Baby Huey is, in fact, a
duck.
A big, yellow, clumsy duck. His preferred wardrobe is a blue bonnet, blue shirt, red bow, and diaper. The running gag is that Huey is a huge and rather stupid infant, who drives those around him crazy through his ineptitude. His cartoons were highly derivative of the Three Bears shorts that Warner Brothers was making at the time, which featured a similarly large and stupid baby bear.
Huey is a creation of Marty Taras, an animator at Famous Studios. Huey's first cartoon, Quack a Doodle Doo, was released March 3, 1950, several months after his first comic book appearance, though it was Famous, and not the comic company (St. John Publishing) that owned him. Huey was voiced by Syd Raymond, and continued to voice Famous Studio shorts throughout the 1950's. His last Famous cartoon was Huey's Father's Day, 1959 (and NOT Pest Pupil, as originally written here).
In 1959, Famous sold off all its characters to Harvey Comics, which had held the licensing right to Huey comic books after St. John Publishing's contract had expired. Harvey made some cartoons for television featuring Huey, on and off, as well as several comic series such as Baby Huey in Duckland. The comic series are all dead now, and the cartoons are hard to come by, despite being syndicated. Huey was last seen in the direct to video, live action film Baby Huey's Great Easter Adventure, which came out 1998. We can only hope that he's fired his agent.
A list, by no means pretending to be complete, of Huey's Famous Studio cartoons:
- Quack a Doodle Doo (March 3, 1950)
- One Quack Mind (January 12, 1951)
- Party Smarty (August 3, 1951)
- Scout Fellow (December 21, 1951)
- Clown on the Farm (August 22, 1952)
- Starting from Hatch (March 3, 1953)
- Huey's Duck Daddy (November 23, 1953)
- Git Along Little Ducky (March 25, 1955)
- Swab the Duck (May 11, 1956)
- Pest Pupil (January 25, 1957)
- Jumping with Toy (October 4, 1957)
- Huey's Father's Day (May 8, 1959)
Sources
http://www.toonopedia.com/babyhuey.htm
http://home.att.net/~thft/huey.htm
http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/page.cgi?g=Paramount_Pictures%2FFamous_Studios%2F