Miffy Rip-off Continues To Be A Mere Footnote In History

In the mid-1950s, Miffy, a sketched rabbit character with an iconic x-shaped mouth, emerged from the Netherlands before going on to take Europe by storm. Whenever a character rises to fame in a certain area, clones would come to life to piggyback on the character's popularity. And Miffy is no exception.

In the late 1960s, a cat named Musti emerged from some place outside the Netherlands. Like Miffy, the feline also has an x-shaped mouth which makes us wonder if the similarity is coincidental. If Miffy was made to appeal to gals, I suppose Musti was created for lads.

I been knowing Miffy for quite a while. I first saw images of the rabbit in props sold in the now-defunct 99 cents chain of discount stores. As for Musti, I did not know the cat was a thing until just a few days ago when I was reading Wikipedia articles about Miffy where one of them has a link to a Musti article. Despite appearing in TV series and software for decades, it's rather surprising that Musti remains in the shadow of the Dutch leporid that (probably) inspire his creation.

As for the TV series, I saw two episodes: one in CGI and one in hand-drawn animation. But none of them impress me. Yes, the visuals are okay. But the voices of some of the characters sound unreal (such as that of Musti himself) due to series long practice of having the narrator, voice all characters. If I were to offer a suggestion, I'd tell the studio that all characters should have their own voice performer. Also, I'd recommend that Musti to be voice by a kid actor 8-10 in age.

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Make friends with Musti, the happy little kitten who is always having a new adventure.

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