 1989 on the Disney Channel and would run three seasons of 65 episode until Monday, November 19, 1990. The show would enjoy great rerun viewership over the next several years on the Disney Afternoon lineup until 1993, and later in 1995-96 as part of Disney Channel's late afternoon Block Party lineup with other great Disney shows like TailSpin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears among other great shows.

The cast of Disney's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers TV series.
(From left to right): Dale, Gadget, Chip, Zipper, and
Monterey "Monty" Jack.
(Image courtesy of Disney)

The series involves the title characters, Disney mainstays Chip 'n' Dale, who create a detective agency that solve crimes that involve rescuing missing pets, or seemingly low-key thefts that usually end up leading to larger criminal conspiracies that the Rescue Rangers ultimately thwart by the end of each episode. 

Chip and Dale are both joined in their missions by the other Rangers: the cheese-addicted Aussie strongman character Monterey "Monty" Jack, a blue housefly named Zipper who does all of the little jobs that the others usually can't like picking locks or crawling through small places, and of course the resident inventor and mechanic of the group, Gadget. 

At then 13 years old, I was completely captivated by the cartoon series -- so much so that I always swore if I ever got a tattoo it would be the Rescue Rangers logo. I never did though, or any other body ink for that matter; at least not yet. 

Gadget is a young blond-haired female mouse who is the team's pilot, mechanic and inventor. She wears a purple mechanics jumpsuit with blue goggles on her head, and has absolutely no problem getting dirty while working on her inventions. 

Her character is brought to life by the remarkably talented voice actress Mrs. Teressa "Tress" MacNeille, best known as the voice for popular 90s animated characters like Babs Bunny (Tiny Toon Adventures), Dot Warner (Animaniacs), and Arnold's Grandma Gertie (Hey Arnold!), and over a dozen characters on The Simpsons -- just to name a few. 

Gadget's personality was based upon the inventive female character Jordan Cochran in the 1985 movie Real Genius. She's a combination of the "cute girl next door" combined with an obsessed and quirky inventor. Gadget has a natural warmth about her that makes everyone welcome and pleased to see her. She's very loyal to her friends and frequently goes out of the way to help them.

She first meets Chip and Dale in the third episode of the five part origin story Rescue Rangers to the Rescue (Season 2, Episode 3) when Monterey Jack was seeking help from her recently deceased father, a famous mouse aviator named Geegaw Hackwrench. Having no other obligations, Gadget joined the group -- which later became the Rescue Rangers team -- in their mission to retrieve a stolen jewel and prove the innocence of a retiring police detective who was framed. Once the team is established, Gadget lives with Chip, Dale, Monterey, and Zipper at their headquarters in a hollow oak tree in the city park.

Gadget Hackwrench is pretty much the female version of Angus MacGuyver with a little bit of Winry Rockbell thrown in there for good measure. She has the uncanny ability to take discarded and unrelated items and invent nearly anything with them, which she attributes to the fact that she has a "mind-bashingly high IQ" and is easily bored.

In addition to building and maintaining the Ranger Plane (and later on the Ranger Wing) Gadget is the one responsible for the various technological items used by the team and is regularly inventing new vehicles and tools for the team's use. Like most eccentric inventors, she can become extremely focused on her work, and therefore oblivious to the world around her. Gadget usually assists the team via her numerous inventions. Unfortunately, her creations don't always work the way she intends and have sometimes failed at just the wrong moment to cause the team trouble.

One of the things that makes Gadget so likeable is that she has her quirks. She thinks so much from an inventor's standpoint that it tends to make her naive at times. When Gadget is excited about her inventions, she's known to use scientific jargon freely and talk at an extremely rapid pace. This tends to leave anyone listening to her clueless as to what she actually means as she talks a mile a minute and often times reiterates when she talks. A good example would be explaining that her latest invention "will be ready in a jiffy....well, maybe two or three jiffies." 

Gadget is also known to say "Golly" whenever she's surprised by something. 

One of the main personality traits that personally attracted me to Gadget's character is the fact she is constantly thinking and often times has trouble focusing on just one thing to do, or one way to do things, as exhibited in the episode Gadget Goes Hawaiian (Season 2, Episode 33). This is a trait common with ADHD, or with people on the autism spectrum that I struggled with at a young age and continue to work on even today. Some fans speculate that Gadget character might well be an Aspie herself.

However once Gadget overcomes her rapid-thinking and finds her focus she can invent at a staggering pace, for example, her armored gyro-mobile in The Case of the Cola Cult (Season 2, Episode 14) -- one of my personal favorite episodes of the series, and one that will have more significance later in this article.  

While her character comes off as generally friendly and outgoing to people, with just a little bit of snark and sass at times, Gadget can also be easily angered on occasion as seen in the episode Dirty Rotten Diapers (Season 2, Episode 38) after being driven to the breaking point in her calm nature by a ring of thieves. When she reaches that limit beyond where her cute veneer is lost and she gets all riled up, our dear Gadget can become a total badass, and God help the bad guy on the receiving end of it!

Her creative and mechanical genius, open concern for her friends, and even her scatter-brained autistic tendencies made her very attractive to a generation of fans, and I'd say one of Disney's strongest female characters at the time. 

In the show, both Chip and Dale are attracted to Gadget, and often compete for her attention, although she is portrayed as being seemingly ignorant of these advances. On more than one occasion she has upset Chip and Dale's romantic advances more than once, simply by being blissfully ignorant, or too focused on her inventions. This ends up being a running gag throughout the series. 

Now here I admit a little bit of a shipping bias since I always loved the few moments Gadget and Dale shared together. I don't really remember why, but I always thought they would make the better couple. Not sure if it is the fact that Dale can have his own moments of brilliance when it comes to inventing things like the spy gadgets in episode Double 'O Chipmunk (Season 2, Episode 32) or just the fact that he shares the same sort of scatter-minded tendencies that Gadget has (Dale often times uses the word "Zowie" when he is surprised). 

"Forget a man in uniform, what I really like is a boy in a
Hawaiian shirt." 

Gadget is also a retro favorite among fans of the furry fandom community and anthropomorphic animal cosplayers. You can find a number of images online of professional cosplayers and ordinary people dressing up for fandom conventions portraying our favorite mousey inventor and the other Rescue Rangers themselves. Apparently Gadget is a childhood favorite for many adults from my generation and 90s children.

Unfortunately, that also applies to people who are allegedly adults who seem to still hold some attraction for her well past puberty. Let's just say if you ever plan to do an Google image search for Gadget, I would strongly advise using the parental lock, or with the Safe Search filter on; otherwise you're guaranteed to see images that will murder your childhood dead in unspeakable ways. For the sake of your innocent memories of Gadget Hackwrench, please for the love of your furry deity, be careful on the internet!  

I almost had my childhood ruined several years ago by one certain Rescue Ranger themed skit on Robot Chicken which we shall never speak of again. 

Yeah, when it comes to my cartoon crush, I much prefer to remember Gadget for the awesome character that she was in my early teenage years: strong female character, pilot, mechanic, inventor....and apparently the central figure of worship in a Russian cult.

I'm totally not making that last part up, folks!

There is apparently a group of Gadget fans in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod who have built an entire religion around her likeness called Gadgetology. 

Members of the Russian Gadgetology cult preparing to hold a
ritual service for their deity -- Gadget Hackwrench.

The members of this cult believe with all their hearts that Gadget is a divine being, a goddess, who lives on another plane of existence, or a parallel universe. The members of the cult burn candles around a poster size image of the cartoon and chant to her to grant their wishes. They pray to posters of Gadget, write songs and poetry about her, and place stickers of her anywhere they can. 

Gadgetology followers regularly meet online and even hold offline events where they pray to effigies of her, celebrate her birthday, serenade her with songs and poetry, and give little offerings to her image. 

Basically, these people want to communicate with her directly, to shake her anthropomorphic hand and see her mousy inventions firsthand. They believe that she will manifest herself into our reality if enough people wish for some hard enough and long enough. Some of them even believe Gadget has already visited other dimensions to bless fans from parallel universes for their faith.

There are no less than three denominations of Gadgetology which are not mutually exclusive: Traditional Gadgetology, Progressive Gadgetology, and Apocalyptic Gadgetology. 

This is a level of fandom devotion that goes beyond just a simple cartoon crush, but hey, if it makes them happy, and they aren't sacrificing live animals, or anything, more power to them.

So there you have it, a cartoon character than I identified with and had a small attraction to around 13 and 14 years old has become so popular, not only is she a cosplay favorite, she's now literally a goddess to a couple hundred Russians. 

All I have to say about that is....bet none of y'all had a cartoon crush who was deified! Ha ha! 

No seriously, I like the idea that one of my favorite protagonists in one of my all-time favorite animated shows has brought people so much joy, and had such an impact on their lives they still care about her. That's the power of fandom folks, and it is a force to be reckoned with.

While I cannot say that my own love for Gadget ever reached such levels of devotion, I did learn from her character that being different and unique are not bad things -- they can be even be great strengths, even your own personal superpower, if utilized in the right ways.

Granted I can't invent things from a few spare parts, but I know how to use my imagination to create good work for people who enjoy my online content.  

Always be uniquely you and find your own style. 

My Gadget button, a gift from a previous girlfriend
who also shared my love for the TV series.

Have any of y'all learned anything from having a cartoon crush in your youth, or in the present day? Let me know in the comments section below, and tell me if you enjoyed this article. 

  

Have a wonderful Dixie day and y'all come back now, ya hear?