This weekend's installment of "Things That Keep Me Up At Night" set out to answer the question Who the heck is Max's mom? Max, you'll recall, was Goofy's son on "Goof Troop," a staple of The Disney Afternoon from September of 1992 - December of 1993. I was 11 when the show aired; torn between being too cool for cartoons and wanting to know what hilarious scrapes Max and P.J. were going to get into. Like, remember that episode where they were doing a science project and they accidently convinced the citizens of Spoonerville that the city was being invaded by aliens? Or the one where they have to dress up as Goofy and take his place in the skateboarding demo? Anyone? Well I remember. I remember the show, and I remember thinking to myself "who the hell would have sex with Goofy?" Which is, I suppose, the real question behind this weekend's post. What kind of character would fall in love and procreate with a socially awkward dog? (I'm allowing myself to make the assumption that a heterosexual courtship and marriage led to little Max's birth. This was Disney in the early nineties, after all). I get the whole Mickey/Minnie relationship. Minnie is a hottie and Mickey demonstrably has his shit together. Donald Duck was sort of a jerk but it was all bluster, and with Gladstone Gander as his competition, Daisy would have been a fool not to choose him. But Goofy? All faux pas and foible? All elbows and embarrassment? He's the sidekick, not the leading man. It never made sense.
I took to the internet to find out if Max's mom had ever been identified and quickly realized that I was by no means the first one to raise the question. The parsing of Goofy's sexual history is fodder for several 'toon discussion boards. My search immediately revealed that Goofy was a widower; beyond that there was nothing to be found but idle speculation. Instead of answering the question that's been weighing on me for 16 years, my search left me with more questions. Is Max the black haired re-incarnation of the '50s era "Goofy Junior?" If so, does that make dog-faced Penny Max's mother? Wouldn't the coupling of Clarabelle the Cow and Goofy have resulted in some cow/dog breed Disney wasn't quite prepared to deal with? Who is the mysterious Glory-Bee? Why is fanboy such a toolbox? I leave these questions to you, dear readers. I've resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never know who got into Goofy's pants ... and on that note I'm going to try to get some sleep.
~M
2 comments:
I never really think at the gap in our ages...and then you post this and I realize while you were 11 and watching goof troop, I was dealing with the weirdness that is one's senior year of high school and then heading off to college. Sigh.
Oh man, I knew that posting the timeline was going to backfire! Ha. No worries... we've overcome our difference in age pretty well I think :) Although, come to think of it, I really could have used a cool older friend during those awkward years. Sigh.
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