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Hamton

Hamton J. Pig (usually just called Hamton) is a fictional anthropomorphic pig from the 1990s animated series Tiny Toon Adventures. Hamton was voiced by Don Messick in the English version and by Junichi Sugawara in the Japanese version.

Hamton's role in the series is as a straight man, with his personality dominated by tendencies toward being bookish and obsessively neat. However, when Hamton's patience is pushed too far, he is known for angry fits that surprises the human source of his frustration. Some of his madness-inducing moments involved such incidents as being unable to open a new school-issued locker or failing in an attempt to cook a lobster. Hamton's best friend, Plucky Duck, often attempts to take advantage of Hamton's easy going nature, with Plucky often using him as his sidekick in his various scatterbrained schemes.

Like the other characters in the series, Hamton attended Acme Looniversity, where his mentor and favorite teacher was Porky Pig. Other friends of Hamton included Babs and Buster Bunny and Fifi Le Fume.

Although Hamton's non-aggressive personality bears similarities to Porky's, Hamton also bears similarities to "Piggy Hamhock", a Friz Freleng-created character featured in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts Pigs Is Pigs (1937) and At Your Service Madame (1936).

Hamton is one of the few characters whose family appeared on-screen during the Tiny Toon Adventures series' run; his family consisted of his parents, Winnie and Wade Pig. Hamton's parents figured prominently in the Tiny Toon Adventures direct-to-video movie How I Spent My Vacation (along with Hamton's uncle Stinky, a heavy-set pig with poor personal hygiene); in this film, they take Hamton and Plucky on an ill-fated vacation to a theme park (during which Hamton barfed on a valuable comic book of Plucky's). Hamton's parents also appeared in another episode involving a house party Plucky goaded Hamton into throwing while his parents were out of town. Jonathan Winters voiced Wade (he had previously voiced "Slap-Happy Stanley" in an earlier episode), while Edie McClurg voiced Winnie.

A menorah-like candelabra is seen in the Pig family window during the series' Christmas special, implying that the family is Jewish. However, they do not keep kosher, as Hamton once tried to cook a lobster, and indeed, aren't even kosher themselves, being pork (it's fairly likely this is meant to be a joke).

Toward the end of the series, Hamton has shown to have an official relationship with Fifi Le Fume. It's incorrectly depicted as an ironic relationship, although Fifi has her typical skunk's stink and Hamton has taste for cleanliness and dislikes bad odors, which, in reality, pigs are actually associated with, so it's not really an ironic relationship; he is only a "clean pig" because he is no ordinary pig; he is anthropomorphic, possessing human abilities. It has also been shown that Hamton is more than willing to ignore her stink for her attention, which he often succeeds in doing. In "Prom-ise Her Anything", he asked Fifi to be his date, and Fifi accepted in a heartbeat. Fifi and Hamton were also seen together on other occasions through the run of the show.

The voice actor for Hamton, Don Messick, died in 1997 of a stroke; Hamton was Messick's last major role. In the Sony PlayStation video game Toonenstien: Dare to Scare, Hamton was voiced by Billy West. This makes Hamton one of two TTA characters who has had more than one voice actor (the other is Buster Bunny, whose original voice actor Charlie Adler was replaced by John Kassir after a dispute with Warner Bros. that he got no roles on the studio's next animated production.)