Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf
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Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf are animated cartoon characters in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Ralph (named after a Warner Bros. employee) has virtually the same character design as another Warners character, Wile E. Coyote—brown fur, wiry body, and huge ears, but with a red nose in place of the Coyote's black one. He also shares the same appetite, fanatical persistence and use of Acme Corporation products, but he covets sheep instead of road runners and, when he speaks, doesn't have the upper-class accent or the egotistical bearing of the Coyote. Sam, by contrast, is a large, burly sheepdog with yellow fur and mop of red hair that constantly covers his eyes.
Inspired by the Friz Freleng cartoon "The Sheepish Wolf" of a decade earlier (October 17, 1942), Animator Chuck Jones created Sam and Ralph for a series of shorts. The first of these shorts was "Don't Give Up the Sheep", released on January 3, 1953.
Most of the cartoons begin at the beginning of the workday, in which Ralph and Sam go to a meadow where sheep graze, exchange chitchat, and punch into the same time clock. Work having officially begun, Ralph repeatedly tries to abduct the helpless sheep and invariably fails, either through his own ineptitude or the minimal efforts of Sam. (While Sam is always in the right place at the right time to thwart any of Ralph's schemes that don't manage to thwart themselves, he is never shown moving quickly to get there, as if he either knew in advance where he would be needed, or has the power to teleport himself at will.) At the end-of-the-day whistle, Sam and Ralph punch out their time cards, chat amiably, and leave, presumably only to come back the next day and do it all again. Both Sam and Ralph are performed by voice actor Mel Blanc. In at least one instance, the workday is interrupted by a lunch break which they conducted amiably.
Jones may have gotten the idea for the cartoon from a book by Lewis Browne that alleges that there are no judges, police, doctors, etc.; there are only people judging, doing police work, healing the sick, etc. Thus, there are no sheepdogs, only dogs that guard sheep. The characters serve as Jones' satire on the mortal-enemy pairings that were by then common in cartoons at the time (including Jones' own numerous contributions to this stereotype, particularly his Coyote vs. Road Runner pairings). By the introduction of the workplace environment, Jones demonstrates that the characters in these hunter-versus-prey scenarios mutually need one another—what would Tom and Jerry or Sylvester and Tweety do if they didn't have each other to chase around all day?
The cartoon proved a success, prompting Jones to repeat it five more times between 1953 and 1962. In 1963, animators Phil Monroe and Richard Thompson also starred the duo in their cartoon "Woolen Under Where".
Sam and Ralph have featured in a handful of Warner Bros. projects since the closing of the studio's animation department. Sam has a cameo in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and they occasionally feature in the Looney Tunes comic book published by DC Comics. They appear from time to time on the television series The New Looney Tunes Show, now voiced by Joe Alaskey.
Sam and Ralph also serve as the main characters in a 2001 PlayStation video game called Sheep Raider (also known as Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf), produced by Infogrames. The game puts the player in the role of Ralph Wolf, who must steal sheep in a Tomb Raider-like world while evading Sam Sheepdog.
Sam and Ralph also make a brief cameo in the 2003 feature film "Looney Tunes: Back In Action".