Melanie Clampett
Birth Date: Sometime in 1981.
Daughter of the head of the Avery Traveling Circus. In the circus, Melanie Clampett stars in a trick riding rodeo act. Her stage name is “Melissa Avery”, and her nickname on promotional materials is “Tex”, after her Texan-style rodeo. Her mother calls her “Sweetie”, and her father calls her “Sweetie Pie”.
Tiring of her circus life, Melanie ran away to leave the circus. Her parents hired detective Daniel MacGuinness to track her down and bring her home. When they realized the reason she had run away, the Clampett family decided to settle down in town for a few months. Melanie became a shadow to Daniel, following his every move in hopes of learning to become a great detective herself.
“Real Life” Data
In photographs, Melanie is a Dal, released by Jun Planning. She is the “Tweety” release, with a theme of Tweety (and Sylvester).
I originally planned to name her “Melissa Avery” after Melvin “Mel” Blanc (the voice of Tweety) and Frederick “Tex” Avery (of Bugs and Daffy fame). While thinking a bit about Looney Tunes cartoons, however, I realized that Tex Avery couldn’t have done the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. They just weren’t his style.
A minor bit of research led me to Tweety’s original creator, Bob Clampett. While it’s Friz Freleng who made Tweety into the yellow bird we know today, I found the name Clampett fit better for Melissa’s name. At the same time, “Melissa” sounded too clumsy to go alongside “Clampett”, so I changed that to “Melanie”.
With the name Melanie Clampett decided upon, I decided to use Melissa “Tex” Avery as a show name, with Avery as the name of the Clampett family’s circus.
The nicknames “Sweetie” and “Sweetie Pie” come from Tweety’s real name being “Sweetie Pie”. Because of his speech impediment, Sweetie pronounces his name as “Tweety”.
I considered giving Melanie the same speech impediment as Tweety, but decided against it.