Scruffy is one of the five aliens in Pet Alien.
Biography[]
"Scruffy, Dinko's devoted pet, has taken it upon himself to protect Tommy and the aliens from... ...everything.
Scruffy looks and acts like a dog, except that his ears wag when he gets excited and he can use his tongue like an extra hand.
The tongue, which has a mind of its own, is suspected to possess slightly greater intelligence than its owner."
From the official Pet Alien website.
History[]
The Most Special Place[]
Scruffy is a member of a dog-like species that originates from the Planet McBark within the Big Union of Galaxies. They all look identical to each other. When Dinko first came to his native planet while driving the Go-Getter, he began chasing him and grabbed onto the spaceship until he and Dinko finally arrived at Earth. Dinko discovers him on the ship and adopts him as his pet. They land in Tommy Cadle’s backyard and stay in his treehouse for the night.
The leave Tommy’s house the next day and travel all over the world for their new home, while encountering two more aliens: Flip and Zuffy. They decide to go back to Tommy’s house and try to play on his tire swing, but they accidentally break it. They consider leaving, but Tommy forgives them and allows them to live in his treehouse, which they happily accept.
Pet Alien[]
One night while relaxing in his bedroom, Tommy Cadle discovers a spaceship crashing into his lighthouse roof with five aliens: Dinko, Gumpers, Swanky, Scruffy and Flip. Terrified, Tommy tries to run away and falls off the lighthouse, but is saved by Dinko. The two form a friendship and the aliens beg Tommy to let them live with him in the lighthouse. After much pleading, Tommy agrees, but as long as they promise to let anyone else move in and not cause anything trouble.
Scruffy can be considered the most underutilized and least prominent of all the aliens. He mainly appears for gags involving his sentient tongue, hardly gets any focus episodes, and is absent frequently, making him seem more like a filler character or a background extra instead of a main character.
Appearance[]
Scruffy is a purple alien dog with tiny arms and feet that look like shoes, a large sentient tongue, antenna-like ears, a stubby tail, and a green nose. He wears a yellow collar. Originally, Scruffy’s muzzle was more straight and his tongue was much smaller.
Personality[]
Scruffy is Dinko’s loyal and playful pet dog. However, due to his lack of screen time and dialogue, not much is known about him beyond that. He can also get really vicious when provoked long enough, as shown when Tommy and the aliens continued to ignore him, despite them promising to stop earlier in the episode.
Abilities[]
Scruffy has the ability to hop like a kangaroo and he has a long sentient tongue that he can use like an extra hand. In the original toy line, Scruffy didn’t have these abilities; he walked like a normal dog, his tongue was normal sized and he didn’t have his hopping abilities. His special ability was originally chasing frisbees and flying saucers.
Trivia[]
- The season two theme song, "On Pet Alien" introduces Flip and Scruffy as a comedy duo, but they are rarely seen together, are downplayed throughout the series, and are absent from a lot of episodes.
- Scruffy is the only alien who can’t talk.
- Flip and Scruffy weren’t part of the original draft of the show, since the show was originally supposed to just feature Dinko, Gumpers and Swanky as the main aliens. When Splash Entertainment took over and rewrote the series, they were added to the lineup, most likely because they were important characters in the original pilot (although Swanky and Gumpers only had brief cameos at the end). Despite the decision to add them to the lineup, they were heavily underutilized in the final product and rarely got any screen time or focus episodes.