Scouting Week: Junior Woodchucks

Folks, once again my birthday is upon us and last year, I dedicated an entire week to my favorite film, Dumbo. This year however, I've decided to turn my attention to how a certain aspect of something I'm familiar with has been portrayed by Disney.  That is Scouting. As you see for the longest time of my life, I was a Boy Scout and I am the only person in my family to reach the rank of Eagle, which is the highest rank that one can attain in Boy Scouts.  And I've decided to start this week by looking at what is most arguably Disney's most famous Scout Troop, the Junior Woodchucks.  The Junior Woodchucks were Duckburg's version of a Boy Scout Troop.


The Junior Woodchucks were created by Carl Barks in 1951 and first appeared in Comic Book format, in the tale, Operation St. Bernhard.

Now this is not that exact comic but something along these lines.  Now before the Woodchucks got their own title, their stories would appear in either Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge's books.  Now there is also an origin story detailing how the Woodchucks came to be and also a story on how Huey, Dewey, & Louie joined the troop. Which is also shown in DuckTales as that is where I first learned of the Woodchucks.

As you can see here, Launchpad is  their scoutmaster. And according to my research there were two other scoutmasters.  The first being Donald and in the Italian comics, one that is apparently tall and muscular  duck  that is afraid of  flight.  Now The Woodchucks made a reappearance in the Mickey Mouse Works short, Survival of The Woodchucks.

In which the boys were trying to earn a merit badge but Uncle Donald was sabotaging them because he never got that particular merit badge.   And of course, they cast Donald as the scoutmaster.

Now these are just a few appearances of the Woodchucks, let's move on to the other stuff, the uniform and the guidebook.  Starting with the uniform,  I've noticed over time, it started feeling more and more scout like. Looking at the first uniform, it didn't have much of a scout feel to it but by the time, Survival of The Woodchucks rolled around, that reminds me of the Scout uniform that I used to wear. Just the wrong color.  Now moving on to the Guidebook.  Don Rosa apparently also created a backstory for the guidebook.

The Guidebook seems to hold endless knowledge of everything about how merit badges and stuff for the woodchucks.  Unlike real Scouting where each Merit Badge had it's own individual book. Such as this one.

Now, reading up on the Woodchucks, there was also a female variation called The Chickadees. Now I don't know enough about them to go into full detail and also it was stated that part of the Woodchucks were meant to satirize certain aspects of Boy Scouts and I do see that and to be honest, I'm okay with that.  All in all, I have to say that I like The Junior Woodchucks.    Join me tomorrow as I continue Scouting Week as I take a look at..


Good Scouts