Mother Goose and Grimm

Mother Goose and Grimm is a comic strip begun in 1984 by Mike Peters. The strip centralizes on its title characters: an anthropomorphic goose named Mother Goose, and her dog, Grimm. Except when it chooses to be a one-shot, gag-a-day strip in the vein of The Far Side. Other characters include Atilla the cat and various others. The strip also had an animated series in 1991, which tanked.


 * Anthropomorphic Shift: Grimmy and Atilla started out noticeably less humanoid than they are now. One of the most notable changes is that they now speak normally instead of via thought bubbles á la Garfield.
 * Art Evolution: Grimm was much more lumpy and scratchy in the first years. Sometime around 1988, his design was streamlined, and the art has stayed the same since.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Ham the pig, who was portrayed as Goose's roommate, has been long gone from the strip. Sumo the Cat seemed to have disappeared as well until a December 2011 story arc.
 * Atilla seems to be on his way to this as well, with the introduction of Ralph.
 * Fat and Skinny: Sumo and Atilla, respectively.
 * Follow the Leader: The animated series came not long after Garfield and Friends, another (far more successful) Animated Adaptation of a comic strip. Not only that, it was on the same network, made by the same studio, and even had Mark Evanier as the head writer.
 * Furry Confusion: Grimm and Atilla look like a normal dog and cat, while Mother Goose is far more humanoid. However, Grimm and Atilla act no less human than Goose.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Whether verbal or visual, one of the strip's specialties.
 * Murder by Cremation: A strip had Grimm's Too Dumb to Live friend, Ralph the Boston Terrier, giving a testimony of the death of a possum who had apparently died, so they cremated him and placed his ashes in an urn.
 * Name and Name
 * Never Trust a Hair Tonic: The cartoon has a hair tonic which could grow hair on billiard balls, as advertised...but it can't grow hair on anything else.
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries: Averted with Mz. Goose. Also played with in one strip where Ham asks Goose why she has a bikini top. She actually straps it over her eyes at night to keep the light out.
 * Parody Failure: More than once.
 * One had a man watching TV with a woman behind him looking shocked, and the caption, "Scully discovers the XXX Files." Which wasn't actually funny if you had any knowledge of The X-Files, since it was well-established that Mulder really did stash porn all over the office, and that Scully was perfectly aware of it and didn't care.
 * Another strip had Edward Scissorhands constantly losing at Rock-Paper-Scissors...which is, in fact, already used as a Running Gag in the movie.
 * Print Long Runners: 25 years in 2009.
 * Species Surname: Mother Goose is referred to as "Mz. Goose" by others.
 * Sphere Eyes: The main characters.
 * Talking Animal: Entire cast at some point. Grimm and Atilla used to speak via thought bubbles á la Garfield, but now are full-on talking animals.
 * Theme Naming: The title characters are named for popular fairy tale writers.
 * Unexpected Genre Change: Every now and then, Peters will set up a one-panel gag involving none of the cast whatsoever, or just Grimmy staring blankly off to the side.