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| “ | We're just a couple of crazy rascals out to have some fun! | „ |
| ~ Chip and Dale |
| “ | The biggest risk is not taking any risk. | „ |
| ~ Chip and Dale’s motto in the movie |
Chip and Dale are two chipmunk brother cartoon characters created in 1943 at Walt Disney Productions. Their names are a pun based on the name "Chippendale". This was suggested by Bill "Tex" Henson, a story artist at the studio.
According to Disney, Chip is the logical schemer, and Dale is the goofy, dim-witted one. Originally, the two were of a very similar appearance, but as a way to tell them apart, some differences were introduced. An easy way to visually tell them apart is that Chip has a small black nose (it looks a bit like a chocolate "Chip" as a way to help people remember who is who) and two centered protruding teeth, whereas Dale has a big red nose and his two prominent buck teeth exposed. Chip is also depicted as having smooth, short fur atop his head while Dale's tends to be ruffled.
In the '50s, they were finally given their own series, but only three cartoons were made; Chicken in the Rough (1951), Two Chips and a Miss (1952), and The Lone Chipmunks (1954). They later served as the two titular main protagonists of both the 1988-90 Disney Channel series, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, as well as its 2022 sequel film of the same name.
Chip was first voiced by Jimmy MacDonald, Billy Bletcher, Anne Lloyd, Helen Silbert, Gloria Wood, Robie Lester and Teri York in the classics and currently voiced Tress MacNeille, who also voices Daisy Duck and John Mulaney, who also voiced by Peter Porker in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. while Dale was by Dessie (Flynn) Miller, Billy Bletcher, Anne Lloyd, Gloria Wood, Robie Lester and Teri York in the classics and currently Corey Burton and briefly Tress MacNeille and by Andy Samberg, who also Jonathan Loughran, in Hotel Transylvania
Early cartoons
Pluto shorts
Chip 'n' Dale first appeared in the cartoon Private Pluto (1943), though they did not have their names or distinguishing characteristics. Pluto has been assigned to guard a pillbox where the two chipmunks are storing their nut supply, with the large gun being used as a nutcracker. However, various portions of Pluto's anatomy (such as his head) are realized as useful nutcracking implements. Eventually, they retreat into the pillbox, leaving Pluto weeping outside.
In their second short Squatter's Rights, they are once again against Pluto, though this time with Mickey Mouse along (though the latter never realizes the chipmunks' presence). The chipmunks have been hibernating in Mickey's hunting cabin when he and Pluto arrive, they are less than thrilled. Various gags ensue, culminating with Pluto almost having his head blown off by a shotgun.
With the aid of a bottle of ketchup, the chipmunks manage to make Mickey think his dog has been critically wounded. Exit one Mouse, leaving the chipmunks once again the sole occupants of the cabin. (Interestingly, though the two chipmunks have no physical distinctions, certain elements of the two chipmunks' later personalities can be recognized.
Donald Duck shorts
Chip 'n' Dale did not get their names (or the traits that separate them) until the cartoon Chip an' Dale (1947) where they antagonize Donald Duck. They continued to appear in animated cartoons, usually annoying, tricking, and terrorizing Donald that they became far more famous for antagonizing Donald and are possibly best known for appearing in his shorts (though sometimes it is justified since Donald picks on them), having gained their trademark appearances and personas when acting as Donald's antagonists, until the mid-1950s.
Chicken in the Rough
Chip 'n' Dale wanders into a farmyard to collect as many acorns as they can but Dale mistakes an egg for a nut and is in turn mistaken for a hatching egg. Upon investigation by the rooster, Dale is forced to impersonate a newly-hatched chicken.
Donald Applecore
In this short, Donald is an apple farmer, and Chip 'n' Dale are wreaking havoc on his apples. A battle for supremacy on the farm ensues, with many apples getting destroyed in the process. The word rhyme "Applecore - Baltimore" is used in this short.
Two Chips and a Miss
Although Chip 'n' Dale are almost always united in a common goal, this was one of their only shorts to see them working against each other, for the affections of Clarice, a performer at the Acorn Club.
List of Chip 'n' Dale shorts
The 1940s
- Private Pluto (1943)
- Squatter's Rights (1946)
- Fun and Fancy-Free (1947) (cameo)
- Chip an' Dale (1947)
- Three for Breakfast (1948)
- Winter Storage (1949)
- All in a Nutshell (1949)
- Toy Tinkers(1949)
The 1950s
- Crazy Over Daisy (1950)
- Trailer Horn (1950)
- Food for Feudin(1950)
- Out on a Limb (1950)
- Chicken in the Rough (1951)
- Corn Chips (1951)
- Test Pilot Donald (1951)
- Out of Scale (1951)
- Donald Applecore (1952)
- Two Chips and a Miss (1952)
- Pluto's Christmas Tree (1952)
- Working for Peanuts (1953)
- The Lone Chipmunks (1954)
- Dragon Around (1954)
- Up a Tree (1955)
- Chips Ahoy (1956)
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
In 1989, they became the two main characters/heroes in a new animated series, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. They formed a detective agency with new characters created for the show: female mouse inventor Gadget Hackwrench, muscular adventuring Australian mouse Monterey Jack, and Zipper the fly. While in the original shorts, the duo are frequent troublemakers who are concerned only with themselves, in Rescue Rangers, they are crime fighters who help the less fortunate.
In this series, the personality differences between the two are more pronounced, with Chip as the responsible, no-nonsense leader and Dale as the goofy, laid back free spirit. Additionally, they wear clothes in this series which reflect their personalities; Chip wears a leather jacket and fedora (much like Indiana Jones), while Dale wears a Hawaiian shirt (much like Magnum, P.I.). Also, Burton gave Dale a slightly raspier voice not heard in any incarnations before or since.
In the series pilot, "To The Rescue", Chip and Dale join their old friend, police K-9 Plato and his human partner, Detective Donald Drake, with pursuing a suspect that stole the Clutchcoin ruby necklace. When the suspect ditches his getaway car in a lumber yard as Drake and Plato arrive, backed up by Officers Kirby and Muldoon, Chip and Dale help recover the necklace, but the suspect escapes. At the precinct, Chip, Dale, and Plato are shocked when they find that Fat Cat, whom Plato thought drowned a year ago with his master, Aldrin Klordane, has shown up to cause trouble. After Plato, Chip, and Dale chase Fat Cat through the station house, drawing the attention of Drake, Kirby, Muldoon, Sgt. Spinelli, the police captain, and the SWAT team, Fat Cat knocks over the coat tree that Drake hung his coat on, revealing evidence Fat Cat planted in the coat to frame Drake and Plato, including the Clutchcoin necklace, minus the ruby, airline tickets, and gambling debts. The police captain has no choice but to have the SWAT team arrest Drake, disarm him of his service weapon, and lock him and Plato up, much to the devastation of the entire precinct at the belief Drake and Plato had gone bad so close to their retirement, which was only a month away. However, knowing that Drake and Plato were framed for the ruby's disappearance, Chip and Dale volunteer to find Fat Cat and recover the ruby and prove Drake and Plato's innocence.
Their pursuit of Fat Cat leads them to meet Monterey Jack and Zipper, who soon join Chip and Dale after Fat Cat throws their home overboard from the ship Monty was living on, enraging Monty over the loss of his house. Though Fat Cat escapes, Monty takes Chip and Dale to meet his old friend, Geegaw Hackwrench, to help them pursue Fat Cat. They find that Geegaw isn't home, but his daughter, Gadget Hackwrench, is, and she somberly reveals that her father was lost over a year ago. Using her father's old aircraft, the Screaming Eagle, Gadget takes Chip, Dale, Monty, and Zipper to Glacier Bay to pursue Fat Cat and his master, Aldrin Klordane, discovering that they've hired Professor Norton Nimnul to carve a large glacier out of the ice to take back to the city. However, as they continue the chase, Monty and Zipper temporarily split off due to Monty's personal revenge for his home, but rejoin the gang later as they pursue Klordane into the old subway tunnels under the city, where Plato is captured after Klordane kidnapped Drake from his jail cell earlier.
There, the gang find that Klordane intends to use the ice and lime Jell-O to make a massive earthquake generating device to crack open the vaults of the Global Gold Reserve and steal all of the gold coins and ingots stored inside. Though Klordane succeeds in his plan, encouraged by Plato, and with Plato calling them "Rescue Rangers" for the first time, Chip and Dale and their friends are able to bring the entire building down so the cops within, including Kirby and Muldoon, can arrest Klordane, Nimnul, and all their men, but Klordane escapes with his train full of stolen gold and Plato, causing a cave-in with dynamite to prevent the police from following him. The Rescue Rangers are able to catch up to him, and manage to cause enough of a distraction attacking and injuring him, such as covering him in coal dust, that they are able to divert the train onto a dead end track, causing it to roar back up to the surface, slam into a building, and send Klordane, with Plato administering his patented Crime Bite to Klordane's backside, flying right into the police captain's office, where Klordane returns the ruby and confesses to his crimes, thus vindicating Drake and Plato.
With their names cleared, Drake and Plato are able to retire as originally intended with the rest of the precinct relieved they are innocent and Klordane framed them out of personal revenge, and Plato presents his police badge to the Rescue Rangers as a token of thanks for their heroism. When a young child then asks Sgt. Spinelli for help finding her missing puppy, the Rescue Rangers are more than ready for their next adventure.
They appeared in the Live-Action/Animation 2022 movie, where they get back together to stop a criminal organization and save toons from being bootlegged.
Comics series
Chip 'n' Dale also had their comic book title, first from Dell Comics with Four Color Comics #517,581, and 636, then their title for issues #4-30 (1955–62), which was then continued by Gold Key Comics with #1-64 (1967–80), and later under its brand Whitman with #65-83 (1980–84).
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
appear as guest stars in some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes:
- "Daisy-Bo-Peep"
- "Donald's Big Balloon Race"
- "Minnie's Birthday" (Cameo)
- "Mickey Go Seek"
- "Daisy's Dance"
- "Pluto's Ball"
- "Daisy in the Sky"
- "Pluto's Best"
- "Goofy the Great"
- "Mickey's Great Clubhouse Hunt"
- "Donald's Hiccups"
- "Minnie's Picnic"
- "Goofy in Training"
- "Mickey's Big Band Concert"
- "Clarabelle's Clubhouse Carnival"
- "Minnie's Mystery"
- "Mickey's Comet"
- "Space Captain Donald"
- "The Friendship Team"
- "Pluto's Playmate"
- "Choo-Choo Express"
- "Goofy's Coconutty Monkey"
- "Daisy the Painter"
- "Mickey's Adventures in Wonderland"
- "Chip's and Dale's First Beach Trip"
- "Minnie's Mouseke-Calendar"
Other appearances
Chip 'n' Dale occasionally appeared in Mickey Mouse Works and House of Mouse. They can also be spotted in the 1983 featurette Mickey's Christmas Carol where they are seen dancing to the music inside Fezziwigs. They also appear at all the Disney Parks as well.
More recently, they appear in the 2017 DuckTales show alongside the other Rescue Rangers. There, they are regular chipmunks who were mutated to gain enhanced intelligence (similar to Pinky and the Brain). They help Launchpad McQuack fight off Steelbeak and Black Heron.
Goofy Gophers
A recurring shtick often mistakenly attributed to Chip 'n' Dale is the characters' alleged use of politeness: "After you," … "No, I insist, after you!" This gag, from the early-1900s Alphonse and Gaston comic strip, is used by another studio's characters: Warner Bros' Mac and Tosh as the Goofy Gophers. However, in 1950 short "Out on a Limb," Chip 'n' Dale do engage in a round of this (possibly about the Goofy Gophers) before Chip stops it from getting out of hand with a swift kick to Dale's rear end.
Voice actors
The classic voices of Chip 'n' Dale were mostly provided by Helen Silbert, Dessie Flynn/Dessie Miller, and James MacDonald. The earliest voices were provided by female office staff, without credit. In "Private Pluto" the chipmunks' speech was created by speeding up sound clips of normal speech. In a number of the shorts that followed, many of these same sound clips were used again, though later shorts used dialogue specifically recorded for that short.
At one point in "Winter Storage", they get into an argument while caught in a trap. When the scene switches to an outside view of the box (with Donald Duck sitting on the box) the dialogue being heard is a sped-up segment of the voice-over narration from the Goofy short "A Knight for a Day".
Since 1988, Chip has been voiced by Tress MacNeille and Dale by Corey Burton.
In the 2017 Ducktales show, they are both voiced by Jeff Bennett.
In the 2022 CGI/Live-action film, Chip was voiced by John Mulaney, Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse and Dale by Andy Samberg, who also played Jonathan in Hotel Transylvania.
Video games
- Chip 'n' Dale appear in a Rescue Rangers spin-off video game that was produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Capcom in 1990. A sequel was released in 1993.
- Chip 'n' Dale appear in Disney's Toontown Online in Chip & Dale's Acorn Acres. Toons can go there to play miniature golf. This place has access to Donald's Dock and Bossbot Cog Headquarters.
- Chip 'n' Dale appears in "Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The Adventure in Nimnul's Castle" a DOS game produced by Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. in 1990.
- Chip 'n' Dale appear in "Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour".
Kingdom Hearts series
In the Kingdom Hearts series, Chip 'n' Dale reside in Disney Castle as operators of the Gummi Ship garage. While Tress MacNeille and Corey Burton resume their respective roles, the latter uses a deep-sounding voice for Dale. Though making voiceless cameos in the first game, play a larger role in Kingdom Hearts II. The two also appeared in the prequel game, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.
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