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One of Merrymouse’s earliest cartoons featured a bumbling alien with buck teeth called Oofus the Space Cadet. Poor Oofus, left behind by his own kind. After exploring a faraway moon, a classic saucer UFO lifted up and away from the screen and nobody aboard noticed that Oofus was even missing. Nobody loved Oofus enough to notice.

 

The whole cartoon is basically just that premise there: Oofus, alone, exploring a strange moon all on his lonesome getting swept into one misadventure after another.

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In one episode, Oofus sculpts a little fort out of hardened moonsand and decides to guard it. (Who knows what he’s guarding it from? This foreign cartoon moon is not like the Scorch, where there are real fiends to rob you, splay you out, make you suffer for sport. Or in the case of grimers, carve you up for prime organ real estate!) Maybe it was just something to do. Anyway, this endeavor gives Oofus a great deal of purpose, at least for an episode, and soon he begins sculpting some fellow lookouts to keep him company and take over his shift whenever he gets tired. He begins talking to one of his moonsand friends, sort of narrating aloud everything he’s doing and thinking.

 

This particular moonsand friend has two polished geodes for eyes. They gleam when facing skyward, at one of two suns blazing off in the background like some Star Wars shit. This particular moonsand friend is his best friend in the whole wide galaxy. There’s a little montage of him chatting up his moonsand mate next: holding an umbrella over his head to protect him from a meteor shower in one scene. Serving him some sculpted food on a flimsy plastic plate in another (a sandwich—what else?) In the last heartbreaking shot, one of those giant suns that’s always looming in the backdrop zooms closer for some reason, melting his moonsand mate when Oofus has his back turned. Oofus struggles to rebuild his friend but the sun, stubbornly deciding to remain where it’s at now, tattooed into the foreground, won’t allow it. Moonsand mate keeps melting, again and again, just as fast as Oofus can build him back up again. Oofus cries big fat tears that form a puddle in a crater on the moon, which Oofus eventually sits beside crying some more until he falls in and nearly drowns. Poor Oofus eventually paddles out and he is all alone again.

 

Though he is alone, he continues to talk as if his friend is still there, narrating every last dumb detail.

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There’s power in this.                                     Oofus knew.

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You’re only alone if your mind accepts that you’re alone.

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The UFO never comes back for Oofus. And though he has every right to be angry, he’s not. He’s simply…lonely.

 

Somehow, he finds a reason to laugh at least once every episode.                                  To me, this makes him brave.