Clyde Crashcup

Clyde Crashcup is a fictional character from the early 1960s animated television series The Alvin Show . He is a scientist in a white coat who tends to "invent" things that had already been invented; his experiments invariably fail.^[1] He usually invented by penciling the concept in air, with the picture becoming the actual object. The character has also appeared in comics and other Alvin and the Chipmunks works after The Alvin Show.

Clyde Crashcup was created by Ross Bagdasarian. He is voiced by Shepard Menken mimicking the enunciation of Richard Haydn's nasal-voiced character Edwin Carp. Clyde had one of the four segments of each episode of The Alvin Show, and the Chipmunks starred in the other three (two of which were musical segments).

Crashcup is a scientist in a white coat whose experiments invariably fail. His was the only voice heard in many of the episodes because the other main character in the series was his assistant Leonardo, who only whispered into Clyde's ear.^[a]

Clyde Crashcup was primarily an inventor rather than a researcher, although he tended to "invent" things that had already been invented. However, in one episode, he built a functioning time machine. He typically would invent something by taking a pencil out of his lab coat's pocket and drawing a picture in midair of his conception: the picture would then become the actual object. With the release of "This Is Your Life Clyde CrashCup" it shows him for the first time of wearing black pants and black bowtie and a grey shirt.

Clyde's catchphrase was to break down the name of his invention into its metonymic elements to explain his thought process. For example, when asked to justify the invention of the telephone, he would say "That's 'tele-' for tele and '-phone' for phone: telephone."

In one episode, Clyde invented a wife, voiced by June Foray.

• Dell Comics published 5 issues of a "Clyde Crashcup" comic book from Aug-Oct 1963 to Sept-Nov 1964. During a period spanning parts of 1963 and 1964, Dell also published a 12¢ and a 25¢ comic book titled "Alvin and His Pals in Merry Christmas with Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo", in which Clyde and Leonardo appear throughout. All were written by John Stanley.
• In 1981, Crashcup appeared in the TV special A Chipmunk Christmas , in a dream sequence. Crashcup tells Alvin that he has just invented Christmas and Santa Claus. True to Crashcup's earlier appearances, his Christmas is on February 12, and his Santa is shown to be Abraham Lincoln in a hollowed-out pumpkin that is pulled by four elephants. This scene has been been removed from some later airings to allow for more commercial breaks. Charles Berendt provided the voice of Clyde Crashcup in the special.
• Crashcup later had a special guest spot in the modern Alvin and the Chipmunks 1990 episode "Back to Our Future", in which he showed up in the time of the new show with a time machine and brought the modern Chipmunks back to his time, where they temporarily switched places with The Alvin Show Chipmunks. It was later released on VHS on April 14, 1994, as Back to Alvin's Future.
• In the 2000 film Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman , the Chipmunks and the Chipettes attend Clyde C. Crashcup Elementary School, a school apparently named after him.

• Don Markstein's Toonopedia

• Animated characters introduced in 1961
• Television characters introduced in 1961
• Alvin and the Chipmunks
• Fictional scientists
• Dell Comics titles
• Male characters in animated television series

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