The Pink Blueprint

The Pink Blueprint
Title card
Directed by	Hawley Pratt
Story by	John Dunn
Produced by	David H. DePatie Friz Freleng Bill Orcutt (production supervision)
Edited by	Chuck McCann
Music by	William Lava
Animation by	Warren Batchelder Don Williams Norm McCabe Dale Case Laverne Harding
Layouts by	Dick Ung
Backgrounds by	Tom O'Loughlin
Color process	Deluxe
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	May 25, 1966 (1966-05-25)
Running time	6:24
Country	United States
Language	Silent

The Pink Blueprint is the 18th cartoon produced in the Pink Panther series. A total of 124 6-minute cartoons were produced between 1964 and 1980.

Plot

A frustrated building contractor (the "Little Man") battles with the Pink Panther over the design of a house being built. The original design has blue overtones and a more traditional "milk carton" shape; conversely, the panther's is futuristically rounded, sleek, and all pink. Several unsuccessful attempts are made at swapping the original house blueprint with the pink version. In conclusion, it appears that Pink Panther gets the outlandish house he wants, but it is really the boringly-designed house the contractor was going to build, with a fancy-looking pink "facade" (false-front wall) loosely tacked onto the front for disguise.

Notes

• The concept of substituting a pink version of something for the original color was borrowed from The Pink Phink, wherein the Little Man is trying to paint a house blue but the Panther prefers pink paint. Both The Pink Blueprint and The Pink Phink were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, with the latter winning.
• Footage from The Pink Blueprint would be reused as a flashback in the made-for-television entry Pinkologist, wherein the Little Man goes to see a shrink because he is going insane from the Panther's frequent and infuriating interference in his life over the past years. Pink Posies also utilizes this same replacing-another-color-with-pink concept, wherein the Panther secretly pulls up all of the yellow flowers that the Little Man plants and replaces them with identically shaped pink flowers, initially causing the gardener to question his own eyesight, health, and sanity; he later becomes maniacally frustrated when pink flowers continue to appear no matter what he does, and so when he eventually does catch sight of the mischievous feline and realizes that Pinky is the true cause of the flower-color-changing problem, the enraged gardener ferociously pursues Pinky around the yard with his riding lawnmower.
• The Pink Panther Show contained a laugh track when the Pink Panther cartoons were broadcast on NBC-TV. When MGM released all 124 Pink Panther cartoons on DVD in 2006, the theatrical versions were, for the most part, utilized. However, several television prints made their way onto the DVD set, The Pink Blueprint being one of them.
• This was the first Pink Panther short film to air on television, on NBC, on September 6, 1969.

See also

• List of American films of 1966
• List of The Pink Panther cartoons

Further sources

• Meet the Pink Panther; by Hope Freleng and Sybil Freleng [1], (Universe Publishing, 2005).
• The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection [2] (2006). [DVD set]. New York: MGM Home Video.
• DePatie-Freleng website