In Chinese astrology, 2007 is the Year of the Pig. To celebrate the swine, we’re counting down the top 20 oinkers of all time.
1. Miss Piggy. Simply put: no porker has contributed more to popular culture. She shattered the barriers of interspecies romance (pigs + frogs!), and taught us about female martial arts.
2. The Harley Davidson Motorcycle. The “hog,” as it’s known. An American icon. A loud one. An expensive one.
3. Arnold. The Green Acres mainstay was the was like an adopted human son to the cast, and almost everyone on the show treated him as such.
4. Wilbur. We hear the Charlotte’s Web hero is “Some pig”
5. Babe. He upped the ante by talking, which is now de rigeur for all these animal movies. A bit of a boy scout, though.
6. The inflatable pig that Pink Floyd shoots into the audience during shows. I mean… dude.
7. Pumbaa. A gregarious Lion King warthog whose charm outweighs his flatulence.
8. Piglet. The Robin to Pooh’s Batman.
9. The Sweat Hogs. We’re getting a little loose with the definition, but this quartet of Brooklyn high school slackers from Welcome Back Kotter deserves a slot.
10. The 1994 Arkansas Razorbacks Men’s Basketball team. This National Championship team produced NBA sixth man Corliss Williamson. On second thought, maybe they should be lower on this list
Porco Rosso |
11. Porky Pig. Sure, he’s one of the most famous characters in the Looney Tunes stable, but we find his stuttering problem
extremely annoying.
12. The Three Little Pigs. Our favorite iteration of the huffed-and-puffed-on was probably Green Jelly’s claymation version.
13. Piggy. The chubby, bespectacled, rock-crushed, conch-flaunter from Lord of the Flies is almost too sad to think about.
14. Madmartigan. The master swordsman in Willowgets turned into a pig — yes, briefly — by the evil sorceress, harkening back to when Odysseus’s men get turned to swine by the dread goddess Circe.
15. Porco Rosso. Not actually a pig, but in Miyazaki-land, does it make a difference? The man who gives the movie its name is actually a former fighter pilot doing some freelance work. The pig’s head is the result of a curse.
16. Bebop. This mutated warthog was one of Shredder’s incompetent thugs in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But why didn’t he show up in the 1990 movie?
17. Hamton J. Pig. The Tiny Toons character was the token nebbish, always getting roped into some sort of crazy scheme with Plucky Duck. But he got to be John Flansbugh when they did the They Might Be Giants episode.
18. Napoleon/Snowball/Old Major. FUCKIN’ COMMIES!
19. Chief Wiggum. The Simpsons cop actually, you know, looks like a pig.
20. Link Hogthrob and Dr. Strangepork. Doomed to be afterthoughts. How could they compete with Miss Piggy on the set of “Pigs in Space”?
